The Richmond Community Kitchens celebrate the end of the session with dining out. We decided to try Filipino cuisine at Cucina Manila in Richmond. There were 14 members attending this dining out from various kitchens like South Arm, Caring Place and Gilmore Park Church.
Cucina Manila in located at the strip mall across Richmond Center where Staples is.
Cucina Manila serves Filipino food on steam buffet table like those you see in food court. This is a self service restaurant where you help yourself with the cutleries, water and sauces.
Although the food is served food court style, the setting is nicer than the food court.
There is combo of 2 dishes with rice for $8.50. You can also order by the dish itself which comes with bigger serving for sharing. The price for the main dish ranges from $8 to $10. Dessert price is $2. You order and pay for the food at the counter.
We ordered a lot of food to share. Linda, a volunteer in the Community Kitchen in charged of the ordering as she is from the Philippines. Some of the members asked her if she cooks similar dishes at home and she said she cooks most of the dishes and agrees to demonstrate some of the dishes in the community kitchen in future. We look forward to that.
Here are the dishes that we tried. The above is … Stuffed Milk Fish. The fish is boneless and stuffed with a salsa like filings of onions and tomatoes. The fillings is tangy which is appetizing. The fish is grilled with nicely charred skin.
Adobo is the national dish of Philipines. It is cooked in vinegar, oil, garlic and soy sauce. You can see that there is quite a layer of oil in this dish but the pork tastes very good.
The above is called Bicol Express. It is pork and prawns cooked in coconut milk with grilled eggplant. This is supposed to be a spicy dish but it is not spicy here. It is rich in coconut milk.
We also had Beef Stew. This is quite tomatoísh.
This is Oxtail with Green Beans. The sauce is peanuty.
Linda told us that the above are some very popular breakfast items. They are Filipino sausage and Tocino. The sausage is sweetish. The Tocino is like char siu in Chinese BBQ shop and is also sweetish but it’s firmer than char siu.
All the above dishes are eaten with steamed rice. They gave us mounts of steamed rice. I noticed that the serving of rice is very big here. Linda also ordered the Filipino spaghetti for us to try. This spaghetti has a shrimp paste flavour. Linda told me it’s called Palabok.
For dessert, we had the above Deep Fried Lumpia with Banana and Jackfruit wrapped in eggroll or phyllo wrapper called Turon. This is a street food in the Philippines. Deep fried banana is quite common in South East Asia but it’s the jack fruit which gives this snack a distinctive flavour.
We also had the Sweet Stick Rice and Sapin-sapin for dessert.
We had a wonderful time trying the Filipino cuisine. We enjoyed this so much that we organised another dine out the following week before we break for the summer. Stay tune.
The meal came to $11.10 per person. Cucina Manila accepts cash only.
BUSINESS HOUR
7 days a week: 9:30AM to 8:30PM
I was wondering how come my portions were smaller. My friend thought it was discrimatory. Lol. Now i know it was because it was because we ordered combo.
Pretty sure they accept interac.
Cucina Manila accepts Debit,I have always paid by debit
Those dishes are deadly. Too much oil that will clog your arteries!
Hopefully KimHo hasn’t discouraged you from posting restaurant visits.
Part of my weekly routine feels kind of empty without your reading about your restaurant visits. I’ve been trying to fill the void with other food blogs, but have yet to find a worthy substitute yet.
I like reading the other stuff on your blog, but the restaurant visits are the bomb.
Peace
Hi BeefChowFun:
Oh no! Of all things, what Kim Ho did and say will not affect what I do or not do. So no worries there. That sort of things spurs me on, not pull me down. 🙂
It is just pure work. With having to travel 2 weeks a month working in London and in Beijing (both 1/3rd of the globe way east and west of Vancouver!), it does take me out of action in terms of blogging. This is not to mention that I work really odd hours when am controlling the project remotely from Vancouver.
Ben
I’m too cheap to go out to eat on a regular basis. Hopefully that will change when I move to Singapore. You can say that I enjoy window shopping/eating through your blog posts :). Your pictures are actually some of the best I’ve seen for blog posts.
i’ve been to cucina manila 2x and the food was ok.
they’re more of a “turo-turo” type of restaurant. Kumare’s food is much better than cucina manila.
i also tried another place on the corner of 5 road and bridgeport (casa pinoy), formerly known as isaac & agatha i believe. they serve mostly combo plates. food was ok, nothing to brag about.
my pick for filipino food in richmond is Kumare first and little ongpin second. if you want big portions, little ongpin is the place. for good taste, i personally would go to kumare.
Pingback: Chamonix on No.3 Road, Richmond |