The Best Spanish Restaurants in Metro Manila (Terry’s, Bar Pintxos, Txoko)

Traffic is definitely back in Metro Manila, but it still feels amazing to be behind the wheel and driving towards some delicious restaurants. Today's all about Spanish food and trying to find the best Spanish tapas places in Manila. While we're still in the car, might as well talk about today's concept. I love the idea of ir de tapas. It's kind of like Spanish bar hopping. Instead of going from bar to bar for different cocktails, you're actually going from restaurant to restaurant for different types of tapas and small bites, always accompanied with a good wine or good drinks. I like to think of tapas as our local pulutan because it's a very hard dish or category to define. It's very hard to say what fits as a tapas and what doesn't, or raciones, or para picar, or like smaller portions of something. But I think that for me the defining characteristic is it's something that's usually served with alcohol. Well, it's still a little too early for me to start drinking, but that might end up being a lie that I'm gonna do to camera. But the first place I wanted to check out is Terry's. Now Terry's has been around for a long time and is one of the pioneer of classic Spanish food in the Philippines. Yes, there are Spanish restaurants that are much older. There are some that date back to the late 19th and early 20th century. All these places are still around. However, the menus have become more Filipino over time and don't necessarily serve traditional Spanish food. Terry's for me is something I can rely on and in my book is a classic. The word tapa, it comes from tapar, which is to cover something. The origin of the concept of tapa, it is said that one of the kings in Spain asked for a glass of wine and then something to eat. So the server prepared a slice of jamón ibérico and put it on top of the glass. Tapando, covering. There are three, I would say, three versions. The tapas, the pinchos, and orders. Order means many small pieces of something. A tapa would be one and the pincho, pincho is a pick. A piece of omelette, a piece of cheese, and a piece of bread and put all together with a stick. I did mention that this is kind of like the Spanish version of pelotón, so it makes a lot of sense to start with a beautiful light glass of rosé. Always really refreshing. I love starting with the classic and Terry's for me is it. I remember coming here when I was younger and then when I was older to find specific ingredients that they had in their deli from Spain that I would use. And for me, nothing is more classic than gambas al aljilio, a seemingly very simple dish in terms of ingredients. But there are a couple of things that cooks master to get them absolutely perfect and delicious every time. It's a big serving because I'm starting the day hungry, even though I know we're gonna be hitting lots of different restaurants today. Mmm, you got lots of pieces of confit garlic there, some dried chilies, I think. That's the best part for me. And this is the type of dish for me that kind of screams Spain and screams tapas. It's probably like, it's like a gateway drug into the tapas scene. Then you have croquetas, which are very popular all over Spain. Here's another deep-fried parasol, not necessarily traditional, but with some filo pastry, some jamón, I believe, and some cheese. It's not common that somebody goes to a place to have a tapa itself, alone. There are three, I would say, three things or three concepts that get together. The tapa, the drink with the tapa, and the person eating the tapa. So people get together and go to a bar, and maybe each one of their gathering ask for a different tapa. But what is important for them is to get together. And finally, we couldn't start this video off without some sort of sausage. Preserved pork dishes in Spain are a big, big deal. Just like the Philippines, there's this huge love for pork products in general. The Filipinos arrive here, they sit down, they want everything together at the same time, at the same table. People are looking, as I said before, for new things or for different things. But it's also a reality that we have been adjusting menu, creating new things, but at the very end people come to the restaurant asking, and they remember or they recall dishes that we were serving 15 or 20 years ago when we started. Because we are thinking about to go back and have like a section in our menu of classics, what the people want, and keep those classics there. And then do creation-based, as I said before, being loyal to the ingredients, be Filipino, be Spanish, but creating, showing different ways. You might be wondering why I didn't start this video by featuring paella, for example. Paella can be a tapas. You have some smaller versions of paellas that are served in different restaurants and tapas bar all throughout. But I feel like it's something that's very common, very known. So I wanted to try to do things a little differently, which is why the next restaurant we're going to does serve tapas, but a very specific kind from a specific region in Spain. A few more shrimps and then I promise we'll go. Again, way too much food. So pinchos is where things can kind of get a little confusing. We've established what tapas are, or are not, rather. They're a bit of everything. Pinchos are basically the version from the north of Spain and more particularly usually from the Basque country. It comes from the word pinchat, which means to pierce. So most of the time pinchos are things you'll find with toothpicks in it or usually on slices of bread like we have here. So in Bar Pinchos, they have a lot of kind of a whole menu dedicated to just