FOR diners who love good ol’ Filipino home cooked dishes, there’s a new place to savor the food that they grew up with. It’s called Limbaga 77, and it just opened along Scout Limbaga in the Tomas Morato restaurant row of Quezon City.
The place is actually a grand 50-year-old house that has been converted into a restaurant. Its original architecture has been retained, and so with the original materials that give the house its grandiose look and feel, such as the wooden floor panels and large window frames. Its receiving areas have been converted into dining halls, its bed chambers into function rooms, and the patio and veranda into al fresco dining areas. To preserve the cozy and homey atmosphere of the house, its minimalist interiors maintain the natural look of the old house. Limbaga 77’s owners want it this way because they want guests to feel right at home, as though they were family and friends, and enjoy comfort food in a comfortable setting.
But while diners are made to feel right at home, Limbaga 77 treats them to an appetizing journey around the country without having to leave their seats by offering them a menu replete with dishes that have graced the tables of Filipino households in different provinces and regions of the Philippines. These dishes warm the heart, comfort the soul and satisfy the palate. They evoke fond memories of lovingly prepared meals shared with family and loved ones at home because the flavors of the dishes are so familiar.
Who would not crave for Crispy Pata or Stuffed Squid? Ilocano diners would surely appreciate getting a taste of Poqui Poqui (an Ilocano dish made with grilled eggplant as main ingredient), and Bicolano diners should enjoy having a bite of Laing. Limbaga 77 has these—and more—although not in their traditional form but with an exciting twist. The new restaurant’s take on the all-time favorite Crispy Pata, for example, has the pork leg boiled and baked in coconut juice and beef stock with roasted garlic, soy sauce and bay leaf, then deep-fried. It’s best eaten with Poqui Poqui Rolls, a dish inspired by the original Ilocano Poqui-Poqui but has the grilled eggplant omelette stuffed in lumpia wrapper, deep-fried to a golden crisp and served with a homemade sweet chili sauce. At Limbaga 77, the classic Adobo becomes Spicy Seafood Adobo, which combines crabs, white shrimps, mussels and squid cooked in coconut milk, soy sauce and vinegar, and not the usual chicken and pork. Then there’s Stuffed Laing, which has the Bicolano signature dish, Laing, combining fresh taro leaves, ground pork and white shrimps simmered in chicken stock and coconut milk with lemongrass, white onion and garlic. Stuffed Squid becomes Binusog na Pusit, which is succulent squid marinated in organic honey and calamansi, stuffed with tomatoes, onion, cheese and pesto made with chili leaves.
For the rice to go with these delicious dishes, the restaurant recommends two specialty fried rice variants—Danggit Fried Rice, which has the Cebuano dried fish danggit mixed with scallions, sliced fried egg, onion and garlic; and Bagoong Rice, which makes rice more savory by adding bagoong, or fish paste, to it, along with sweet mango bits, tomatoes, white onion and garlic.
Other savory must-tries at Limbaga 77 include Stuffed Bulaklak ng Kalabasa (squash blossoms stuffed with ground pork, local white cheese, cheddar cheese, spring onion, white onion and garlic) and Dahon ng Sili Pesto Pasta (a variation of Aglio e Olio linguini pasta with a pesto sauce made using local chili leaves, topped with cashew nuts).
Desserts are also big at the newly opened restaurant, and turning out to be early favorites are the Brazo Tablea Cake, a Filipino-Spanish fusion dessert with hints of tablea cocoa and Batangas barako coffee; as well as the Bikoron, whose name is short for biko and turon, because sticky rice is cooked in coconut milk to become biko and the biko is rolled in lumpia wrapper and fried to a golden hue, turon style, and served with peanut sauce.
These desserts go very well with coffee at Limbaga 77, which offers a number of coffee concoctions made from a blend of organic coffee beans from Benguet, Mt. Province and Bukidnon, and sweetened with a popular saccharin treat from Ilocos called balikutsa. Sips of hot, freshly brewed coffee should serve as a fitting end to a good Filipino meal.
(For inquiries and reservations, call 0926-7158134 or email limbaga77cafe@gmail.com.)
