Last of two parts

MABUHAY CAFE & RESTAURANT

1040 River St., Chinatown

545-1956

Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily

Overview: Inexpensive, home-style Filipino food in a cafe setting

Details: No parking — try municipal lots

Price: $8-$11

Recommended: Shrimp sari sari (saute), pancit (fried noodles), sarciado (tomatoey stir-fry)

The Lumauag family has been serving home-style Filipino specialties at Mabuhay Cafe for 45 years — first on 'A'ala Street and then, chased around by development in the neighborhood, on Hotel and now on River Street. It's not the most savory neighborhood, but Mabuhay is a clean, peaceful and air-conditioned little oasis.

I'd been wanting to taste their shrimp kilawen since I heard about the dish — a sort of ceviche of raw shrimp, ginger and citrus. My server fixed me with a doubtful eye: "You know the shrimp is raw?" I nodded.

The shrimp arrived peeled and butterflied, atop a bed of shredded cabbage with a generous frosting of grated young ginger. Indeed, ginger was the predominant flavor until I got busy spooning the sauce from the bottom of the dish over the shrimp, and squeezing on lemon and soy sauce. If I were making this at home, I'd slice the shrimp and toss it with the citrus, ginger and soy sauce, making it easier to eat and lending it a more balanced flavor.

It puzzles me why more Filipino restaurants don't routinely garnish dishes with lemon, or better yet, kalamansi, so you can doctor them to your taste as Filipino families do at home, particularly with raw foods and salads. Kalamansi, the Philippine lime, has better acid-sugar balance and more pleasant citrus flavor than plain lemon.

Pork sarciado is one of those innocuous dishes that pretty much anyone can enjoy, even if they're afraid of Filipino food. Sarciado is a tomato-based gravy made with fresh tomatoes and tomato paste or sauce, garlic, patis (light fish sauce), a splash of vinegar, bay leaf and onion. It can be paired with anything from pork or chicken to chunks of fish or shellfish — even meatballs and hard-boiled eggs. Over rice, it's comfort food in anybody's book.

THELMA'S

94-366 Pupupani, Waipahu (off Farrington Highway at Pupukahi Street in Westgate Center)

677-0443

5:30 a.m.-9 p.m. daily

Overview: Ample super-cheap Filipino eats — sit-down, buffet or takeout

Details: No bar, easy parking, catering available

Price: Mixed plates, $5.20-$7; breakfasts, $5 and under; dinner entrees, $7-$10; all-you-can-eat everyday buffet, $9.95 adults, $5.50 children

Recommended: Pork pumpkin, sayote-leaf salad, Thelma's special lechon kawali, whole fried akule (when available)

Another name that kept coming up when I asked about O'ahu Filipino restaurants was Thelma's, so one weekday evening, my husband and I checked it out. We got there about 7, nabbing the last of the smaller tables, and by 7:30, there wasn't a free seat in the 76-seat room. The place was a madhouse with lots of cranky kids and chattering extended family groups, people coming and going with takeout bags and hopefuls clogging the doorway.

Thelma's characterizes the average Filipino restaurant experience: vinyl tablecloths, fake flowers (daffodils, because yellow is Thelma's color), Filipino tchochkes (some still shrouded in their original plastic wrapping) on the walls, a steam-table buffet on one side, long rows of tables jammed together where large families can sit, dime-store cutlery and plates, water in gigantic plastic glasses. Half the people were speaking a Philippines language and eating in the proper Filipino style: fork or spoon in one hand aided by the thumb and forefinger of the other hand.

My husband's eye fell immediately on a dish he recalled his grandfather making: pork with pumpkin. We had to have it. This dish comes either as a soup or "dry" (stir-fried), and we chose the latter. It was delicious; a melange of otong (long beans), sliced kabocha pumpkin and tender morsels of chicharrone (crispy-skinned roast pork). And herein lies the nasty secret of Filipino vegetable stews: You'll hear over and over that "Filipino food is so healthy, it's all vegetables." Yes, but one reason those vegetables are so darned good is they're braised or stewed with lots of pork fat. "Pour on the lard," my husband said, munching happily.

I paged quickly through Thelma's wide-ranging menu (three pages, with some American-style standards at breakfast and lunch) to the salads and was delighted to find sayote-leaf salad (sah-YO-tay). Sayote is chayote or pipinella; as with other greens used in Filipino salads, the tender young leaves are briefly blanched, like spinach or watercress, then dressed with chopped tomatoes and onion and fish sauce.

I had read in a blog somewhere that Thelma's lechon (roast suckling pig) was exceptional, so we ordered the special lechon kawali — chunks of roast suckling pig covered with crackling fat, pan-fried with chopped tomatoes and onions in soy sauce and fish sauce (kawali refers to frying). Thank you, thank you, my blogging friend. This wickedly rich dish is literally a pork-rind stew — salty, crunchy, meaty, slightly sweet and sour. "Dangerous," was my husband's assessment.

The whole fried akule had also been recommended, but they didn't have it that night. The only dish that didn't work for us was, curiously, the so-called national dish of the Philippines, pork adobo, which was bland and uninteresting.

All this came with a free bowl of rice ample enough for three, at least. We had leftovers enough for a couple of lunches.

Thelma's buffet offers seven or eight dishes (some meat, some vegetables) daily on a steam table with rice and monggo beans (a favorite Filipino starch). And there are Filipino breakfasts that I intend to go back and try: tapa (dried meat, fried rice and egg), longganisa sausage or tocino ham and egg, pata (deep-fried pig's trotters with egg and rice) or daing (dried fish with egg and rice).

Of the four Filipino restaurants I tried in recent weeks, Thelma's rates most delicious overall, though service is abrupt; Max's was delicious, friendly and aesthetically pleasing; Mabuhay was its own, beloved folksy self; and Loulen's was the least-successful (food not very interesting, place disconcertingly deserted, service lackluster).