At 50, Friends & Neighbors Has Outlived Many Poblacion Restaurants—Here's Why

(SPOT.ph) The thing about Poblacion is that you’re never really sure that the place you found you really liked will still be around the next year. This is simply the nature of being the hot neighborhood: tastes are fickle, rents are high, and there's generally little stability. The short history of Poblacion is already littered with the barely remembered names of once-favorite spots that did the coolest things.

There is one constant in Poblacion, though: a decidedly unhip place that’s been serving affordable meals in the area since 1975. It’s a spot that closes well before most spots in Poblacion are even open. Its name implies that it isn’t really for the waves of visitors to the neighborhood, these cool kids looking for the hot new thing. No, this place is for Friends and Neighbors.

The casual eatery was started by Virginia Casingal in 1975, along with her husband Simeon. It remains a family affair, with their children running the restaurant. Aling Virginia hailed from Bicol, and started by serving the homecooked food from the region. The current lineup of dishes isn’t just Bicolano fare, though: at this point, Friends and Neighbors serves up that distinct melange of regional specialties that have somehow become their own thing. It’s very carinderia, and one might associate it with the generalized Filipino cooking of Metro Manila.

Which can be a tough label, as people think of this kind of food as “nothing special.” Perhaps it is just that familiarity breeds contempt, and this is the kind of food that’s served practically everywhere in the city. You’ve got sisig and lechon kawali and sinigang and all the staples you can find at practically any food court anywhere. In an environment where everyone is always looking for new experiences, this kind of thing might not feel like it’s worth the trip.

This, of course, discounts the fact that food can just be good. And the food at Friends and Neighbors is certainly that, its versions of these standards among the best that can be found anywhere. If you get the Sizzling Sisig (P170), you’ll find that it’s properly toasted, delivering a punch of maillard goodness along with the rich fattiness of the pork. Get the Pinakbet (P50), and the vegetables taste really fresh, and the bagoong they use with it isn’t the super sweet kind that tends to overwhelm the produce.

Order the Pancit Canton (P100 for a merienda portion), and they cook it to order. It comes out hot and swimming in savory sauce, a small portion of chicharon on top. It is comforting in ways that only pancit can be, evoking memories of various celebrations that invariably involve a serving of noodles. Try the Lumpiang Ubod (P90) and you just really taste the care they put into selecting produce. Everything is crisp and fresh and just delicious. It gets a topping of raw garlic to add a layer of spice to the sweet and savory sauce. 

Get the Bangus ala Pobre (P270), and it is perfectly cooked. It’s served on a hot plate, and absolutely covered in fried garlic. This is one of those dishes that feels like a specialty, in spite of the simplicity of its ingredients. And maybe for dessert, you get a tub of Leche Flan (P130), which is the exact right kind of rich and creamy and sweet.

Walk into Friends and Neighbors around meal times, and you’ll find that it is probably just as crowded and lively as any of the trendier places in the neighborhood. Because this is actually where the people in the area go to eat. It’s the people who actually live in Poblacion, or work in one of the high rises nearby, or study at the nearby college. It’s the kind of place that people don’t think of as a treat, because they’re having it so often that it just becomes part of the fabric of their existence.

But everything in here is a treat. It is good, affordable, Filipino food where you can taste the care that went into every dish. If that’s not a treat, I don’t know what is.