Chicago: Day 5 - Filipiniana Restaurant - Niles, IL

[update 10/21 - Please scroll down for the most recent 3 posts]

After this long ass day of driving and checking out the sights in Mt. Horeb and Madison in Wisconsin, we were finally back in Morton Grove. My cousin and wife wanted to take us to a local Filipino restaurant in Niles, which is a suburb (or "village" as it's officially called) near their place in Morton Grove. Turns out there's a lot of Filipinos (and Koreans, judging by the restaurants) in Niles. I had read about Filipiniana and was told that it was pretty decent. Of course, nothing beats home cooked, but WTF, we were happy to try anything Filipino. My cousin took my bro here last year during his Chicago trip . Filipiniana Restaurant is located in this really nondescript looking strip mall with the most gargantuan sized parking lot I had ever seen in my life. Most strip malls have parking lots that are maybe 10 cars deep, maybe 15. No, this was like a fkg football field. I wonder if this place ever gets crowded?
The restaurant is right next to a new supermarket that's still being built - Meijer (as seen in the previous post, but at a different location). Meijer is a huge grocery and dry goods store all rolled up in one huge warehouse package.
Because it was a Sunday, they were doing buffet only, much to the consternation of my cousin's wife. She was a bit disappointed but we were actually fine with the buffet. Anyhow, since she knew the owners personally, she ordered a few special items for our dinner party which consisted of us, them, and the family that went to the Dells with us. Here's one part of the buffet: top left - pork ribs; top right - chicken adobo; bottom right - Beef Mechado (beef stew): and bottom left - pinakbet (one of my faves).
This was TC's plate - You can see the green beans from the pinakbet, a chicken adobo drummette, a rib, pancit bihon, and fried rice.
This is my plate - I tried to get a little bit of everything. As you can see, there was also lumpia and fried shrimp.
Calamansi juice:
This was one of the special orders - it's called "Bilao" (pronounced "bee-lah-oh", emphasis on the 3rd syllable), which means "basket" because the food is served in a flat basket. In this case, the basket was lined with foil and held a shit load of grilled meats which included mussels, shrimp (as much I like shrimp, they were a pain in the ass to peel), fish, chicken, and squid.
It was served with a condiment side dish of chopped tomatoes, onions and bagoong alamang or fermented shrimp paste . Sometimes you can still see the beady little shrimpy eyes.
As if the first bilao wasn't enough, here was the second one (along with a fish head)!!!!! My jaw just about fell to the floor because I didn't expect this much food. Those baskets were $33 too. I felt kind of guilty like maybe they were doing the royal treatment because we were visiting. There were only nine of us (tbhree of which were kids). Let's just say there was a shite load of leftovers. I think my cousin and his wife are going to be eating this for days. Wait, I remembered they were going to take it to work and share it with their co-workers, so maybe not.
The restaurant itself is pretty large. The buffet is located in the back and there are nice native decorations on the walls, like wooden carving. Sadly, they did not have one of these - The Infamous Barrel Man (image courtesy of Derrenversoza's flickr.com)
or one of these, The Weapons of Moroland Shield). Dude, I have a small shield like this (with less weapons) in my office at work! No barrel man though!
or a pair of these! I used to collect these wooden forks and spoons at thrift stores. We have a huge pair in our kitchen which is painted by Superman. Check out the awesomeness here.

or one of these! "The Last Supper)" preferable on black velvet and made in Tijuana or the Philippines.We had a table out in front which turned out to be my cousin's wife's "regular" table. Turns out she frequents this place a lot and drops the bucks here. She really was quite generous. I even asked my nephew, "Hey, is your mom like this all the time?" and he said, "Yes - she always does this no matter what". Sheeyit.!!!
Filipino style fruit salad and by fruit, I mean the canned cocktail shit. Just add macapuno (sweetened coconut sport) and cream cheese and there you have it. I personally don't like it because it's too soft and mushy. When me and my siblings were young, we would fight to get the cherry. Here is a recipe I found at recipezaar here.
Puto bumbong and Sapin sapin. Puto bumbong is purple rice (pirurutong) which is placed in thin bamboo tubes and steamed. They are normally served during the holidays and are topped with shredded fresh coconut and sugar. The sapin sapin are layered coconut flavored glutinous rice cakes of various colors, the most popular being purple, orange, and white.
Dessert table - there was also a platter of sliced fruit (watermelon and canteloupe)...The last dessert on the table was some sort of gelatinous corn dessert. I passed on the fruit and desserts entirely. I was still full from earlier today.
This is a nice restaurant to take guests and also if you don't want to cook Filipino food at home. There aren't any huge Filipino places like this in San Diego. Filipiniana could easily seat 100+ people. Too bad we didn't come on a "non-buffet" day. It would have been interesting to see how the dishes would have fared instead of sitting under a heat lamp, since most of the Filipino places in SD are like that - "point point" at food that's been made hours ago. On a scale of 1 - 10, I'd give it a 6 and 1/2. The ambiance was chill and the service was great. The food selection could have been better but we didn't have a choice since the buffet was pre-set.
Tomorrow would be a full day for us to explore a few more interesting spots...