- Hey everyone, it's Mark Wiens.
I'm in Manila, Philippines,
and I am sitting down.
It's actually a little past lunch,
so it's mid-afternoon meal,
and I am about to eat a Filipino food feast
at a restaurant called Mang Tootz.
(lively music)
At Mang Tootz you'll find a full variety
of local Filipino dishes.
However, one of their specialties
that no one goes to Mang Tootz without ordering,
and even many people come to Mang Tootz just to eat them,
are their famous banana ramas.
In order to make their famous banana rama
a slice of banana is wrapped into a thin lumpia wrapper.
It's then deep fried to a golden crisp and set aside.
Next, a sugary syrup mixture,
that almost has a caramel taste to it, is simmered.
At the perfect timing
all the crunchy banana rolls are added to the syrup
and tossed so that all the syrup coats them evenly.
Finally, a generous amount of sesame seeds are sprinkled
in the mixture and it's tossed
until everything is perfectly golden
and coated in all of that syrup.
What awaits you is one of the best
crispy sweet banana treats that you might ever taste.
Is this Jackfruit?
- [Woman] Yeah.
- [Mark] Oh okay, can I have jackfruit?
(server speaks in foreign language)
And also sisig.
(server mumbles)
Okay, then sisig and chicken kebab.
Okay.
What time are you open til?
- After nine, (serves mumbles) around four, 4:30, again, so.
- [Mark] Okay, okay.
So we got on the end of lunch.
And then two rice.
- Two rice.
- [Mark] Yes, please.
This is a very local Filipino food restaurant
and it's very famous,
actually throughout all of Manila
but it's located right next to the University of Santo Tomas
so a lot of students eat here,
and it's a good place just to hang out.
What I love immediately about coming
to this restaurant is the pastel green color.
These tables, I love that paint color.
The one thing I have to admit to you
is that I'm not here at the most ideal time.
Due to just circumstances
and then also due to Manila traffic
we didn't get here quite when we wanted to.
So, a couple of the dishes are already finished for lunch,
and we're here right before dinner starts,
so maybe an hour before dinner starts.
So, we're here kind of in-between lunch and dinner stage.
Luckily they still had a couple of their signature dishes
that I wanted to try.
I got a cup of rice here,
and it comes with a soup on the side.
I'll put this soup over here on the side,
and a wonderful cup formation of rice.
What I really want to start with is the bicol express.
I spent about a couple of months in the Philippines
many years ago and bicol express
was one of my go-to dishes,
something I always relied upon.
It's a dish of pork, plus coconut milk,
and it's also known for including lots of chilis,
so it's one of my favorite dishes,
and I cannot wait to try it here.
So, the pork is all chopped up into bite-sized pieces.
It is a little bit oily,
and then there's yeah.
You can just see how thick the coconut cream is.
It's not like a curry
but it's more of like a curdled coconut cream sauce,
and then there's some green chilis in here.
Bicol express
is one of those dishes that
oh, it's just wonderful.
It's a little bit oily
but what I really like about it
really focuses the flavor on the coconut cream.
It's not very spicy but it does have
a very fragrant green chili flavor to it.
Next up, I believe this is a jackfruit curry,
and I think it's coconut milk as well.
Maybe young jackfruit,
and then maybe some onions in here as well,
and this looks delicious.
Jackfruit curry is always an option
I love to choose when it's available.
Again, very nice with the coconut milk,
and it's salty and then maybe that's onions
that I'm tasting.
The actual pieces of jackfruit are very soft and tender,
and then it has a very nice kind of,
I think it's maybe an onion-y taste
along with lots of garlic in there as well,
and then again, some really rich, really thick,
buttery coconut milk.
Next up, we got some sisig,
and this one of the national dishes of the Philippines.
It is a combination of,
I think it's mostly pork face,
which is grilled or roasted,
and then chopped up, minced up,
and then it's topped with onions
and chilis, and then calamansi.
Squeeze it on top for some citrus-y flavor,
and I'll go for a bite here.
Get some of those onions.
That is extraordinarily porky,
and it has an amazing smokey taste to it,
and also, you cannot eat sisig without mentioning
the different textures that you get in your mouth.
