Stephanie L.
Yelp
There's an abundance of restaurants offering elevated Filipino food nowadays, but Patio Filipino isn't that. This is the type of place you bring your kids, and then your kids grow up and bring their kids, and so on. They offer Filipino comfort food with family sized portions, so that you can share a meal with your loved ones and everyone leaves overly stuffed and happy!
Every entree we ordered was delicious! There were only 4 of us but we came to eat! We tried the following:
Pork Sisig
Tofu Sisig
Pork Sinigang
Beef Kaldereta
Pancit mixed canton and bihon noodle
Garlic Rice
I love how the pork sisig was extra crispy. This was texturally appealing since everything else we ordered was on the softer side. The tofu sisig had a nice crisp too, as they cut the tofu pieces small and fried them well. The tofu sisig could have been a little more creamy but the flavor was there. They topped both sisigs with two thai chili peppers and lemon wedges. Squeeze the lemon juice all over and mix mix mix for that final touch. We were so shocked to see thai chilis as it's not common in Filipino cuisine. We're a family that loves spice so this was greatly appreciated. We even asked for more and they weren't stingy with it at all. They gave us about 8 more thai chilis which we chopped up and sprinkled on everything else!
The pork sinigang was soothing on a cold day. For those who have never had sinigang, brace yourself. It's a mouth puckering sour soup! This one was loaded with all the veggies (eggplant, okra, green beans, etc), which we all know is the best part! The broth in this wasn't overly oily (talking about you cafe colma). It was a really clean broth so you know there was a lot of care put into this soup! The pork chunks were a nice blend of fat and meat, but next time we'll probably give the shrimp sinigang a try instead for extra variety.
If beef kaldareta is on the menu, I'm probably gonna give it a try. This one has a lot of flavor but it was pretty heavy on the oil. They overloaded this with olives too, which felt super unnecessary. The beef was cooked down so tender, that it was mostly shreds versus chunks. In contrast, the bell peppers and carrots could have been cooked a tad bit longer as they were still pretty hard. It's a nice stew like dish, and was great over rice, but it could have been prepared a little bit better. Would still give this another try though.
We opted to have the mixed noodle pancit and I was surprised to see that this only had chinese sausage, chicken and cabbage. Don't get me wrong, this was good, but it wasn't great. I'm used to seeing more veggies like carrots and celery in this dish. Overall it was pretty basic. It's a good dish, if you just want some noodz but we'd probably opt for another entree than pancit next time.
They have a few diff rice choices to choose from and all serve 4, however it honestly could serve about 4-6 depending on how much rice you consume. We ate more than or usual rice portion and still had enough for another full serving to go. They do have steamed rice for one, but that will also serve about 2+ persons, depending. We ordered one garlic rice and one steamed because my toddler is a little picky. The garlic rice wasn't garlicky enough for me and overly oily. Most of the rice wasn't even sticky anymore because of how much oil or margarine they used, so a lot of the rice grains were actually loose. I'm not saying I wouldn't order it again, but it's not my fav garlic rice either. TBH I'd probably just stick with the regular steamed rice if I was eating other saucy things, OR I'd give the adobo rice a try for a little extra flavor.
They do have a separate dessert menu you can ask for, however, the two items we'd actually want to try were out :( Ube Floating Island I'll come back for you one day!!
If you're coming here, make sure you come hungry and honestly, come with at least 3-4 people so you guys can try more things. Each dish is about $20-$25 so its definitely meant to be shared. Each dish feels like your parents or your friend's parents' cooking, and the vibe just feels like you're at home.
Though the food was good, the service was a little mixed. The person who initially greeted us asked if we had a resy, and said "I'll see what we can do" and then just walked away.. even though the restaurant was maybe 10% occupied. So weird. We eventually got seated with a diff woman who was really friendly. All other employees were very nice and helpful when we requested new tableware, water, extra chili peppers, etc. We got the initial server again when we asked for a dessert menu, and she kind of gave off the same attitude like she didn't want to be bothered. Not sure what her deal was but we ended up not getting dessert anyways since the items we wanted weren't available.
My sisters and I all agreed we had a good overall experience and we'll make our way back the next time we have a hankering for some Filipino food!