- 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. Please remember to give
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with you lots more food and travel videos, and I will see you on the next video. Thank you again for watching. Goodbye from Manila.
