Some restaurants make you feel like a regular. Others make you feel like you've been there before,…read moreeven when it's your first visit.
Cabalen, a tiny Filipino restaurant tucked into a rough-looking shopping center on Mayport Road, managed to do the latter.
When I walked in and saw a room full of Filipino customers speaking Tagalog, I had a feeling I was in the right place. The food was served cafeteria-style, with steam trays full of Filipino staples, chicken and pork adobo, menudo, Bicol express, and more. You can order à la carte or build a combo with rice or pancit and two selections from the steam table.
I went with rice, longanisa and dinuguan, a pork blood stew. My wife chose pancit, green beans and pork adobo. We added a couple of sides, because restraint has never been my strong suit around Filipino food.
First up was the ukoy, a deep-fried fritter made with shredded cabbage and carrots, topped with a whole fried shrimp and served with a vinegar dipping sauce. This was the best bite of the meal, and possibly the one I'll be thinking about the longest.
The fritter was crisp without being greasy, with enough flavor to stand on its own. Then came the vinegar sauce, sharp and bright, cutting through the fried richness and making each bite feel as lively as the first. The shrimp was fried whole, head, shell, and tail intact. You eat the whole thing, and you should. All that crunch, including the parts most people discard, worked beautifully with the fritter. It was the kind of snack that makes you reach for another piece before you've finished chewing the first.
Order the ukoy. Do not overthink it.
The dinuguan was excellent, deep and earthy with a faint sweetness that kept it from feeling too heavy. Longanisa, the sweet Filipino pork sausage, is one of my favorites, and Cabalen's delivered exactly the flavors I wanted. It's hard to go wrong with that combination over rice.
The pancit was familiar, comforting and a good introduction for anyone new to Filipino food. The pork adobo was a little dry, though still flavorful. It had the sort of homestyle quality that made the flaw easier to forgive. The green beans, cooked with coconut milk, eggplant and squash, were tender and delicious.
We also ordered embutido "not pictured), a Filipino-style meatloaf made with seasoned ground pork, vegetables and raisins. Raisins in meatloaf can be a divisive proposition. I happen to like the little pockets of sweetness, and this one worked for me.
For dessert, we split turon, a banana and brown sugar filling wrapped in an egg roll wrapper and deep-fried. The exterior shattered with every bite, giving way to warm, sweet banana. It was a simple, satisfying finish to lunch.
But the food was only part of what made Cabalen memorable.
As I ate, I kept thinking about my grandmother's table. The flavors felt familiar in a way that went beyond liking the food. Even the slightly dry pork adobo carried a kind of comfort, the sort of imperfection that can make a home-cooked meal feel more personal than something polished in a restaurant kitchen.
After lunch, I called my mom to tell her about Cabalen. She told me that Cabalen is a neighboring province to Pampanga in the Philippines, where my family is from.
I'm a first-generation American, born in the States, with little firsthand knowledge of the Philippines beyond what I've experienced through my grandmother's cooking. I can't pretend one lunch made me an expert on my heritage. But sitting there, eating food that felt so connected to my family, I felt a little closer to a place I've never really known.
That's a lot for a small restaurant on Mayport Road to accomplish. Cabalen did it without ceremony, one plate of food at a time.
Cabalen is worth the trip for the ukoy alone. Come hungry, leave happy, and don't be surprised if the meal feels like coming home.
