Jericho; Kuya J, ikaw na ang aking bida!. FACEBOOK COVER PHOTO.
MANILA, NOVEMBER 9, 2015 (MANILA BULLETIN) by Sol Vanzi November 5, 2015 - Inside every Pinoy foodie is a homebody yearning for good old comfort food. Filipino comfort food, of course, is both the simple fare nanay and lola used to serve on weekdays and the special dishes reserved for weekend family meals and special celebrations.
Crispy pata is a Pinoy favorite but it is, admittedly, the most difficult to prepare. It is so popular that at drinking sessions with lots of pulutan, crispy pata is always the first to be consumed.
Reading the recipe, one gets the impression that crispy pata is easy to make. Boil the pata until tender, cool, dry, deep-fry, and serve. In reality, it takes a couple of hours of simmering and hours more to cool and dry before it can be fried in a deep pan half-filled with very hot oil under well-controlled heat.
Science is solving all that for a Cebu-original chain that is invading Metro Manila and Luzon with lightning speed. All of Kuya J's branches (15 in Metro Manila, three in Cebu, and one each in Bacolod and Boracay) are equipped with a top secret crispy pata fryer that is the result of a long experimentation.
Corporate chef Sheena Koseki, who has scald marks from the old method, now uses the new fryers to produce evenly browned and perfectly blistered pata skin with moist, tender meat exuding a faint Oriental aroma from select herbs and spices.
Kuya J's crispy pata comes with a sweetish dipping sauce, but COO Danny Pumarego assures us that customers could also ask for the traditional vinegar-garlic-chili, suka-toyo, or any sawsawan combo of their choice.
Also to die for is the restaurant's beef caldereta using brisket trimmed of fat and melted suet skimmed, leaving only large meaty pieces in thick cheesy gravy. Crispy strings of spring onion leaves provide a fiber-rich, colorful blanket over the dish. The caldereta inspired one diner to exclaim "Sarsa pa lang, ulam na!" to which I could only respond with a nod.
Sinuglaw is the resto's concoction featuring a combination of sinugbang liempo (broiled pork belly) and kinilaw na tanigue (mackerel ceviche) in tart, organic sukang tuba (coconut wine vinegar). Accenting the dish is a contrasting clump of crunchy spinach chips, which we recommend, should be eaten immediately before they turn moist and limp.
Very much in demand is Kuya J's version of relyenong talong, which is a large serving of grilled eggplant omelet, stuffed with ground pork and cheese. There is no trace of bitterness often encountered when the eggplant used is too mature and seedy.
Similarly stuffed with pure ground pork is the fat lumpia frito, so unlike everybody else's versions, which are mostly fried skin and ground vegetable extenders.
Our love affair with crispy pork includes myriad ways lechon kawali, a.k.a. Ilocano bagnet is prepared. At Kuya J, one can order bagnet plain or as star ingredient in other dishes.
There's kare-kareng bagnet, a family-size serving of native vegetables in thick peanut sauce with sautéed bagoong on the side and topped with chunks of bagnet. Then, there are also the bagnet versions of laing and dinuguan.
Kuya J is a casual dining restaurant that offers great Filipino gastronomic delights using quality and unique tasting dishes in a homey dining experience.
Lifestyle/Food and Arts & Culture columnist of the Manila Daily Bulletin.
office in Levitown, Paranaque. Photoshot by Leo Q. Carolino.