Dining Out: Sanduk touts 'exotic' Filipino specialties, along with likeable crowd-pleasers

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Sanduk Restaurant
91 Holland Ave., 613-729-2438, sanduk.ca
Open: Tuesday to Thursday, Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: Appetizers $12 to $16, other dishes $18 to $40, shareable platters $75 to $115
Access: Steps to front door, washrooms upstairs

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I spent too much time recently on YouTube, admiring interesting restaurants in other cities, and wound up pondering what Ottawa’s restaurant scene lacks.

Why doesn’t Ottawa have a fresh udon restaurant like Raku in Toronto, or a fresh soba restaurant like Uzuki in Brooklyn? Why isn’t there a live-fire kitchen in Ottawa like Alder in Toronto, Ilis in Brooklyn or Osito in San Francisco?

Perhaps envy had blinded me to the expanding diversity of restaurants that Ottawa can brag about. Already this year, I’ve reviewed the Nepali restaurant Everest Cuisine on Carling Avenue, Sabor Brazil, a ghost kitchen in Barrhaven, and Rangoon, a Burmese eatery in Chinatown. All are unique-in-the-city businesses that make food I’d happily have again.

And now there’s Sanduk Restaurant, which opened in December on Holland Avenue and which introduces Ottawa to Kapampangan cuisine, which is food from Pampanga, a province in the Philippines.

Ottawa has a few other Filipino restaurants, but Sanduk, which takes its name from the Tagalog word for a scoop, is the only one waving the flag for Pampanga, which has been dubbed the food capital of the Philippines.

I’ve had lunch and two dinners from Sanduk’s all-day and quite descriptive menu, which combined dishes I knew or knew about with items that it calls “exotic” and even “bizarre.”

At lunch we enjoyed well-made lumpia spring rolls and pancit ($22), a stir-fry of noodles with chicken and vegetables, which came with a creamy sauce that I’ve not previously had when I’ve had pancit.

We also tried what the menu called the most famous Kapampangan dish, sisig, which Sanduk makes with either pork or milk fish. We ordered the “crispy pork” version ($24), which consisted of pieces of assorted pork cuts and parts, which I believe were boiled, grilled, chopped and dressed to create a dish that was tasty, complex and uncompromising, served over rice.

Also from the oh-brave-new-world category, we subsequently tried bitukang babi ($16), a street food of skewered slices of pig’s intestines that were charred, chewy and tangy in an offal-y way. Barbecue sauce added some sweetness on top of the tang.

We also had kwek kwek, a street food of boiled and battered quails’ eggs ($14), and gatang susu ($21), namely snails in their shells cooked in a garlicky coconut milk-based sauce, a dish that proved challenging for us neophytes to eat.

Pork blood stew ($18) is available at Sanduk, but we couldn’t muster enough takers to order it. Sanduk also used to serve stuffed frog, but that dish has left the menu.

But if such dishes draw a hard pass from you, you can play it safer at Sanduk and have some quite good, easy-to-like food instead.

Barbecued skewers of pork and chicken ($20) served with likeable sauces were straightforward, juicy and appealing.

I think the most crowd-pleasing dish on the menu is the kare-kare, in which a thick, peanutty sauce coats your choice of proteins, from pork belly to seafood to oxtail. We had the pork belly version ($25), and I think it’s one of the best pork belly dishes I’ve had in town, with lots of succulent meat topped with super-crispy skin and bolstered by a rich, nutty sauce.

Of three long-cooked meats served with rice on the side, we liked most the lechon paksiw ($22), which plunked its morsels of pork belly, skin still crisp if not super-crispy, in a salty, tangy sauce. Slow-simmered chicken adobo ($21) was toothsome in its own soy- and vinegar-based sauce. While the citrusy, salty sauce that came with bistig ($26) won us over, the beef was dryer than we would have liked.

Sanduk’s menu says of aligui ($40) that you “can’t leave Pampanga without it!” This dish was a mix of shrimps, mussels and crab, with a side dish of what I believe was a pungent, crab-based paste.

I wish I’d known even more about the dish before I dug into it, which makes me think that Sanduk’s servers, while pleasant and attentive, could be more proactive in introducing the lesser-known fare here to guests who might have perplexed looks on their faces, as I did.

Desserts here, while not listed on the menu, were worth asking about and affordable. Ube, the vividly purple yam beloved in the Philippines, turned up in a slice of moist cake topped with custard ($5.99). Mango cake ($6.99) was more pedestrian, but good. Maja blanca ($4.99) was a coconut-milk pudding of sorts that we found less interesting than the cakes.

Taking over the space where Anna Thai Cuisine had been, Sanduk is a long, narrow dining room with a polished, tropical feel. Decorative items and bookcases along white walls, distinctive lighting and many plants contribute to its unique, welcoming vibe. Close to the entrances are several tables that entice guests to sit on floor cushions. Upstairs, a private room seats 12.

It turned out that by dining at Sanduk, I got a jump on Filipino Restaurant Month, which started Monday and runs until the end of April. Sanduk is one of three Filipino restaurants in Ottawa and 30 in Canada involved in this marketing initiative.

There are prix fixe menus at participating restaurants, which in Ottawa also include Tamis Cafe on Bank Street and Tulip Restaurant in the Hilton Garden Inn Ottawa Downtown. There, the chef is Philippines native David Vinoya, who makes his own mean kare-kare.

There was a lot more at Sanduk than what I could discover during three meals. But what I tried there suggested further visits could be fruitful, and not simply during Filipino Restaurant Month.

phum@postmedia.com

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