I recently came back from New Zealand to the United States of America, and I am headed out-of-state again shortly. I used (and will be using) Los Angeles International Airport for my travels due to it servicing convenient non-stops to both destinations, and while in Los Angeles County in between trips, I decided to meet up with one of my friends who was also in Los Angeles while visiting from Phoenix.
We decided to go to Spoon & Pork, a Filipino comfort food restaurant. They have a location in Silver Lake, but we decided to go to the one in Sawtelle, a neighborhood near Santa Monica. I wanted to try as many different dishes as possible, so we opted for the Kanin Club, a 90-minute unlimited menu tasting experience for US$65.00 per person.
Our first appetizer was lumpia shanghai, also known as Filipino spring rolls, with pork, shrimp, and sweet chili lime sauce.
Our plate of carbohydrates that we ate little-by-little throughout our meal was rice with fried garlic confit oil. I’m a big fan of garlic, so as you’d expect, I was a big fan of this fried rice.
Our first small plate was bistek with skirt steak, sweet onions, and lemon-soy gravy. The steak was incredibly tender and flavorful, and this ended up being my favorite dish of the meal.
Our second small plate was tocino, which is apple-cured grilled pork belly with atchara. I usually don’t like pork belly because of how fatty it is, but this pork belly was amazing. The flavor of the fat was nice and smooth, and although the texture was that of what you’d expect from pork belly fat, it seemed to mix well with the meat, more quickly than what I’d expect.
Our first large plate was patita, which is slow-cooked deep-fried pork shank with chili garlic glaze. This portion was much larger than I expected. It wasn’t quite as good as the pork belly, but it was still tender and had a good kick of flavor to it. The left-on pork rind added some good variety through its crispy texture.
Next was twice-cooked patatas bravas with datu puti aioli. They came out blisteringly hot and I think I scorched my tongue a bit on them, but they were still a solid potato dish—crispy on the outside and very soft on the inside.
Lately, I’ve been watching quite a few YouTube videos by Jessica Lee Seul, a former K-pop star turned content creator. A few months ago, I saw a video of her trying different sisig dishes at various different price points, and the memory of that video inspired me to also try sisig for the first time, at this restaurant.
… I hate it. It’s basically extremely salty pig scraps.
As our final dish, I ordered another beef dish. I think this was tapa, or beef sirloin strips, but I don’t exactly remember. This was good, but not quite to the level of bistek.
Here’s a shot of the restaurant’s interior.
I’m not really sure how the math adds up exactly because I forgot to take a picture of the in-store menu and the prices associated with the different portion sizes, but from what I felt, the all-you-can-eat seemed a bit overpriced. It was a bit more expensive than other all-you-can-eat places you’d see of this nature, and on top of that, the regular menu prices are actually pretty affordable, so it made the AYCE look extra high. I have a suspicion that we might have actually saved money if we just ordered everything à la carte.
The garlic rice, bistek, and tocino were amazing, and I would add this restaurant to my regular rotation if it wasn’t so deep west and far away from the places where I usually stay when I’m in Los Angeles County.