It did not really come as a surprise, having travelled around the Philippines for 2 weeks, that the best meal I had there was (a) in the cosmopolitan capital of Manila and (b) not Filipino. I am willing to be proven wrong – I did end up in some rather provincial places – but overall I found Filipino food to be too sweet, greasy, bland or all of the above.
In some ways it is a shame that we didn’t do Manila first, when we were excited to try the local food, as I have read about some places that do modern Filipino food and get rave reviews, but after 2 weeks of eating greasy meat, sweet bread, margarine coated everything and a lot of junk food at bus stations, we just weren’t keen to give them a go.
This is how we ended up at a modern Thai restaurant for our final meal in the Philippines. People’s Palace Thai is similar in style to a David Thompson restaurant, except with less emphasis on the cultural style of eating and more on traditional recipes cooked and presented in a modern style with a focus on high quality ingredients.
We started with betel leaves topped with sweet pork, crispy fish and green mango, which was a perfect Thai mouthful – sweet, sour and salty with just a little heat. Small portions and its leafy mode of transportation made something that could be quite heavy and intense, quite manageable on a hot and humid day.
Sitting outside in the muggy Manila heat all we could think of was salads, so we ordered three. The best was the larp gai - a minced chicken salad seasoned with lime, fish sauce, chilli and herbs, and served with raw vegetables for crunch and substance.
I rarely order larb out – it is something that is so simple to make at home and so often messed up in restaurants. I generally find that the dressing is not tangy enough (not enough lime), not salty enough (not enough fish sauce) or too sweet (too much palm sugar) and/or the meat is too greasy. It’s such an easy dish, I can’t fathom why. Anyway, all this to say that the People’s Palace Thai got all this right. It was perfectly balanced and light and refreshing as it should be.
Prawn, pomelo, chicken and coconut salad was disappointing – far too much pomelo, not enough of all the other stuff. You want the pomelo to be a garnish not the main event.
Soft shell crab with green papaya salad was not the best rendition I have had, but not bad either – the batter could have been a little lighter but the crab was very fresh. The green papaya salad was too sweet for my liking, but texturally it still complemented the crab well.
Another thing we had been missing was a decent drink so we ordered several glasses of white wine. Libs chose a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and I tried several but eventually settled on a Martinborough Riesling. They got warm pretty quickly outside so we knocked them back sharpish.
I was pleasantly surprised by the kaffir lime marinated prawns with crispy shrimp crackers, which Libs ordered. I thought it sounded a bit plain, but the marinade was on point – zesty and a tiny bit sweet with just a hint of chilli. The prawns were perfectly poached, cool and refreshing and the crispy prawn crackers made a great vehicle for them, adding salt and crunch.
I wasn’t sure about the crab omelette either on a hot day, but it was lighter than I expected. Again the crab was nice and fresh, but I think the omelette could have done more seasoning (it was a bit bland) and less cooking (I like a gooey centre).
I finished up with a lemongrass ice cream on ginger brandy snap biscuit, which was fantastic. I am not usually into Asian desserts, but this fusion dish brought together the best of East and West with refreshing Asian flavours and French finesse.
Reading back over this review it might seem odd that I remember the meal so favourably, because actually only half of it was really good. It goes to show that so much of a good meal is about timing, mood and circumstance. If I had just been travelling around Thailand for two weeks and then paid over the odds for this meal in the capital, I probably would have focussed on the negatives, but in this context it was a great note to end our holiday on.