different types of condiments and stuff that you can put on on nice like crusty bread. We have pan con tomate. We have tortilla de patata with more pan con tomate. We have their creamy bacalao, which is a salted cod fish on top of like a sweet. That's interesting. We'll taste that later. Then we have some foie gras. I think this is more creamy bacalao. And then some chorizo and some egg. There's no other way to do this, but let's dig in. I think we'll start with kind of like the most traditional first. So what I love about a good pan con tomate is you kind of want a really crunchy bread and you kind of let your tomato puree sit on there a little bit so that it gets really nice and moist. So good. And what I love about this dish, it's kind of like a really refreshing dish. That for me is one of my favorite Spanish dishes. Tortilla de patata, which is one of my favorite other dishes and you see how it's cooked here. It's kind of like nice and liquid inside, which is the way it should be. I kind of get how a lot of people wouldn't necessarily order that on a menu because it seems so simple. It's like a potato omelet, if you will. But it's cooked in such a special way and there's a lot of technique that goes into making a good one. And that's just, it's so comforting. Next we have the bacalao. So I believe here there is a sweet version and a savory version, I think. No, okay, I got it wrong. So the the topping is savory and the bottom is kind of like a pão verdura. What do you say that in English? Like a nice thick French toast, so there's lots of sweetness there. So that's topped with this creamy salty bacalao and some caviar eggs on paper. This would seem very strange for people. In my head, it makes no sense. Like I would never come up with this kind of dish, but in my mouth, yeah, I dig it. Okay, next, this is where we go into pinxos territory. How I know pinxos is more of this, kind of like things on bread. Foie gras, one of my favorite things. Let's try this other one here. I think this is the creamy bacalao as well. This is the unsweet version. Delicious. And finally, quail egg and chorizo. So this really proves that it can be both a heavy meal that you have for lunch or for merienda or dinner, or it can literally just be a tiny snack that you're having with drinks. So now that we've gone from classic to classic meets modern, we're gonna head off to this new place that apparently does things very differently, but just as good. I don't know if I can eat anymore, but everyone I've been talking to about Spanish restaurants and I've been asking around quite a bit, everyone told me I have to come check out Choco. It's kind of like the new place on the list. All I've heard are really, really good reviews. So I'm really excited to try the food today. We ordered a bunch of things which might seem very random, but I think today is random, which is part of what makes tapas so colorful and so fun to eat. Either you're alone like me or with friends. And here, so we have the lengua, which is a beef tongue with some pineapple, a bunch of sauces. We've got octopus carpaccio, which is a nice kind of change from the regular pulpo that you might find, which is mostly grilled most of the time. And then a nice callos, which is a Filipino favorite. It's one of those dishes that was brought in by the Spanish and really became part of the fabric of Filipino culinary traditions and lots of families have callos. I grew up eating callos and it's kind of like one of those dishes that just screams comfort when it's done properly and it's not the easiest dish to do. So when you find a restaurant that does a really good callos, it's usually a good thing. All right, let's dig in. Let's start with the carpaccio. Mmm Extremely well cooked. Because it's so thinly shaven, it's so tender. One of the things about octopus in general when you order it, a lot of times it tends to be very tough if you don't cook it properly. But cooked like this, it just makes it naturally very tender. Mmm I don't even know how I'm still eating, but this is delicious. Before I finish that, let's try the lengua. So I don't know if Spanish people are kind of like Italian people when it comes to putting pineapple in things, but this is the first time I've seen pineapple and lengua, the sauce. Wow, that's really good. It's like a shrimp head sauce kind of gravy. The lengua is just, look at that. I can just pull it. I don't even need the knife. Mmm So here I have that perfect bite. Pineapple, lengua, and shrimp sauce. I'm not gonna lie to you, textures are a little surprising. You have the crunchiness of the grilled pineapple, the extremely tender lengua. But it works. But this is what I'm really, really excited about. So that to me looks like a sous-vide temperature bathed egg. For me, the mark of a good callos should taste really clean, should be really tender, but not lose its gelatinous chew, which I think makes a really good callos. They serve that with their homemade bread. Oh my god, they do their sauces so well. You can tell so much time and effort has been put in kind of mastering those sauces. And the callos, super clean. If you guys are watching this at home, and you're jealous, you should be. The food has been so good today. Like I wish we had done this sooner. I wish we'd do more of these because it's actually really fun to do. Hopefully it inspires you to either make tapas at home, try tapas restaurants, or order tapas when you're at restaurants. And hopefully it gives you a little taste of Spain and Manila and gets you excited to be able to travel once again, maybe to Spain. That could be your next destination because Spain as a food destination is one of the best in the world.