New York Times critic shows fondness for Pinoy food

After a food critic from the prestigious New York Times recently reviewed two restaurants in New York City, he noted that despite the different styles of these places in their food offerings, both had a lot to give. Pete Wells, a restaurant critic for the New York Times since November 2011, recently reviewed two restaurants — Jeepney, located in the East Village, and Pig and Khao, found in the Lower East Side. In a review published on Tuesday,  Wells revealed his fondbess for both restaurants, giving each of them a two-star rating (the ratings run from zero to four stars). "The two places have many things in common. Open since last fall, they are small, casual, fun and often loud — Jeepney with American and Filipino party rock, Pig and Khao with slow-rolling Southern hip-hop," Wells wrote. "Neither stocks hard liquor, but each still manages to shake up very entertaining cocktails. Recently, I’m glad to report, both dropped their no-reservations policies," he also said. Own styles Despite the similarities, Wells genially noted that the two restuarants have their own styles of presenting Asian food. He further said that he has "grown fond" of both joints, but that he would take different people to each. Wells said that Pig and Khao's chef, Leah Cohen, went to countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines, where he noted her mother was raised, in a span of a year to eat and cook. "Eating at her restaurant, I felt as if I were poring over an album of carefully edited postcards from her travels," he wrote. "Dinner at Jeepney, on the other hand, felt more like parachuting into Manila myself. I didn’t know all the vocabulary and didn’t always know what I was putting in my mouth, but I knew I had left home," Wells noted. Differences He then made the distinctions between the two restaurants. "For Pig and Khao, I’d round up the ones who love Asian flavors, don’t have significant hearing loss yet, think it’s fun to get endless refills of beer from a keg in the back garden and won’t be heartbroken to learn that fertilized duck embryos are not an option," Wells wrote. Pig and Khao's ambience, wrote Wells is composed of "Low lights, bare wood tables and a straw fedora on the chef’s head." Service, he said, was "genial; well versed in the menu, if not in all (the restaurant's) inspirations." The spiced chickpeas, red curry rice salad, grilled pork jowl, sizzling sisig, grilled curry lamb ribs, and turon were Wells' recommended eats in the restaurant. Pinoy "gastro pub" Of the self-described "Filipino gastro pub" Jeepney, on the other hand, Wells wrote thus: "The friends I’d take to Jeepney would be the explorers, the ones who see every meal as a chance to learn something," Wells said. "The menu nonchalantly tosses out ingredients like sawsawan and bagoong as if they were peas and carrots, and these friends would listen as the high-spirited servers explained it all," he also said. The atmosphere of Jeepney, according to Wells, is composed of "a casual, rollicking tribute to Filipino culture, with pinup girls." He recommends the service as "extroverted and enthusiastic," and suggested would-be diners to feast on adobo wings, pinakbet salad, arroz caldo, bulalo, dinuguan and puto, pancit malabok negra. The Pinoy style of kamayan, or eating with one's hands food served on banana leaves, was mentioned by Wells, as well as the intricacies and complexities of eating balut, which he also tried. However, Pig and Khao as well as Jeepney are hardly the first restaurants with Filipino cuisine to be given glowing reviews. In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz raved about Jeepney's sister restaurant Maharlika, also located in New York city, for its brunch choices. "Few brunches are so simultaneously humble, comforting and wonder-making. Try the sizzling sisig or just some eggs with the sweet longaniza; shoot, even their mango-stuffed French toast will have you praying that this joint never shuts down, ever," he said. - Gian C. Geronimo, VVP, GMA News