This Thursday, we ate at a new contemporary Filipino-California restaurant that just opened in August. It’s in the Alton Hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf (I think the last time I was down here was during fleet week 2019 when Kristine was here) which is also new. Cocktails were fun and tasty (Ube-colada!).
We ordered more than we could eat but we wanted to try so many things. The banana heart salad was just ok. The pork bun was also ok (you can get a lot of really good pork buns in this city…). Their take on longganisa was quite good…same flavor profile but much more refined and not as heavy handed as what I’ve had my entire life. I also was mixed on the smoked hamachi kinilaw – the flavors was fine, but I’ve had so much tasty hamachi that I’d really just rather have it simply served in sashimi or sushi (this was the same problem I had with the hamachi dish at Nari over the weekend).
The bay scallop pancit was very rich and flavorful (homemade noodles, bagoong XO sauce and mushrooms)…more so than any other pancit I’ve had. The octopus with the purple sweet potato and patis-masi slaw was tasty. We debated whether or not to order the Sisig fried rice (it’s one of their most popular dishes) because I knew we had already ordered a lot, but it’s made with chicharron, poached egg, and pickled onion so it was hard to not order it and we’re glad we did.
Even though we were stuffed, we ordered two dessert – the ube creme anglais/pear sorbet/yuzu and the apple fritters/tamarind glaze/coconut ice cream which were both tasty, the latter with a great balance of acid from the fruit and some salty/savory components. The restaurant was very casual and was packed full by 6:00 (our reservation was at 5:15…service was very rapid when we started, but not surprisingly slowed down as the restaurant became more full). It was another interesting and enjoyable diversion from our usual fine dining fare.
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