This pub in Legaspi Village, Makati draws in the evening and late night crowds with their extensive selection of beer and pub grub to tuck into after a long day at work. Their quiz nights and music trivia nights are also popular and bring out the competitiveness (and inner geeks) in everyone. But there’s a delicious reason to head much earlier to The Belle & Dragon because Chef Alec Santos has rolled out a special menu just for the daily lunch crowd.
And part of this lunch menu, available from 11am to 3pm every day, is a crispy lechon combined with sinigang: two of your favorite Filipino dishes merging into one glorious offering at The B&D. And the best part? This lunch special comes with the most excellent partner: unlimited rice. How’s that for a reason to rise early or spend the office lunch break in this restaurant?
This lunch menu item is good to share: it’s a big shallow bowl of comforting sinigang with a tamarind miso sour broth. The soup becomes more vibrant with different textures of vegetables like okra, eggplant, white radish, mustard greens, onions, and gabi (taro).
Making the dish visually arresting once it arrives on your table is the crown of rolled pork belly, golden and crisp with its layers of shiny fat peeking through. While it floats on the broth, each slice still retains a crunch. The unctousness of the crunchy pork belly balances out with every sip of the sour soup, its acidity rounding up the flavors in your mouth. Chase it with spoonfuls of rice, and repeat.
The Lechon Sinigang comes with unlimited plain or garlic rice, so go ahead and ask for seconds or thirds (or more, go get ’em carb lover). The dish itself is full of texture and the soup lipsmacking with its sourness, that it really calls for all the rice you can handle in between bites and slurps. However, if you want to behave a little bit and go low-carb–it’s not a problem. You can switch that unli-rice to a serving of salad for P50.
The Dish: Lechon Sinigang (P340)
Where to Find it: Lunch menu (11am to 3pm daily) of The Belle & Dragon, located at OPL Building, 100 C. Palanca Street, Legazpi Village, Makati. Call +632 625-8828, Like on Facebook, and follow on Instagram for more information. #eastmeetspub
