Best eats of 2024: Best restaurant dish – Manam’s House Crispy Sisig from Hayop Ni Manam
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Manam's House Crispy Sisig, the star dish at new Filipino restaurant, Hayop Ni Manam.
PHOTO: HAYOP NI MANAM
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Where: Hayop Ni Manam, 104 Amoy Street hayopnimanam.com
Open: 11.30am to 2.30pm, 5 to 9.30pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays and Mondays
Tel: 8028-9012
Info:
Sisig is never going to win any beauty contests. It is unrelentingly brown, with little bits of translucent diced onion. But this crispy platter of pig parts – pork jowl and cheek at Filipino restaurant Hayop Ni Manam – is irresistible.
The dish lives up to its name: Manam’s House Crispy Sisig ($22), arriving on a hot plate. The server stirs it and sizzling ensues. The meat is charred in parts, springy in others. Lime juice and sweet onions try valiantly to stop it from being too rich.
To fully enjoy it, however, is to just surrender and relish the dish in all its crispy, piggy and lardy glory. Eat it with rice. The restaurant has two excellent ones: Sinangag ($7) or garlic fried rice, and Bagoong Rice ($10), fried with fermented shrimp paste.
The 48-seat restaurant, which opened in July, has brought an under-the-radar cuisine to the forefront. It is a joint venture between Singapore partners and The Moment Group in the Philippines, which has more than 60 restaurants in its portfolio, including the Manam chain.
Hayop, the owners say, is Tagalog for “beast”, and used as an extravagant compliment. Hayop’s sisig is hayop.
