I know I know I’ve been fixated on the Filipino Food Festival for quite a while now. And I guess this happens to the best of us. When we are out of the country we start enjoying to an obscene degree – complete with eye-rolling – things you never even ate in your country. This, in my case a few nights ago, was HALO-HALO.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The Filipino Food Festival in Millennium ends in June 26, 2011 and we wanted to go back and treat our Filipina maid to pinoy food which she must be missing as well. Again we wanted to pick a night where there is Bistek Tagalog since it was our favorite during the opening night. The menu changes because the ingredients are limited and brought by 2 guest chefs from Manila via plane. Click here for a sample menu.
Our favorite dish of the night was the chicken mami! We loved how garlicky it was. (They have a similar local indonesian dish but the garlic flavor is not strong.)
1) Ube and macapuno 2) leche flan 3) bistek tagalog 4) mangga’t bagoong 5) monggo blanca 6) fried lumpia 7) garlic fried rice
Some elements of a Filipino Fiesta, colorful buntings and traditional bahay kubo (nipa hut). Waiter in a Katipunero outfit.
The chef offered to make us traditional halo-halo and we were amazed at how massive and delicious it was. The buffet has halo-halo ingredients but not all. This was complete! What you see are just the toppings, but underneath was so much ube, beans, jelly, etc.! They confessed that some of the ingredients ran out on the first 3 days of the buffet, but they were able to make some substitutions with local ingredients. I applaud them for their resourcefulness as it must be difficult to cook Filipino food in a country where even the soy sauce and the vinegar tastes different! (mahirap magtimpla ng adobo dito kasi ang asim ng suka at ang alat ng toyo!)
Our picture with Chef Karl Fortaleza and Chef Larry Moreno who were so wonderful to us. It was nice chatting with them after our meal and they were so nice they even sent me home some balut and bagoong! =P (haha! pinoy talaga ako!)
We vow that next year we will visit the Filipino Food Festival on the first few days so we get the ones made with ingredients that were brought from the Philippines! If you haven’t had your fill of the pinoy food fiesta yet, click here for details. Don’t forget to call to ask the menu of the day!
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