All-time favorite Filipino snacks such as kakanin, pancit, and palamig get a makeover at Andrew Café.
Chef Jester Arellano, resident culinary professor of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institution Management at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, together with his students, spent weeks of thorough research, experimentation, analysis, and food-tasting to create the café’s Merienda Menu.
The dishes are inspired by merienda icons, some of which are also perfect as hearty meals for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
According to the chef, the team did more than just tweaks and twists—they revolutionized the creations as they provided enhancements that would make them tastier while preserving the tradition.
The lumpia wrappers which are made in-house serve as a vessel for several local classics they made such as spring rolls in the form of piniritong lumpia, vegetarian favorite ube lumpiang sariwa, the spicy laing lumpia, the iconic sisig lumpia, and shrimp sauce-drenched palabok lumpia.
For the main course—where all the noodles are made from scratch—the deep-fried pancit palabok, is seasoned with eggs, chicharon, smoked fish flakes, squid, and drizzled with shrimp sauce; the laing ravioli is dressed in chili coconut tomato sauce; and the bestseller sisig pasta is drenched in tamarind cream sauce.
The champorado mousse cake blends tablea, rice crispies, pinipig-polvoron, and optional caramelized tuyo to make one mouth-watering dessert. Favorite sticky dessert sapin-sapin gets a facelift in the form of sapin-sapin panna cotta made with layers of ube and coconut pudding served with jackfruit coulis and coconut sauce.
Thirst-quenching beverages such as the refreshing langka samalamig, a serving of sago’t gulaman infused with hints of jackfruit, and the zesty house-blend sampaloc (tamarind) juice are sure to complement the updated food items.
The Merienda Menu is available all day until August 4 at the Andrew Café, located at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde Taft Campus, corner of Estrada and Leon Guinto Streets, Malate, Manila. It is open Mondays to Fridays from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and on Saturdays from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.