You can taste the little pieces of skin
which are a little bit chewy
or a little bit kind of rubbery in texture.
Then you've got definitely some gelatinous bits
in there plus some like meaty bits in there.
You've got the full range of textures
in every bite that you take when you eat sisig.
That is a very smokily fragrant plate of sisig here.
As I was taking that last bite of sisig,
I saw that they pulled a brand new batch
of what is probably their most famous dish,
and it's actually a dessert at this restaurant
at Mang Tootz.
When you say Mang Tootz many people know them
for this dessert.
People order them by the giant batch,
so they're packing up huge orders,
and then the owner, he really nicely
she gave us a fresh plate of them
right out of the oil,
and when you order them
they put them onto a plate and then some sprinkles on.
I think it's some kind of a fragrant sugar mixture.
These are little wall.
That is so crispy
that you can barely even poke your fork through it,
so I think you gotta stab pretty hard.
Alright, I think I'm just gonna go right in.
I'm not even big on sweets.
I don't even like sweets very much
but this is really, really good.
You can like really taste the flavor of the banana,
like a multiplied banana taste,
and then it's really creamy and soft,
and then that outer wrapper is just completely crispified.
It is pretty sweet.
It almost tastes like it has a honey glaze on it,
plus that extra sprinkle of sugar.
That is hot, I'm impressed.
Okay, I got to continue eating my meats now.
Okay, next up I'm gonna try some of their liempo,
and actually this is the dish
that I got the final little portion of it.
She just scooped it out of the bottom
of the pan for me.
She said I could have the last bit,
and it is grilled pork belly.
You can see the layers of the meat.
If you love pork, that's just salty, smokey,
fatty, meaty wonderful pork.
I'm gonna taste that with some soup.
That's pretty salty
but very light.
It just has a little bit of a cabbage flavor.
The last dish I got.
This is the chicken kebab
which is Mang Tootz is also known for their chicken kebab.
Look at that plate.
For the chicken kebab
they were grilled on skewers,
and they're pretty good sized chicken kebabs.
I think there's chicken, there's pineapple,
there's some chilis on there,
and then when I ordered it,
she grabbed one of the chicken kebabs.
She skewered it onto a plate,
and then ladled on some different sauces.
One of them looks kind of mayonnaise-y,
and then almost looks like a teriyaki soy sauce glaze.
And so, there's a bunch of things going on
on this plate of kebab.
This is not your ordinary kebab.
It's hard to tell if that's mayonnaise or cheese.
It's still hard to tell if that's mayonnaise or cheese.
I think it's mayonnaise,
and almost a little bit of
a thousand island dressing type of taste.
It's a little bit dry
but it does have a good flavor,
and also, one thing I wanted to mention
is right behind me there's a little convenience store,
so there's the restaurant,
which serves all the food to the left-hand side,
and then right here there's a little convenience store,
so you can get everything you need.
Ying and I took a seat right here,
it's actually on the sidewalk.
But then outside, it's such a popular restaurant
that they have tents sent up,
which is actually on the road,
so you can sit outside underneath the tent
or you can come in here on the sidewalk
and get more of a sheltered street food table to sit at.
Now that I've taste tested all of the different dishes,
I'm circling back around to the bicol express.
Oh yeah.
And again, you have so many different textures of the pork.
It is soft, kind of tender in some parts,
then kind of like, almost like jerky in some parts,
and then you've got the tenderness of the fat,
plus the kind of chewy, rubberiness of the skin.
All the textures of the pig
are in every single pork dish.
Ying and I just finished with that pork feast.
Amazing Filipino food here at Mang Tootz,
and as I was sitting here,
what I really like about this place
is not only the food
but just the friendly atmosphere.
A lot of students come here
just to grab a quick bite on the go.
They have some of the classic Filipino dishes.
Good food, good friendly atmosphere.
I'm definitely feeling a little heavier
after that meal.
I'm gonna end this video right now.
I wanna say a big thank you to you for watching.
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I'm gonna be sharing with you lots more food
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Thank you again for watching.
Goodbye from Manila.