 Are you about to shotgun that balloon? Bruh! I'm gonna shotgun that balloon. What's going on everybody? Welcome to a special episode of Phone Grows Food. Now as you know, there are tons of amazing restaurants out in New York City to cover. And the best way to cover them all is by doing food crawls. And today is a Filipino food crawl through the East Village. In particular, the food crawl today is Filipino fusion food. And you know we could not do it without our Filipino fusion friend, Ryan Benson. Hey, what's up guys? Straight from LA 5-7 Hooper, Nelson Chan. What's going on everybody? I may not be Filipino, but I like Filipino food. Alright guys, we're hanging out four spots today. First going to Ugly Kitchen, then Maharlika. Then we're gonna head down to Lower East Side, hit up Kumain, and then taking cows. These four fusion places definitely know their authentic roots. They're coming in with their own New York twist. Our first spot up on our Filipino food crawl is Ugly Kitchen. And Ugly Kitchen is really interesting because they serve a lot of traditional food, but it's a bar in the East Village. Ryan, you are Filipino. I am half Filipino and half Irish. So this is something that like a Filipino grandparent would cook you? Oh, 100%. You have your top silag over here. So like thinly sliced steak, garlic, rice, eggs. And you got the lechon kawale over here, which is your deep-fried pork belly. And then we got daing here, which literally translates to dried fish. And then laing, which is like dried taro leaves that's been sit out and then it's been simmered. All right, guys, let's do it. I do not believe I've had taps a lot of breakfast. All right. Yo, the sauce is like an extra tangy soy sauce. Yo, this is an incredible breakfast food. This is bomb. I mean, I did eat this every morning. The texture of the steak feels really different from normal steaks. It's not as chewy, a little more tangy. Let's try this lechon. Now, this is not regular lechon, Ryan. You know, I know lechon from the Filipino barbecues. Normal lechon is roasted. Usually it's going to be a full, whole-suckling pig. Lechon kawale is pork belly that's been fried. They do it in such a way that it keeps the moisture of the meat. The crispiness is, you know, unheard of, man. You're a big fan of the Chinese roast pork. How does this compare? Well, how is it different? It's different because the whole pork piece is fried. You know, the Chinese style is only the skin, the top part. Kind of like fried chicken, but like, you know, fried pork. Oh, yay! Oh, man, with the hands. All right, so before we get into our last dish, the fish dish, let's talk about these cocktails. All three of these cocktails have calamansi juice in them. Except for this one. This one is kind of like a Filipino take on along an iced tea. This is straight up like juice. Calamansi Sprite. And if you guys don't know, calamansi is a Filipino fruit. Yeah, it's like a little lime. Yo, I'm about to get drunk. So this is daing, which literally translates to dried fish. And then we have over here laing, which is like taro leaves that traditionally are left out. If you don't leave it out and leave it to dry, it causes this like itchy reaction in your throat. You get this crisp right here. Oh. Is that the ASMR? My favorite way to eat daing, laing. I take the daing, I dip into the laing. Daing to the laing. I would say that, you know, for the people who have been introduced to Filipino 101, they still may never have had this, because this might be 102. Yeah. That wraps it up at our first spot ugly kitchen on first ab. But just a few blocks up, we're about to head to Maharlika. Ryan, we walked up the street. Where are we at? All right, guys, we're at Maharlika right now. This place is a little bit more fusion than ugly kitchen. They do have their own takes on like different drinks here, bringing like traditional values. So this is the Curtis Lee Smith. We have the Filipino Flash, the Kalamansi, Mule, and the Baguio Breeze. Cheers, guys. All right, we got some food flying in. Here we go. If anybody's ever been to a Filipino party, this is the first thing that's gone. Everybody knows lumpia. You know, it's their Filipino version of an egg roll. But there are a lot of different styles of lumpia, right? Oh, yeah. As long as you have that wrapper, you can buy anything. Right, right. This is their premier fusion dish. You know, you have a little punchy at the noodles with some uni on top, some breadcrumbs, some shrimp. And this is the fusion that we're talking about. Obviously, uni more typically a Japanese topping, right? Mmm. You know, that looks, I've never seen that flavor. It's almost so good. It's very unique. You know, Nelson got both hands on his plate. It's like he's... Hey, it's called manners, all right? Lisa, I want some more. This synagogue definitely looks different than this other synagogue I've had. This one, traditionally, is a tamarind-based soup. It was that one thing that I kind of craved when I was a little bit homesick. I thought that was a salad at first. Right? The tamarind really kind of brings like this sour taste to it. Here, they did their own take and added like all these different types of seafood, plus some miso. So you have like a little bit of Japanese influence. Ah. Sini shavs. I love sini shavs. I like it sour, but it doesn't make you go, ooh, sour. It's just like... This really... It's like a lot of like different fatty cuts of pork, and then it's usually served in a sizzling cast-iron plate with some egg, so it keeps it like a lot thicker. It's very gooey. Why don't you tell us how you really feel? That's how I really feel. It was very gooey. There's a lot of different textures. You said there's a lot of different types of pork in there. Balu, in my opinion, is like a hard boiled egg with a little bit more extra... I'm breaking it open my head and then sprinkle a little salt, drink the soup, then... Now, the breaking on the head, that is a traditional way to do it. Not just because you want to be like a bro, like... Um... A little bit of both. Okay, alright. Are you about to shotgun that balloon? I'm gonna shotgun that body, bro. This is way more like egg-like. Yeah. Way more egg-like than embryo. Ceasig is like chopped up pieces of pork where you can't really see what you're eating. And then the balloon is like, you see everything that you're eating. So, two different ends of the spectrum. The food at Maharlika blew me away. It was so dope to come from Ugly Kitchen, which