The Best-Value Restaurants in West London Are Cheap, Not Cheap Eats | Eater London

"London’s Filipino chefs take divergent approaches: Some don’t mess, serving dishes as traditionally as possible. Others have taken the bones of Filipino cuisine and put new flesh on them, never claiming authenticity. Rommel Bustarde’s approach at Mama’s Kubo is somewhere in between, the food recognisably Filipino but looking outwards, tidying up and straightening lines of what is a notoriously riotous cuisine. A liver adobo is at the top of London’s pantheon: soft, creamy, honking with garlic, paired with an off menu garlic rice that can be felt on the breath the next morning. Sisig radiates like a sun, pig finely chopped, less heavy on the offal than other versions but with a strong crispy caramelisation of the heat of the pan. Pancit palabok is a cipher of a rich carbonara, with pancit for spaghetti, dried fish providing parmesan’s umami, pork rind for guanciale, egg the texture of tofu and then a whole load of prawns and squid. Finish with taho, layered silken tofu in a pool of lukewarm syrup, hitting all the comfort points of a morning bowl of porridge sweetened with honey." - Jonathan Nunn