SF Road Trip Day 1 (cont'd) - Patio Filipino & Kuya's Asian Cuisine

(I'm actually writing this post several days later on Tuesday after a long day from going to Burlingame's Pez Museum, then across the Bay to Berkeley to hang out at Cal and have lunch)

So, for our first dinner at SF, Thane accompanied us to Patio Filipino in San Bruno . Why a Filipino restaurant since there's tons of those in San Diego, you might wonder? There's a difference. In San Diego, there may be a lot of Filipino places, but they are mostly "point point" type establishments, where the food is already made and has been sitting out for who knows how long. There are very few "nice" sit down restaurants that make your food to order. Patio Filipino was another recommendation from my chiropractor's GF. She actually likes this place better than Kuya's (also in San Bruno), which my brother really likes. So, we decided on Patio Filipino for dinner itself, and for selfish bloggy reasons, dessert at Kuya's.
Yelp reviews of Patio Filipino here...

One of the first things I noticed was the really nice atmosphere in the restaurant. There are real cloth napkins in here. Hey now. Also a good sign, it wasn't overly loud (not that being loud is a bad thing, but when you want to go to a nice place to dinner, you don't want to compete with all the aunties, uncles and old folk)- there were a lot of families there (mostly Filipino) and the place was packed. I made reservations about an hour ahead of time and the waiter even had a 'reserved' sign on our table which he promptly removed upon our arrival. Oops, sorry for the dark photo. I'm still fiddling with my new camera's settings. The restaurant looks small from the outside, but it's spacious (well, not hugely so) inside. There were to sections of the restaurant. This photo depicts the right half of the restaurant, once you enter the front door...

Click on menu photos to enlarge...We ordered their Paella Valenciana (upper left corner) because it was one of their specialties...
Again, click on photo to enlarge menu...

I liked the decor - no "smiling, waving cats", or "Santo Nino" dolls in the corner here. There was a painting of fishermen near our table...Wait, no huge wooden fork and spoons? No wooden Barrelman? Or Weapons of Moroland shield?

No, it was classy all the way here. They even had an awesome capiz shell lamp that almost every Filipino family had in the 70's. You know, those are making a comeback now! Bert's parents had one but it was rarely cleaned over the years, thus, the dust really screwed up the capiz circles. It's not the easiest substance to clean. Now all this old school decor is coming back into style...

Beers for Bert & Thane - Regular and Lite San Miguel!

Drinks for me and TC - Calamansi and Mango calamansi:

Bistek Tagalog - This is flank steak marinated with lemon and soy sauce and pan fried with onions...This was almost as good as my dad's.

Sizzling Sisig - This is pork chopped with onion and jalapeno pepper with egg and served on a sizzling plate- Okay, when I ordered this, I must have overlooked the "egg" part because I didn't realize that the sisig would have "EGG" in it! All I saw was the word "sisig" on the menu and ordered it without thinking. When this is brought to your table on a hot skillet, it is literally sizzling. But the wierd shininess threw me off. It looked too "wet" and kind of gloppy. Texture wise, I didn't like it. I ate it though and after several bites, stopped because the egg was grossing me out. Sorry Patio Filipino - I'm not liking the egg in your sisig! The wetness destroyed all semblance of any crispness in the pork pieces.

Paella Valenciana - One of the Filipino versions of Spanish paella. This one had Chorizo, Mussels, Scallops, Shrimps, Chicken in Aromatic Saffron Rice. The classic Spanish saffron rice dish is cooked to order in an open pan and you need to allow them 30 minutes for prepare this.

Buko con Seta - Patio Filipino's nouveau take on Halo Halo. Instead of a glass, the halo halo is served in a buko, or young coconut. The buko is hollowed out and filled with coconut jelly, azuki beans, and strips of the young jellied coconut. Yum! By the way, props to our waiter because he gave this dessert to us for FREE!!! I had mentioned earlier that we were from San Diego and remarked that there was a dearth of nice Filipino places there compared to the Bay Area. After chatting with him for a few minutes, we found out that he had a cousin who lived in our area (Chula Vista, CA). I also found out that Patio Filipino was about to turn five years old (I hope that's right). In any case, all of the waitstaff here was very attentive and super nice.

As you can see, the Halo Halo has a big scoop of Ube (sweet purple yam) ice cream on top of the buko. I'm fairly certain that the ice cream brand was magnolia because it was thick, rich and creamy, not like the crappy imitations you find sometimes. Another difference with this halo halo is the lack of crushed ice inside and no evaporated milk. They used the buko meat, juice and guts for this which was really inventive.

Can you believe we still planned to go to another Filipino place down the ways? Bye Patio Filipino!

Man, it was very cold and windy that night! Our faces were fkg freezing! Just a few blocks away was Kuya's Asian Cuisine; I also noticed another Filipino joint, Ihaw Ihaw...Hmmm, must try that place later this week!

Check out Kuya's Yelp reviews here:

Even though we already at at Patio Filipino, and got a free dessert we weren't expecting, our original plan was to just have dessert here. We ended up getting a little "snack"...ha ha.

The decor was minimal - wooden baskets hanging on the walls...There are booths on one side and tables on the other. We got there around 9 pm and they were going to close at 9:30. I bet the waitstaff was all, "Tangina! And I wanted to go home early! Punyeta!" Just kidding. The people working here were also super nice and didn't rush us at all or give us the "GTFO" vibe ("get the fk out"). [note - "tangina" is pronounced 'tahng--ee--nah' and is short for 'putanginamo', which literally means, 'your mother is a prostitute' but is also an all purpose swear word which means, 'fuck!' i use it all the time...just kidding]

It's a pretty long and deep (insert dick joke here) restaurant:

Our snack was Lumpiang Shanghai - mini lumpias with pork filling. There were approximately 20 small pieces - or 10 regular pieces cut in half...We had just a few of these, intending to take the leftovers home and eat for breakfast (yeah, breakfast of champions) the next day.

I was here for dessert. After perusing Kuya's menu, this one caught my eye, Kuya Pong's "Favorite Dessert". There was also Kuya Giles "Favorite Dessert", but I wanted Kuya Pong's because he had the better sounding nickname. What is it with Filipino uncles and their funky nicknames? I have an Uncle Jinky (which unfortunately lends itself to the horrible rhyme, "Stinky Jinky"), Uncle Boy, Uncle Mendoy and so on. Kuya Pong apparently likes Ube Haleya with two scoops of coconut ice cream...Good choice Kuya Pong! I absolutely love ube but I hardly ever eat it. It takes too long to make by hand and you have to stand over the stove constantly stirring the shit out of the ube, sugar and milk...

And despite having had a version of "Halo Halo" at Patio Filipino, Bert was still game enough to try the OG style Halo Halo here at Kuya's...This one had layers of crushed ice, evaporated milk, red azuki beans, the coconut jelly, macapuno, leche flan (yes!), green agar agar cubes (jelly made from seaweed extract), and pinipig. It was topped off by a voluptuous scoop of violently and vividly violaceous ube ice cream...Bert was brave to even eat this because he's lactose intolerant...

On our way home, Thane forgot that that there was a Giants game at AT & T Park. Most of the streets leading to his place were blocked off but by the time we got there, most of the detour cones were in the process of being moved. It still took 45 minutes from the freeway exit to get to his place when it normally would have taken 5 minutes.

The Oakland Bay Bridge at night (you can see how dirty our car windows are):

Coming up - the Cartoon Art Museum and Coit Tower!