Thanksgiving Special: Filipino Food from Pig and Khao

First off, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone both enjoyed and appreciated their time with family and friends. And you better have used Thanksgiving as an excuse to act like a glutton and eat six huge plates of food…because when else can you use a holiday as an excuse to overindulge yourself in all the delicious food and drinks?

Pig and Khao

68 Clinton St [Clinton btw Stanton & Rivington]

New York, NY

http://pigandkhao.com/

Should you try? Definitely for some of the dishes

Pig and Khao’s Khao Soi & Sizzling Sisig

The owners of Fatty Crab (which has a really tasty Chili Crab) and Fatty Cue have partnered with Top Chef alum Leah Cohen to open Pig and Khao in the Lower East Side.  Pig and Khao serves up some tasty Filipino and Thai inspired cuisine, and any time I hear Filipino food I’m down to try it.  [Btw if you want authentic Filipino food check out Ihawan in Woodside, Queens]

As far as how much food to get, we got 3 “small plates” (which are basically the size of the large plates) and 2 large plates for 5 people and we were pretty stuffed.

One big complaint from our table was the service wasn’t great. The waitress described the food as also being Vietnamese (it’s a mix of Thai and Filipino), which isn’t a big deal, but the wait staff kept taking away plates and drinks that were clearly not done. I get you want turnover and want to go home (it was a Sunday evening), but we were eating at a normal pace and got annoyed when the waitress took away plates that still had food on it.

Really Enjoyed:

• Sweet & Sour Cilantro Soda ($5): Because where else are you going to get cilantro soda? Might as well give it a try. The cilantro taste is not overpowering, and it’s a nice refreshing drink with strong lime flavor similar to what you’d get in a virgin mojito (if those even exist).
• Spiced Chickpeas ($3): A great starter to snack on – fried (?) chickpeas doused with spices.
• Sizzling Sisig ($12) (Pictured above): Definitely get this.  It’s basically flavorful pork on a sizzling plate with an egg added at the end.
• Khao Soi ($14) (Pictured Above): Flavorful curry with noodle and chicken. Get some coconut rice to go with it.
• Crispy Pata ($26): Definitely get this as well (I obviously liked the really unhealthy fried pork dishes common to Filipino cuisine).
• Halo-Halo ($8): The Ube ice cream was great, but the best part was the little pieces of flan mixed in.  If you don’t know what ube is, here you go.

Wasn’t a fan of:

• Whole Fried Fish ($28) (Pictured Below): Big fish with what looks like a lot of seasoning and flavor, but I found the flavor of the dish to be muted. Wasn’t a fan favorite among anyone in our table.
• Grilled Pork Jowl ($13): Liked the mix of watermelon with pork and chicharron, but wasn’t a huge fan of the overall flavor of the dish.

Pig and Khao’s Whole Fried Fish