fried squid – Jellybeans in the City

Craving for some excitement? A taste of adventure? A journey to the new and unfamiliar?

Why not try a cuisine that’s off your beaten path?

One of the eateries managed by Lowbrow Casual Restaurants, Flower Boy, operates a stall in The Grid Food Market and offers diners a peek into the bright and rich flavors of Thai cuisine.

Fried Squid Platter (Php440). Large rings of succulent squid, dipped in Sprite flavored batter then deep-fried to golden brown crispiness. Served with crunchy prawn crackers and Jaew sauce.

Bagoong Fried Rice (Php290). Steamed rice topped with scrambled egg and Flower Boy’s own recipe for bagoong made with shrimp paste, rendered pork fat, crispy ham, and tamarind.

Chicken Pad Thai (Php350). Flower Boy’s version of one of Thailand’s national dishes is made to appeal to the Pinoy palate but still keep to its Thai roots. This stir-fried noodle dish is savory, mildly sweet with lots of umami, thanks to its sauce which is cooked for three hours. It looks gorgeous and smells wonderful, too, wouldn’t you agree?

Mango Sticky Rice (Php250). A classic Thai dessert made with succulent mango slices served with sticky rice topped with toasted coconut flakes and coconut cream.

Thai Iced Tea (Php140). Thailand’s popular refreshment made with brewed black tea flavored with spices and sweetened with condensed milk..

Flower Boy is open for pickup and delivery at thegridfoodmarket.com. It is also available for dine-in at Stall 3 at The Grid Food Market, Powerplant Mall, Rockwell Drive, Rockwell Center, Makati. It also delivers via GrabFood, FoodPanda and Pick-A-Roo.

For more details on its menu items and offers, follow Flower Boy on Facebook and Instagram.

The Grid Food Market is the resident food hall of Powerplant Mall which offers a wide range of flavors to cater to various cravings.

Check out my previous posts on other cuisines available at The Grid Food Market:

For a recent holiday get-together with my former office buddies, we settled on FatFook Kitchen at UP Town Center as our meet-up place.

For one thing, UP Town Center is easily accessible to all of us, scattered all over the metro as we are. Despite the Christmas rush, getting there was relatively easy, since most of the traffic are headed towards the opposite direction to the Makati and South areas.

Secondly, we know that we won’t be disappointed in the food. After all, Taiwanese cuisine is so close to what appeals to the Pinoy palate while offering a welcome break to flavors and textures we consider mundane.

The next challenge was ordering food for a group of five that will please everyone’s taste buds or sate their personal cravings. Fortunately, FatFook has a ready solution with its Feast for the Family offer which allows diners to order one appetizer, one noodle or rice dish, one vegetable dish and two main entrees for just Php1,1088.

Given our appetites and this amazingly affordable offer, we ordered two sets of Feast for the Family and indulged ourselves in a variety of Taiwanese dishes which included:

Appetizer.

Noodles and Rice.

Vegetable Dish.

Main Entrees.

Dimsum. Our meal wouldn’t be complete with some tasty potstickers so we ordered some of the frozen dumplings which the restaurant steamed and served to us.

We also couldn’t pass up the chance to have a taste of FatFook’s signature Taiwanese Sausages, plump and meaty links with a sweet, savory and garlicky flavor. Also, since FatFook does not offer service water, we washed down our meal with soda and TeaCo Black Tea.