San Diego Spotlight : Filipino Eatery’s Debut Fills Gap in Ethnic Smorgasbord

News accounts that reported the flight from Manila of former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, mentioned that the pair had left the presidential palace before completing a dinner of simple Filipino dishes, including fish and rice.

Although the meal was insignificant compared to the events that precluded dessert, it was interesting to learn that a couple who so thoroughly indulged fondnesses for New York real estate, Italian shoes, Dutch Old Masters and Swiss bank accounts retained a preference for their native cuisine, even though they easily could have afforded gilded foie gras and hand-polished pearls of Beluga caviar.

Despite the large Filipino community in this county, augmented by members of the armed forces who have served at American bases in the Philippines, this cuisine has not had a noticeable impact on the local restaurant front. Barrio Fiesta of Manila, a new establishment in a National City shopping center, is the first major Filipino eatery to emerge on the scene; an attractive place decorated in a profusion of wicker, Filipino paintings, hanging clamshell lamps and artificial flowers, it offers what appears to be an extensive selection of both everyday and special dishes.

This menu is more than sufficiently challenging to novices. Menu listings, written primarily in Tagalog, the principle language in the Philippines, are followed by English descriptions that sometimes under-explain the the dish. (Some names are derivations from Spanish and Chinese, and hint at the cosmopolitan side of the cuisine, which borrowed both from the country’s longtime colonial master and from a major trading partner.) For example, the appetizer called sitcharon bulaklak is described as “crispy pork ruffles.” Although the term at first seemed to imply pork rind a la George Bush, a server explained--in the nick of time, to be truthful--that “pork ruffles” is a euphemism for pig’s intestines. Dishes of this sort very much help to make this menu the challenge that it is.

Crispy pata is seasoned pig’s knuckle, deep-fried to a crackling finish. The menu’s description of the kare-kare is hard to top. It reads “Mouth watering! Barrio Fiesta’s famous recipe of chunks of beef, oxtail, tripe and vegetables in a delightful peanut gravy.” Halo-halo is a combination of bean preserves and assorted fruit topped with ice cream and crisped rice.

It should be obvious by this point that, although Filipino cuisine shares some aspects of Southeast Asian, Indonesian and Chinese cooking, it quite stands on its own and makes free use of many ingredients that do not appear in standard American restaurant cooking. Those that are familiar, such as pork and liver, can appear in unexpected combinations, as in the menudo , not particularly related to the Mexican specialty of the same name, which dresses chunks of pork, liver and potatoes in what is described as a tomato and liver gravy.

A recent meal shared by four diners was interesting and, again, rather challenging. A couple of starters, two varieties of lumpia (Filipino egg rolls), were the only familiar items sampled. The sariwang lumpia , filled with vegetables, was rather soggy and bland, while the lumpia Shanghai, which announces its Chinese derivation in its name, is a diminutive form of the very crisp, minced pork-stuffed rolls favored in Shanghai.

Entrees are served in bowls set in wicker baskets, and are meant to be shared by the table. Rice should be ordered as an accompaniment, although there are also specialty rices that are dishes in themselves, including sinangag (fried with garlic), crab rice, and Shanghai rice, a copy of standard Chinese fried rice.

An entree that made an easy hit was the Tagalog beefsteak, thin slices of meat served in a sauce made from a seasoned soy marinade that included a touch of teasingly unidentifiable sweet spice. Rings of raw onion and--in an unmistakebly cross-cultural note that added a pleasing texture contrast--french fried potatoes topped the serving.

Dinuguan , described as tidbits of pork in a dark chocolate-like sauce, were precisely that, although the nature of this mild if extremely dark sauce was impossible to discover. The meat included both chunks of lean, tender pork and hunks of gristle, and, thanks to the obscuring sauce, only the teeth could tell them apart.

Lean and gristle again teamed in the pork adobo , a Filipino classic that relies on a sharp, heady sauce flavored with vinegar and garlic. The stew-like preparation was interesting, although the gristle--which may be used for texture, or perhaps just for the sake of economy--was off-putting. This also comes in chicken or chicken-and-pork varieties, both of which include chicken livers and gizzards.

The noodles seem a borrowing from the Chinese and are quite good. The pancit bihon employs an extremely fine rice noodle mixed with a savory garnish of shrimp, minced pork and shredded vegetables.

The dishes mentioned here are but a few from a lengthy menu that offers a great deal of seafood--catfish in adobo sauce, dried and salted milkfish ( daing na bangus ) and sugpo , or prawns broiled in lemon butter--as well as bulalo , or grilled beef shin with bone marrow and mushroom sauce, and charcoal broiled ribs, squid, fish and pork chops.

Desserts range from the refreshing buco salad, a combination of fruits and chopped coconut to the passionately purple halayang ube , a purple yam pudding that, once you get past the remarkable color, tastes something like sweet potato pie. The restaurant does not now have a license to serve wine, beer or liquor.

Barrio Fiesta of Manila

1510-D Sweetwater Road (Town & Country Shopping Center), National City

474-0177

Lunch weekdays, dinner nightly

Entrees $5.20 to $13.20. Dinner for two, including tax and tip, about $25 to $45

Credit cards accepted