The Unconventional Binondo Food Trip: The Crazy K-Pop Trio Again

- May 4, 2013, Saturday.

- Marga and I were supposed to have a Binondo food trip with some of her college friends, but due to some circumstances, this did not manifest. Instead, we decided to meet our friend Melissa, and have our own Binondo food trip. Before I met up with Marga and Melissa, I had a short stop over at the Seng Guan Buddhist Temple to have some snaps.

Devotee.

Giant Buddha.

Ceiling wood sculpture.

- We decided to visit places that we haven't really gone to before, or at least didn't frequent. Usually, we'd go to our favorite dimsum place, and spend the entire afternoon there. This afternoon, we visited the quietly hidden, but the favorite-of-many, Dongbei Dumplings. Dongbei Dumplings is a humble dumpling place located at E.T. Yuchengo Street. It is famous for its dumplings made from scratch, and its giant-but-cheat xiaolongbao.

NOMNOMNOMNOM. XIALONGBAO.

- The three of us passed by our friend Shirby's store on the way to Shin Din Kha Maki Place, located at the corner of Benavidez and Salazar Streets. I had seen features of this maki restaurant in numerous blogs, magazines, newspapers, and some TV shows, but have not tried it out myself. Our friend Shirby also gave us two thumbs up when we told her that we were going there.

- Maki Place is a small restaurant that served different kinds of maki, a thick sticky brown soup that usually tastes salty-sweet and gingery, and other dimsum and noodle dishes. We all ordered beef makimi (maki with noodles,) since it was their best seller, and the usual kind of meat used for makimi in most restaurants. I like their maki particularly because it was not too sweet, and the price was reasonable (135php for a big bowl.)

With her makimi.

- For our final destination, we hopped over to The Tea, perhaps the only place we went to today that we frequently visit, to cool off from the summer heat. As always, I ordered my favorite green tea milk tea. Sipping it as the sun went down an hour after we came was the best part of the day.

Very hot.

Green everything.