Manila's BEST Street Food Guide - FILIPINO FOOD in Quiapo + Binondo | Street Food in The Philippines

Welcome to another episode of Chopstick Travel. I'm Luke and I'm Sabrina and today we are super super excited to announce that we are in the Philippines. So this is the start of our new Manila series where we are going to be eating everything from street food to village food and to some really high-end stuff too. So we've got a whole trip planned. Today is our first day. We just landed last night and we are going on a tour of the Quiapo area and also the Binondo, which is the Chinatown. So we're here and it is bright and early, only 7 30 a.m. We're gonna start eating. So I'm here with Key. She's gonna be showing us around or otherwise known as Foodie Mama PH. You can check her out on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram. So where are we right now? We are here in Quiapo Market. It is the center of Manila. So we're just gonna be walking around and eating around all day. Yeah we've got a lot of things to eat so let's get started. So yes we are here in the Philippines after much anticipation and lots of people asking us to come. We are finally here and Key is going to be showing us around for the next seven days. So actually she just spotted someone selling something that looks really interesting so we're gonna order it up. So what is this Key? Yeah it's a soft silky tofu with like caramelized brown sugar and pearls. We call it taho. Taho. Okay cool. We normally have it for breakfast. So we've got our snack here. He dished it out of his little contraption that he's carrying on his shoulder and yeah this is called as Key said taho and it is warm in my hand actually. I didn't expect it to be warm. Usually when I think of silken tofu I think of tohua, which is served cold usually. So you can see there's also some pearls on the top little like kind of boba and then there's caramelized brown sugar on the inside. So I'm just going to go in for a drink. That's really good. I feel like there's a little bit of almost coffee flavor going on in there from that caramelized brown sugar. Very very silky smooth and then those bobas have a little bit of a chewiness to them and I like how it's warm. It's really nice and kind of hearty to have for breakfast. All right let's give it a shot for breakfast. Oh yeah it's nice. It's not too sweet. A lot of different textures going on in there and served warm. It's a nice way to start the day. So what are your first impressions Sabrina? This market is really nice. It's vibrant. They have different things like dried fish and then your fruit and there's actually some shopping here and it's not too busy here early in the morning so it's really nice to kind of just walk around and learn a little bit about Filipino food. So we're working our way through the market. Spotted another stall selling something that looked pretty interesting. So we ordered up this and this is deep fried bananas that have been fried with caramelized brown sugar. Just a very small humble stall on the side of the road with fresh looking bananas. So I'm gonna try it out. Oh wow. That is really good. There is a sweetness from that brown sugar that has been kind of caked on to the outside and then a sourness from those bananas. Almost like a little bit tart and you can see that they're like cooked all the way through. So they've lost their mushy banana texture and sort of turned almost like halfway between a banana and like a cake because it's a little bit sort of doughy feeling but it's really delicious and hot. So this market is just teeming with food. I had all kinds of people, hungry diners. There's lots of little eateries but then there's also some legit like street food stands. So you can see this is sort of like an eatery behind me and then where we just had the fried bananas was more of like a street food stall. So a mix of both. It's really interesting. Before coming here I didn't really know anything about the Philippines or the Filipino cuisine until I started researching. So it's going to be a trip of learning and I'm really really excited. So we have found a pretty rare street food today. This is one of Key's childhood favorites. She brought us here. It's really simple but it's made out of flour, egg, and baking powder as well and he covers it in margarine and dips it in a bunch of sugar and it's called a hot cake. So I'm really excited to try it. It smells really sweet so let's give it a go. Oh it's so hot. Whoa. Whoa. This is really good. If I could compare it to something it would be like a murtabak pancake. Really sweet, really thick, and like really buttery. So it's got like juice almost when you take a bite. Served really hot and fresh. And in a really cool location right in the market here from his little bicycle. So my turn to try the hot cake. To be honest it looks like an omelette. It looks like an egg yolk omelette but I don't think it's going to taste like that so let's try it. Yeah very sweet. It has a really bouncy texture. The sugar hasn't completely melted so it's sort of crunchy too. That's good yeah. That little hot cake there was only five Filipino pesos. I don't know what the conversion is but I know that that is seriously cheap. So