Binalot @ Greenbelt 1

With only three club members today, we decided today to eat at Binalot, a third-round pick after vetoing Big Buddha for distance and cost and David's Tea House for no apparent reason. At least for Leigh and me, we would soon find this decision an appalling mistake.


Binalot Greenbelt specializes in traditional Filipino foods wrapped in banana leaves, which does provide for an appetizing aroma and unique presentation. I ordered myself a sisig, which you can see directly below. Can you see it? No? Well, that's gripe #1. The servings were quite small. The sisig let me down, being both dull and flavorless, needing salted eggs, fried eggs, and other condiments to give it some semblance of taste. Yech.


There are little pros for this Binalot, despite its long line testifying to its popularity. The restaurant is cramped, and tables are ridiculously small, given that we have to open our meals wide (they are, after all, wrapped in banana plant leaves). Their service was reasonably fast, but the meals were unmemorable.


Ultimately, I don't see myself returning to Binalot Greenbelt, even for takeout. Why suffer through the indignance of bad food and ambience for Filipino food? There's Rodick's, Tapa King, and a slew of other restaurants that can give me equally good food, with space to stretch my legs and enjoy my eating time with friends. - Ganns

I love almusal food. Anything "silog" appeals to my appetite. So today, we opted to eat at Binalot. This teeny tiny place located at the back of Greenbelt 1, which serves anything from "silog" faves to more contemporary stuff like their Sisig na Makisig.

The downside. Portions are not consistent, so I ended up finishing my meal before I knew it. To match the teeny, tiny place are their even teenier, tinier tables. If you are out on a lunch date with your boyfriend, your food ends up overlapping with each other's paper binalot.

Their sago gulaman is quite okay. So-so. Nothing fancy either like those of Via Mare's.

In totality, a so-so lunch experience. - Lean
Let's start with the good things, service was fast. Okay, that it.

By far this is the least satisfying meal I have ever had since the beginning of the MBC. This was also a first for me at Binalot but from seeing the long lines at its Greenbelt branch every lunch time, I thought the food would be good.
It was a big disappointment. For one, the cashier didn't take down my order of iced tea so I had to line up twice. Then she got my order all wrong. Instead of exchanging my plain rice for Tapa Rice, she punched in an extra order of Tapa Rice. So I had left over plain rice from the meal. That's my "combo" meal at the right. I ate the Tapa Rice and transferred by Bongga Longganiza (it wasn't so bongga), salted egg and tomato there.

Lean's right, the tables were way too small for the huge Binalot paper AND banana leaves. We had trouble arranging our stuff (which consisted of 2 wallets and a camera -- no bags!) to be able to eat comfortably.

Overall, the speed of getting our orders were good (probably coz all they had to do was assemble the "binalot", everything else was pre-cooked), the food was so-so, the place was bad. I'd probably try Binalot again just to try out the other items on the menu. But, only for take-out!
-- Leigh