I grew up appreciating Filipino food because of my mom’s good cooking. I remember our usual “ulam” when I was a young girl – my favorites like sinigang na baboy (or baka or hipon or bangus), tinolang manok, bistek (my husband’s namesake), and nilagang baka. And her specialties cooked on special occasions like dinuguan, goto, morcon, and kare-kare. Growing up, I didn’t like the taste of kare-kare… Maybe because it tasted a lot like peanuts and I never really liked peanuts in food (like fresh lumpia and chocolates) when I was younger. Don’t get me wrong, I loved eating peanuts, especially the adobong mani with the skin on them; I just didn’t like them mixed in with food.

When I was in college, I started appreciating the taste of dishes I didn’t like before – like ginisang ampalaya with egg, bopis, tortang talong, and most especially kare-kare with bagoong. I don’t know what happened, maybe my tastebuds “matured” along with my age hehe! So then started my love for the orange, nutty Filipino dish.

Besides my mommy’s kare-kare of course, my favorites are the ones from Cafe Juanita, the kare-kareng bagnet of Pino and 8065 Bagnet, and just recently-added to my list is the kare-kare of Qubiertos! I really liked the sauce – it’s a bit sweet and nutty, and very tasty even if you don’t put bagoong! At only P275, it’s super sulit because it has a lot of meat in it (combination of tripe and oxtail), and my fave kare-kare vegetables like pechay, sitaw, talong and puso ng saging. My husband and I paired it with Qubiertos’ chicken barbeque (a steal at P100!) and P35 unli-rice. Yummy yummy dinner, happy happy tummy! 🙂

Qubiertos is located at #40 East Capitol Drive, Kapitolyo, Pasig. Tel 718-0339, open 11am-1am Mondays to Sundays.