lots of interesting foods and friendly people here at the Quiapo Market. Really pleasant place to walk around. There's a lot more things that we wanted to try that we're going to save for another episode but now we are heading to the Binondo Chinatown area. So we just arrived to the Chinatown here in Manila. You can see the gate behind me here. This area is called Binondo and this is the oldest Chinatown in the entire world. So we started the morning with some Filipino classic street foods and now we're going to be eating Chinese food. So our first little snack that we're going to have in Chinatown is some barbecue pork sticks and we spotted him but we smelt him from even further away so we were kind of like following our noses to figure out what is this awesome smell that we smell. So we're going to go into the restaurant right now and have a taste. So we've got our skewers here. This is pork meat that has been glazed in like a lot of sauce. You can see there's quite a bit of sauce. It's almost red in color and then some burnt bites and me and Ky are going to try it out here. Cheers. That's pretty tender. Yeah I think it is like a soy sauce with a little bit of sugar because it's a little bit sweet. That's pretty salty too. Sweeter than the usual but sweeter than usual and smoky too. Here's my stick. I picked out a nice thick one. Smells really good. Oh yeah that's quite sweet. It's like a really sweet barbecue sauce. Street side BBQ. So good. So smoky. Nice little quick stop for some barbecue. That was pretty good and we're just walking through Chinatown now. Really friendly people all around. Lots of colorful sights and nice pleasant day. Not too hot actually. So where are we now Ky? We're here at Dongbei dumplings. It's one of the oldest Chinese restaurants here and they make the dumplings in-house. So you can watch them make it fresh and hot and you can eat it right away. You should eat it right away. It's really really good. Their best seller is pork gucci dumplings. So let's go ahead and try it out. Yeah let's go try it out. Okay guys we're sitting down in the place. It's called Dongbei dumplings. We have some really gorgeous looking boiled dumplings. Yeah so there's pork and there's chives inside and the wrapper looks really thin and it's all made in house like he said earlier. 200 pesos for 14 of these. So pretty good deal. There's quite a lot. So we're definitely gonna have to dip these in some sauce. So we have some condiments. I'm going to make a little sauce here. This is like a soy sauce mixture. Maybe a little bit sweet. Pour a little bit in there. Not too much and then also there's some really good looking chili oil on the table and I'm gonna go generous with that right in the middle there and maybe get a little bit extra oil and that's gonna be nice with the dumplings. So let me grab one of these little guys. These are pretty small dumplings but they look like they're packed full of flavor. Now grab a little bit of chili, some sauce. Let's try that. Oh those are really nice. Yeah that chili oil is not too spicy actually. It's just a little bit smoky. The wrapper is really thin and then the pork is just falling apart in my mouth there with a little bit of a green onion flavor. Those are really good. You gotta try this Sabrina. All right I'm gonna give it a try here. Dip it in some sauce. That looks awesome. Oh yeah there's actually a little bit of garlic in there as well. That wrapper is so perfect. It's so thin. Yeah these are pretty good little dumplings. Very small but very flavorful. I'd say they're on par with some of the dumplings in Taiwan and I love it with this chili oil too. Those were some really delicious tasty dumplings and an interesting introduction into Chinese Filipino cuisine at Dongbei Dumpling. I definitely would have walked right past that place because it doesn't look like much but they're making some serious dumplings in there. So it looks like we're getting deeper into the Chinatown now and we're actually going to head inside like a market part here. A covered area. So let's go check it out. We are sitting down at our next restaurant and this is a really really tiny place and it's only got two tables. The name of it is called New Pohang and they're serving which is like a Chinese style spring roll. So you can see it here. There is just tons of ingredients. It's really really hot. There is ground peanuts, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, all sorts of vegetables and then there's also ground pork and also tofu inside. So let me break into it and try it. Wow that is really good. There's a lot going on in there. All kinds of different crunchy and soft textures and then everything's held together with that wrap really nicely which has sort of like an elasticity to it and it's got definitely a sweetness too. I love all of this cabbage. I think it must be pickled cabbage because it's got a little bit of a sort of like juicy slightly sour crunch to it and then we've also got this raw garlic vinegar dip here. This stuff looks seriously strong so I'll try to go a little easy on it. Let's try that. Wow wow that goes really well together. Is it strong? Yeah. Is it burning your nose? It's really garlicky. So this stall is