Manila Bay Filipino Restaurant, Boise
Shawn Raecke / sraecke@idahostatesman.com
Manila Bay won’t please every palate.  And that’s why I like it.  Too many ethnic eateries round off their idiosyncratic edges to please a wide audience.  Not so here.  At least, not yet.  The Sinigang na Bangus, a tamarind based stew at this new Filipino restaurant on Fairview is not only aggressively sour, there’s a fish head floating in it.
That’s not to say that Filipino food is inherently challenging. A mix of Malay, Chinese, Indonesian and Thai spiked with years of Spanish colonialism, it’s known for at least two easily accessible hits. Lechon (roasted suckling pig) and adobo (a stew that’s often called the country’s national dish) are easy to love – and obvious examples of Spain’s influence on this Asian nation of islands. Both were dishes I nearly lived on during the first days of a memorably chaotic month and a half in the Philippines. But I quickly learned that the western European veneer that clings to those famous dishes drops away when you push into the back streets and palm-studded countryside. A unique Filipino cuisine still thrives there.
Manila Bay serves lechon (called Letchong Kawali on the menu) and chicken or pork adobo (all $9.99), but this nearly 3-month-old restaurant also serves more feral fare. The sour Sinigang na Bangus soup ($11.99) with its floating fish head is a case in point. Filipino food scholar Doreen Fernandez writes, “Rather than the overworked adobo, sinigang seems to me the dish most representative of Filipino taste. We like the lightly boiled, the slightly soured.”
To my taste the soup was more than slightly soured and the large chunks of milkfish (a species traditionally grown in ponds in the Philippines) hid plenty of bones (not to mention that pair of beady fish eyes). Yet once my tongue adjusted to the realization that self-taught chef and Filipino native Eugene Marshall simply cooks the food she knows, unfiltered and unedited, well, then that broth’s tamarind tang began to make sense. It’s like tuning into an exotic accent you haven’t heard for a while. With each slurp, that broth’s language – the chunks of mild, white milkfish; the stewed Japanese eggplant and slices of white radish – became clearer.
Not everything here requires a taste bud tuning. Lumpia ($2.99) is a straightforward, deep-fried egg roll stuffed with ground beef, a little onion and carrot. Bicol Express ($9.99) is a soothing coconut milk, ginger and pork stew spiked with just a pinch of hot chili. (Filipinos are one of the few southern Asian cultures not keen on fiery food.) Pansit Canton ($9.99) is a tasty Chinese-style stir-fry of chicken, shredded carrot, cabbage and celery tangled in long noodles. A side of Atsara ($4.99), or pickled papaya, is brightly tropical and completely accessible.
The grilled squid (($10.99) is also easy to appreciate, if visually arresting: A single large squid stretches from tail to tentacles the length of its plate. A calamari platter at Red Lobster it ain’t. But it’s also mild in flavor, tender and slightly smoky from the grill, its large tail stuffed with green onion and tomato bits.
Fried, dried pusit ($5.99) is that likable squid’s defiant twin. A typical Filipino appetizer that my lunch mate called “squid jerky,” it arrived the color of tree bark and nearly as chewy. I could intellectualize the appeal easier than I could taste it.
So, too, the dinuguan ($9.99), an item innocuously described on the menu as a “special Filipino pork dish.” Special it is: The pork is mostly blood, liver and intestine (and therefore, I’d suggest asking your waiter for details before ordering any unfamiliar dish).
The atmosphere at Manila Bay also can challenge Western tastes. This clean, if simply adorned, box of a room is made as cacophonous as the Philippines itself thanks to dueling flat screen TVs pumping out live, nonstop Filipino programs.
If teens singing Devo’s “Whip It” in a Tagalog accent don’t spark your appetite, try the leche flan ($5.50). That sweet, caramel-sauced custard is a delectable dessert in any language.
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