September 2006
Ethnic Eats
by Celia Cheng
Pork BBQ Meal
IHAWAN
40-06 70th St
@ Roosevelt Ave
Woodside, Queens
718-205-1480
map/subway
"Home of the best barbecue in town" — that’s Ihawan’s slogan. And after trying their pork barbecue meal, I think they can legitimately lay claim to the best Filipino barbecue in town.
Ihawan is in Woodside, Queens — not far from my favorite Thai restaurant, Sripraphai — and conveniently located a block away from the 69th St station on the 7 train line. This is important information because once you try the Filipino food here, you’ll want to figure out the quickest and easiest way to come back. (The quickest and easiest way is actually to take the LIRR one stop from Penn Station to Woodside, if you are coming from Manhattan.)
Having grown up in Hawaii, where there is much Filipino influence, dining at Ihawan felt very much like coming home — diners and servers alike are friendly and laid back. The peculiar thing about this restaurant though, is that it closes at 8:15 p.m. on most nights. The ground floor is for take-out only, and if you didn’t know there was a sit-down restaurant section upstairs, it would be easy to miss. It seems that the bulk of the business from the restaurant is take-out, hence the restaurant’s early closing time. Regulars are used to the schedule, so it’s no big deal to them. This does pose a greater challenge if you work in Manhattan and can’t leave the office early enough to make it to Ihawan by 7:30 p.m., after which you have no choice but to order take-out (until 7:45 p.m.). But I would even settle for that rather than miss out on the delicious barbecues and lumpiang Shanghai.
The pork barbecue meal includes rice and two bamboo skewers of sliced, grilled meat that has been marinated in a sugar-and-soy-based marinade. This can serve as a meal in itself, and for $4.50 it’s a true bargain. If Ihawan would only set up a street cart in downtown or midtown Manhattan, it could make a killing. People would line up and willingly pay double the price for the barbecue platter.
My Filipino friend Eric, was eager to order the lumpiang Shanghai — twelve pieces of fried, wrapped minced pork and shrimp. He said that his parents used to make these by the dozens and he would just pop them as snacks, like potato chips. Turns out, the lumpiang Shanghai are like triple deep-fried spring rolls, or an Asian version of Combos. When this dish first arrived on the table, I was a little hesitant to try it, as it looked like I might have a heart attack after eating the super-deep-fried mini wraps. However, after tasting one, I understood why these little treats are as easy to pop one after another like chips. Eric managed to eat eleven of them throughout our meal, despite the fact that we shared eight dishes — I was eager to try lots of things! They may be deep-fried, but in some sense I feel that they are healthier than chips since the ingredients are fresh and not processed.
The lechon kawali, deep-fried crispy pork with liver sauce on the side, also came highly recommended by Eric’s sister. This was a very deep-fried evening — not for the faint of heart but oh so yummy! The outside of the pork is deep-fried to a crisp. It’s not breaded, so the texture is not thick like the battered fried-chicken skin. I could hardly tell that the sauce that accompanied was a liver sauce; it was just a tasty paste to dip the crispy pork in for more flavor.
In search of some greens, I ordered my favorite Filipino dish, laing, taro leaves and shrimp sautéed in coconut milk. The coconut milk makes this dish a bit heavy but also enhances the aroma of the leafy greens. I spied only one shrimp, but I think the shrimp is more for adding complexity of flavor to the dish rather than the meat itself.
The pansit palabok, soft rice noodles with shrimps, egg and shrimp sauce, was very interesting. The noodles were soft, round and short — not what I expected, as Chinese or Japanese noodles tend to be rather long and flat. The shrimp and egg were minced into the shrimp sauce so it was more like a paste on the rice noodles. Eric also polished off this dish, with very little help from me.
For dessert, all the choices sounded fun and interesting, but I had run out of room. Eric had the avocado con hielo, avocado with condensed milk and crushed ice, as a drink with his meal rather than dessert. Condensed milk and crushed ice makes everything taste yummy, and I’m a sucker for avocado, but I was not able to appreciate this as a drink because the avocado was so dense. I’m already planning to try the mais con hielo, sweetened corn with condensed milk and crushed ice, on my next visit.
There’s still so many things on the menu I want to taste, like chicken pastel (sautéed chicken with mushroom sauce, hot dog, quail eggs and water chestnuts). And, of course, I will need to satiate some cravings, like the pork barbecue, when I go back to Ihawan. But next time I will need a couple more mouths to help me clean house!
