A Michelin-star restaurant? Here???
When I was younger, I never paid attention to Michelin star restaurants. It might be safe to assume I've only gone to a few and they were good and incredibly fancy. But today, without meaning to, well, I got to try a one-star Michelin restaurant : Hawker Chan.
Hawker Chan originated in Singapore. The food is supposedly so good and so cheap that locals keep coming back to this restaurant. Since Filipinos are always out for franchising food around the world, I wasn't surprised this restaurant got to the Philippines somehow.
Hawker Chan is situated inside SM Mall of Asia, next to the restaurant Chicken Inasal (roasted chicken restaurant, which is a local favorite) in the entertainment mall just below the cinemas. The place is clean, no lines, the restaurant was at 70% capacity, and the staff was pretty efficient. You ordered from a menu at the counter and
they bring the food to you when its done.
I ordered the char siew pork with vegetable noodles, it came with cooked pechay (bokchoy). The pork was seasoned and cooked to perfection, and the noodles were just how I like my noodles. Together though they were enough to satisfy my hunger in precise portions; I was glad I didn't order side dishes like veggies or tofu. Hubs got the regular noodles and roasted pork. He thought it was just okay.
I think the thing that will have people keep coming back is the price : each meal is only ₽178 ($3-ish dollars) and if you do the add-ons (like marinated egg), you'll end up spending about ₽248 ($5). Sweetened iced tea is ₽50 and bottled water is ₽30. For a meal just a little over ₽500 between two people, this place is a gem.
I also really liked the wait staff; I asked them to lower the AC / adjust the central cooling vent that was blasting icy air towards us, and they obliged.
All in all, Hawker Chan was an experience for me, maybe a little overhyped than it should, but wow, I got to eat in a Michelin-starred restaurant! Hah.
If you ever want to go to Hawker Chan, be prepared for the crowd at MOA: its the 4th biggest mall in Asia (supposedly). Lots of parking buildings to accomodate thousands of shoppers and mall goers. There's a school built above one of the new parking structures now too! read more