Kusina Coolamon Court March 13th 2013

Present: Kim, Jim, Andrew, Karen, John, Megan, Ron

Andrew, back from his latest Phililpine adventure, recommended that we try this restaurant, and since we are always keen to try something new, we all readily agreed.

We had three entrees, Alimasag (soft shell crab), Pritong Manok (crispy chicken wings), Priton talong (fried eggplant, tomato, salted duck egg) and the mains were Pinkabet, adobong Manok, Inihau na liemp, sizzling sisig (sorry I forgot to note what was what).

Wines: Willson Family SB 2011 Langhorn Creek
Sonoma County Old Vin Zinfandel 2010 Kirkland.

For most of us (not Andrew) the menu was entirely new, we had no idea what to order, what was good, what flavours were what, so this was a bit of an adventure into the unknown.  But what an adventure, we were pleasantly surprised, delighted by all the new flavours, tastes, spices and different ways of presenting the dishes.

The chicken wings were oily, but tasty, the eggplant deep fried with salad and salted duck egg was a real surprise, the duck egg had a real tang.  The pork was fabulous with a striking lemon flavour, the vegetables we guessed were done with shrimp paste.  The special was a diced pork which some of us thought was similar to Asian hawker food, with chilli, lime, mayonaise (?) and egg.  The deep fried fish we thought was reminiscent of Catonese food.

The comments were: Really nice: pleasantly surprising, a good variety, but very rich: never seen mayonaise used in Filipino food (Andrew): very filling; fabulous; service really quick: really tasty:

We all came away feeling that we had eaten a style of food that was a bit different, a bit new and exciting.  We couldn't determine the exact style of the food, the closest we came to was Malay Nonya or Spanish adobo.  But maybe it was just its own distinctive style, Filipino.

The only downsides were that maybe the service was a little too quick, did they want us out early?  And maybe we had ordered too many deep fried dishes, but this probably comes from not being all that familiar with the style of food.

It was definitely put in the "to return to" category.

What did we discuss?  The usual work, politics (Rudd v Gillard), travel.