Food Trip

Storefront restaurant features Filipino cuisine

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 08/13/06

BY ANDREA CLURFELD
FOOD CRITIC

Here at Bistro San Miguel, we’re presented with a pair of small platters holding clusters of tiny woven green boxes, lattice-work-lidded cartons suitable for concealing precious jewels. At first, I unravel the whole thing. A mistake. You simply lift off the lid and find inside . . . food.

Rory San Miguel, our server and (with her husband Bob) the owner, flashes a broad smile as she explains these are “palm boxes.” Never have I had palm boxes before, though the name certainly fits the presentation. The little boxes indeed look like they are made of thick palm leaves but, once opened, it’s hard to think about the trim container.

Plunge a fork inside a box and give it a half twirl, just enough to pick up a tangle of rice noodles and shrimp that have been tossed with a vibrant green mixture that looks like pesto. It’s not pesto, but a fine-chopped puree of broccoli, daintily seasoned. It’s utterly irresistible, light, tingly on the tongue, maybe just a tad citrusy, and I’m terribly glad there’s more to conquer. I’ve never, ever had this palm box creature before and I’ve been charmed into submission for whatever is next.

What’s next is, in part, a mystery at Bistro San Miguel, a storefront Filipino restaurant in a squat and homely strip mall on Route 35 in Middletown. Though we’ve made reservations, we get the idea that the folks here have only very casually prepared for our arrival. There’s a section of a long table set with silverware for us, but the rest of the dining space is done in scattershot decor. There’s a makeshift bandstand and cafe-style tables on the other side of the two-store flow-through space and racks holding grocery items at the rear of the dining area. Rory explains that she’s in the process of converting her small Filipino grocery into the dining room, leaving the half that once was reserved for eating to the entertainment end of the operation. There’s live music, karaoke and dancing at night, making Bistro San Miguel a kind of club where folks drop in or maybe stage a party.

Bag the buffet

As we sit, we ask for menus, but Rory points us to a buffet, stationed between the music room and the kitchen. We beg for menus and one is presented to us. It’s short, containing a brief list of Filipino classics with a couple of American basics thrown in for good measure. Several items don’t have prices attached to them. I’m just shy of stymied.

But Rory is willing to listen: We want authentic Filipino dishes, we tell her. We point a handful of the items on the menu that interest us and look at Rory with pleading eyes. Then she gets it — and us. “I’ll cook for you and make you some surprises, too.” This makes us happy. We nod in enthusiastic agreement.

The palm boxes are our first surprise. However you have to negotiate to get them, get them. They’re representative of the melting-pot cuisine that is anything you eat in the Philippines. Occupied for four centuries by Spain, an outrider to China located roughly between Indonesia and Japan, used as a stopover by Middle Eastern and African traders, and, for decades, a U.S. protectorate, the Philippines might be the most cross-cultural place on the planet. The 7,100 or so islands that make up the archipelago sitting between the South China Sea and the Pacific have so successfully blended ingredients and culinary techniques that nearly every dish seems a reminder of something else. Only not quite. Not quite.

Rory brings us a soup flush with whole shrimp, heads and shells left on, plus a wash of greens and okra. It’s all set in an intriguingly sour broth, a broth, I think, that’s been spiked with tamarind, a key Filipino accenting agent. It’s fabulous, this mix of fish and vegetables, as is a platter of rice that’s not quite the turo-turo I was after, but it’ll do nicely. Turo-turo translates as “point-point,” and it’s both an action and a concept something like Indonesian rijsttafel: You start with rice and are offered a wide spectrum of toppings; you point to the ones you wish to be added to your rice. Think fried rice, only fresher and not fried. Here, we’ve got rice already topped with cubes of adobo-roasted pork, luscious salt-cooked eggs, snips of vegetables and onions, and a garnish of woefully under-ripe tomatoes. Flick the tomatoes to the side and enjoy.

Enjoy, too, the crispy wontons filled with juicy pork and the fried lumpia, taut, fried rolled-up rice crepes that look a bit like thin cigars. Only these slender cylinders are Shanghai-style, stuffed with pork and minced vegetables and meant to be dipped in a sweet-sour sauce. They’re the ultimate hors d’oeuvre. It’s all making me wish Bistro San Miguel’s menu could be rewritten and better organized, putting the palm boxes, crispy wontons, sour shrimp soup and fried lumpia, for example, into an appetizer/starter category. But that’s not how it works here and, just as when you travel to a foreign country, you need to adapt to the local ways and mores if you want to have a real-deal experience.

We adore experiencing the Chinese influence in the pancit, a bountiful noodle dish that packs in sizzling Chinese pork sausage, leaves of various choys, snow peas, carrots and scallions in a tart-tangy sauce that barely coats the thick, eggy noodles and its accents, but nevertheless makes its presence known. A vegetable specialty shows the Filipino preference for native-grown coconut: Vegetables, including okra, yams and Chinese long beans, are stewed in a vivacious chile-spiked coconut milk bath, a backdrop that brings a subtle sweetness to the vegetables and deftly tames the heat in the dish. I speculate that there’s a speck of ginger in there and Rory gives my query a nod. “A little,” she says.

The complete pig

 

Pork is big in The Philippines and it’s everywhere at Bistro San Miguel. We get both crackling-skin roasted pork belly, sided with a potent sauce dominated by tamarind, and whole deep-fried pork knuckles. They’re not only a tribute to Filipinos’ adoration of the pig, but a testament to the way the animal is cooked: head to tail, not a scrap wasted. We happily gnaw away at the super-tender meat that falls off the various bones.

Fish might not be Bistro San Miguel’s strength. Rory brings us a whole grilled squid and, though the flavor’s sure-footed and the accompanying whole grilled eggplant smoky, lush and ready to inhale, the squid’s tough. Fried butterfish are small, served whole and not for those who faint at the sight of bones. If you pluck the skeletons out of the little fishes in one whole, fell swoop, you’ll do fine; but I found their meat overcooked, dry and uninteresting.

The leche flan is dark and dramatic, made of the same eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla as its Spanish confectionary cousin, but also flecked with giant shreds of real coconut and tiny oval and round beans that taste mildly honeyed. It’s homey and heartwarming and its presence as our finale reminds me that I must return to Bistro San Miguel very, very soon: We’ve only had a hint of adobo, a descendant of the Spanish vinegar-based marinade adobado, in the rice with adobo pork, and I want to see what Rory can do with adobo chicken. Don’t you?

Andrea Clurfeld is the restaurant critic for the Press. In addition to The Dining Companion, which appears every Sunday, her casual dining column, Eat Out, is published in Friday’s editions of the newspaper. Readers may write to her at the Asbury Park Press, 3601 Route 66, Neptune, N.J. 07754 or at clurfeld@app.com.

Source: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060813/LIFE/608130307/1006/LIFE

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