Isla Pilipina Restaurant: Heaven in a Strip Mall

When you don't own a car, you learn the charms of public transportation quickly.  Besides your colorful fellow commuters, one of the perks not driving is being able to look around and see what is passing by outside your window.  Several months ago on our way to Sarajevo Restaurant, we spotted several promising looking places while enjoying the 81 - Lawrence bus, including an Iraqi place that you'll probably read about in the coming months.  Another place that looked good was Isla Filipina.  On that particular night, people were lined up out the door, so we took that as a good sign.  This restaurant is an unassuming place in a small strip mall, tucked in near a Little Caesars and several places catering to Eastern Europeans.  So this week we hopped back on the bus headed to Isla Filipina to get a taste of the Philippines!

Drinks
This restaurant is another great BYOB option in the city.  Since we went for lunch, we abstained from bringing our own, but Beth did discover an eclectic selection of Eastern European wines at the tiny convenience store next door.  Soon we'll be sampling wine from Hungary and Romania!  With lunch, Beth did enjoy a coconut water, complete with little chunks of coconut floating around, which was light and refreshing.  Neil just went with a Diet Coke, but it did come in a cute little aluminum bottle for style points.

Drinks

Food
We weren't sure what Filipino food would look like, but once we got the menu it was hard to pick!  It featured seafood, grilled meats, noodles, rice dishes, soup and more.  We decided to start with a couple of appetizers.  Our first picks, the pork BBQ and calamari were out, so we went with the lumpia shanghai and the fresh eggroll lumpia.  The lumpia was recommended by our waitress as their most popular appetizer and came out as a stack of tiny fried eggrolls filled with a mix ofshredded pork and vegetables and a sweet and sour sauce.  They were delicious bite sized appetizers and the sauce went great with the fried exterior.  We could see why they are so popular!

Lumpia Shanghai

The fresh eggroll lumpia came next.  We decided on it after the waitress recommended it as a very traditional Filipino dish.  The fresh lumpia was like a spongy crepe, folded in thirds and stuffed with carrots, celery, tofu, cabbage, and lettuce.  It was served with a soy based sauce with peanuts.  We decided that we preferred the fried variety, but this was still worth trying at least once.

Fresh Eggroll Lumpia

For our entrees, Beth went with the Bicol Express.  This was a combo of pork, mussels, shrimp, and squid served in a coconut milk and curry sauce.  Big chunks of onion and bell pepper and some diced fresh ginger completed the dish, but the sauce is what made it.  It was a light coconut curry sauce that helped marry all the seafood and meat into one fantastic flavor.

Bicol Express

Neil went with one of his favorites, ox tail, in kare - kare, which was ox tail with green beans and egg plant in a delicious peanut based sauce.  The ox tail was super tender and fell off the bone and the green beans were a nice compliment.  It was served with a shrimp paste that wasn't tasty in the least on its own, but after some instruction from the waitress, we learned that a little goes a long way!  When you put a tiny dollop of shrimp paste onto a forkful of meat, it added a nice savory depth to the meat and sauce.  The waitress said her dad eat lots of it on all kinds of things, but a little goes a long way for our palates.

Kare - Kare

Overall
Isla Filipina is a tiny place and we ended up having to wait about twenty minutes for a table due to a large group, but they do take reservations which we would recommend.  The service was fantastic and they handled the folks waiting well, calling when the table was ready so we wouldn't miss it.  The decor is nice with local artists showcasing their work on the walls.  The menu is hand drawn and great visually, with a few little jokes thrown in for those who were looking.  Our waitress helped us navigate the menu and the unfamiliar food and made good recommendations that were greatly appreciated.  Between the nice decor, the solid service, and the great food, Isla Filipina qualifies as a true find and a place that we'll be back to soon so we can try more things off of the menu!

Foreign Factor
7 out of 10  It's generally a good sign of authenticity when most of the tables are filled up with folks who are from the country of the cuisine and this place was definitely full of Filipinos.  The menu features things that you don't normally see on western menus (ox tail, pork knuckle) and names that were completely unfamiliar. The service takes this into account and made us completely comfortable, but this is a place that doesn't appear to change the menu too much for American sensibilities.

What We Learned
Filipino food is an interesting mix of Asian and other influences.  There were no chop sticks and the food, despite being labeled otherwise in a few spots, wasn't spicy at all.  You could see the American influence in hot dogs being an ingredient in a couple of dishes, but for the most part this food seemed to be a thing unto itself.  We learned that shrimp paste is definitely better in small doses but that the Filipinos know how to season their food to make it tasty, even if it isn't hot.

More
Tagalog, the official language of the Philippines, is one of the most common non-English languages in the United States.  It makes one wonder why we don't see more Filipino restaurants or at least particular dishes working their way into the mainstream.
Filipino Recipes