Mekeni

About a week ago, we went to the only Filipino restaurant in San Antonio worth eating at (there are two others that got mediocre reviews), Mekeni.  The name means "Come on over" in Kapampangan.

I was a little disappointed; the food was only okay.  It was a buffet priced slightly on the high end, but nothing was really excellent.  The kaldereta came closest but was not nearly as good as what the Boondocks's chef served in Salt Lake.  In fact my own kaldereta, produced with the help of the chef's secret ("maraming keso" -- lots of cheese) may be better.  My other favorite Filipino foods are pork and chicken adobo, but Mekeni's pork adobo was barely okay and the chicken adobo was of the lazy "let's throw a bunch of drumsticks and thighs in without de-skinning them or cutting them up" variety, which I guess some Filipinos must like but I do not.  The mechado was also disappointing.

One pleasant surprise was the sinigang.  It was quite tasty, with lots of good chunks of beef.  Unfortunately one of Rachel's first bites contained a very spicy pepper, which ruined it for her.

I let Melissa choose her own foods to try, but even so she didn't want to try anything.  We ended up letting her fill up on Tapioca pudding (with cassava and coconut chunks mixed in).

It wasn't a total loss, though.  A 40-ish woman at the next table heard me trying to scrape the rust off my Tagalog, and asked if I'd been to the Philippines.  "Two years in Quezon City," I replied.  "Missionary?"  "Yes."  "Mormon?"  "Yes."  "No wonder you have a large family!"

Turns out she was Mormon too and wanted to chat.  So we did.

One other thing came up: the restaurant had a large TV running Filipino shows.  Turns out that you can get seven Filipino channels on DirecTV.  (I wonder if it's time-shifted, or if you basically need to get a DVR with that?)  They also have Brazilian and Chinese packages, among others, but not French or Japanese.  (Spanish is listed separately next to English; it's not considered International.)