is more like quick bar food. Good times keep rolling, guys. Cheers to that. Cheers. Alright guys, we're heading down to the LES to Peking Cow next. We're here at Peking Cow in the Lower East Side. You know, they have a good mixture of traditional food as well as that like fusion between Thai and Filipino food. It is very like true school hip-hop in here. Let's start with the appetizer. So, here we got your typical chicharron. You know, this is like your Filipino snack. The chicharron is like a fried crackling, like a pork stew. So, the same chicharron that like Mexican-Spanish guajid, same things in the Philippines. This definitely has its own little like spice blend in it. I can't really put my finger on what is in the chicharron. I think that's a five spice. That's like an Asian-Chinese five spice. So guys, here we have the crispy bata, a deep-fried pork knuckle. This is my guilty pleasure. If I had one thing I could order in this world before I die, it would be this dish right here. Now this dish, by Peking Cow, is a little bit different than what I'm used to. Normally you get a big, big pig knuckle, but they kind of cut it down and like put a little bit of like different spices on it. A lot of Filipino food like fried and crispy and stuff, or it's just the stuff that we got today. Okay, if you're trying to get bread for summer, this is the wrong food to be eating. That's what I'm saying after like I'm on the wrong spot. It's fried just the right amount. It's really easy to over-priced. There's different textures. There's the crispy skin. There's this soft tendon that's chewy, and then there's the meat and fat. You know I love the fusion between the Filipino and Thai flavors because you can see the Thai influence and the red chilies here. I don't think a lot of Filipino food puts those Thai chili peppers on top. And you even have a little bit of a papaya salad here to wash everything down. What else but not least? Here we have a very traditional dessert called halo halo. It's going to be like ube ice cream, so like taro, ice, different, you have different accoutrements that you can put into it like jelly. Did you just say accoutrements? I did say accoutrements. Tell my Pokemon or what are you saying? What's your dictionary? You can put anything in here. You have tapioca, ice, like whatever floats your boat, you put in halo halo. I see people put cereal in it. To be honest with you guys, I actually kind of like the cereal version where people actually put cereal in it too. It gives it a little more like crunch because it kind of tastes like milk to begin with. You guys hide up on the cereal in it. Which cereal would it be? Captain Crunch, no Captain Crunch, Captain Crunch. That's go-to. Call me crazy. There it is. Now you need to call me crazy. There's your crunch, there's your crunch. Not bad, not bad. Don't think about it like ice cream, pork rinds, just think about it as something crispy and fried into something cold and creamy. That's all you need to know. Let's finish off our Filipino food crawl at Kuma Inn. We're here at our last stop on our Filipino fusion food crawl. We're in the Lower East Side at one of the cornerstone establishments. We are here at Kuma Inn. I would say almost Kuma Inn is a hidden gem. Yeah. This is really fusion food. I wouldn't want to use the word fusion because that has a certain connotation to it. You know what it is? You know it? It's personal. I feel like people got to start using that word because it's personal to the chef, but it's literally like his life into dishes. I mean, just looking at the dishes, it looked hella fancy. I mean, I'm ready to get in. This is a pan-fried steam roll. In China, the crowd is the term fun. This is really interesting. The pan-fried, it can be that little crisp on the top. That's really different. In the inside, you get the soft chewiness, but on the outside, you get that crisp, which is really good. This is one of my favorite hot sauces I've ever had, this Bronx hot sauce. And the chef here came up with this hot sauce. All the season, everything's grown in the Bronx community. It's why it's called Bronx Hot Sauce. Let's go on the drunken shrimp. It really tastes like the Filipino side, like kalamansi for me. Yeah. It's something that, like, as soon as you taste it, you know it's the kalamansi in there. Let's get on with the more Filipino dish. Chicken wings. Chicken adobo wings. This is my all-time favorite Filipino dish, is chicken adobo, actually. I love chicken adobo. Oh, man. You know Buffalo Wild Wings got to get this in their restaurants, man. They need this flavor. I love about this is that it has just enough tang, but it actually has a strong, like, butter taste to it. Yeah. Really nice. Last but not least, what are we looking at, Ryan? This is a super traditional Filipino dish called taron. Taron is plantains that have been wrapped in a rice paper and then deep fried. Now, sometimes it can come with jackfruit, but it is hard to get jackfruit. I love how the fried crispy skin was so thin. Yeah. It really allows the plantain to shine. Oh! Oh! That's it for our fourth spot, Kuma and our Ludlow do not miss it. All right, you guys, what does it for our epic Filipino fusion food crawl through the East Village and Lower East Side? Yo, what was your guys' favorite thing that we had, like, one of them? Eating crispy bata at Peking Cow brought me back, like, straight to childhood. There's just something about that, like, mixture of textures. You can't really beat it. I think I'm gonna have to go with the holo-holo because I'm more of a dessert person. I love ice cream, and I love the different types of, you know, ingredients that are all put in there. You got the sweet, you got the savory. It's just, it's crazy, you know. I really like the adobo akuma in, and that and the tapsilag. The tapsilag, which was the very simple breakfast. The synagogue from Maharlika, and I love toron, the fried, wrapped plantain. That was amazing. Thank you everybody for watching that Filipino crawl through the East Village in the comments below. Let us know if there's any other spots in New York we should check out. It's storming in the summer! It just started raining. Alright everybody, shout out to Ryan, shout out to Nell, Fungro's back here, David, Andrew. Until next time, we out! Peace! Let's try the, uh, the... That was the lumpias. Now these lumpias are quite short. Shorter than the usual one. These are the chou lumpias. Wait, for real? No. You say for real?