actually directly inside the market. It's really good and Keith recommended that we squeeze this sweet sauce onto it just directly onto the wrap so let's give it a try. Oh it's thick. Wow that is like thick and clear and give it a shot. It's like honey. It's like honey? All right I'm excited. Oh yeah it's quite rich and thick on there but it complements everything really well because everything's quite savory. It's good. Cut. 70 each? Yeah 70 pesos each. Pretty cheap yeah. Thank you. And it was really good wasn't it? Yeah it was really really good. This is also a rare street food. What do we got here? We call it pinatog. It's corn. It's corn? Yeah it's white corn. White corn? It's fluffy. With coconut. So we just left the Lumpia restaurant and as soon as we walked outside there was a man hawking something and I didn't know what it was but Keith tells me that this is quite a rare street food. So you can see here this is called pinatog and it's got corn so there's white corn at the bottom there. This is the sweet version so there's also a savory version. Coconut on top and then lots of condensed milk and it's served hot and he is dinging his little bell I mean on his bicycle so he's selling it right out of the back of his bicycle. Pretty cool so let's try it out here. It's almost like a sweet creamed corn and then with a little hint of sort of like tropical flavor from that coconut it is quite sweet. There's a lot of condensed milk in there you can see but that corn is soft and still has a little bit of a bite but it's nice and soft so it's easy to eat and he's trying to get all the customers in with his bell here. Sabrina starting to try? Yeah it looks really creamy and it's actually like extremely hot. Yeah it's really hot. Yeah. Oh yeah very strong in the corn flavor and something that I realize over here in Asia is that corn is used in a lot of different treats and desserts which is totally brand new to us but it's really good. It's good? Yeah and the corn itself has natural sweetness already. Yeah pretty rare not very common right? Especially in the more developed areas you won't really see this much. So behind me here we just walked by this really beautiful church this is called the Binondo Church right? Yep it's also called Basilica de San Lorenzo Ruiz because it's named after the first ever saint in the Philippines Lorenzo Ruiz. Wow cool yeah it's really beautiful. We are doing a ton of eating today and we just stopped at our next little hole in the wall shop and they are serving something called siopao so this is sort of like the Filipino Chinese version of a shinjin bao or a baozi so it's steamed first and then you can see on the bottom that's been fried and I'm gonna bite into this I'm guessing there's pork inside maybe a little bit of green onions too so let's try it. It smells really really good and I'm gonna kind of break it open here so we can see inside oh yeah look at that wow so there's a big like meat ball almost on the inside oh that's really yummy so tons of flavor there it is quite juicy on the inside it's not really crispy on the bottom it's more just fluffy from being steamed and I guess this is some turnip that is inside of it it's got a little bit of a crunch and then that meat is just very tender it's pretty good yeah I love the turnip in there gives it a nice crisp crunch so that was a really good fried baozi there and we are getting quite full after that but having just such a great time walking around Manila here our first time in the Philippines the impressions are really good people are so so friendly here and I was expecting to be really hot but fortunately the weather's not too bad it's pretty mild now I guess we're gonna have some dessert we're gonna have the famous Filipino halo-halo for dessert today we are having the famous as I mentioned halo-halo here in Philippines at a place called Barrio Fiesta it's like a chain restaurant we're in a mall but this one just looks so good check this out so there's all kinds of different layers here starting from the top we've got a cherry and then this is a purple yam ice cream then we've got the shaved ice with condensed milk all kinds of different gelatins tapioca pearls there's some red beans just all kinds of different things and so I've mixed it up pretty well I'm actually gonna start by just trying this purple yam ice cream at the top which is like super vibrant purple color let's try that yeah it's sweet it almost has like a potatoey-ness to it and definitely sweet I'm gonna try to get some of these things down at the bottom here some of the chewies if I can without spilling it that's pretty good there's some ice pieces that are larger than the other ones and they're sort of really crunchy and hard almost like a little rock and then the chewies down at the bottom are really really soft it just completely fall apart your mouth it's pretty good all right we are finished off with an incredible day thank you once again to check her out foodie mommy ph on instagram youtube facebook everything thank you very much and we had an incredible day let us know down in the comment box what you thought was the most delicious looking thing we ate and we'll see you again from the Philippines on the next episode