** This restaurant is now closed. **
Is there any better food than street food? I think not.
Alas, I'm an indoor (ie. air con-loving) kind of gal, so I'm thankful that Kanto 98 St. Eatery delivers the goods, sans the sweltering heat of the outdoors.
Kanto, translation being street corner in Tagalog, aims to showcase Filipino flavours in a tidy, modern package. It's the brainchild of Chef Edgar Gutierrez, of Tres Carnales and Rostizado fame, as an homage to his Filipino heritage.
Its location is quite easy to find, just one block off the main stretch of Chinatown, on 98 St. where cult favourites like Van Loc and Pho Tau Bay already reside.
The narrow space is divided in half between counter and seating. There's a retro comic mural on the right wall, a clue to the fun and bold creativity instilled in the meal that you're about to consume.
The street food-inspired menu is split into BBQ meats, baos, bowls, and sides. They also do a couple off-menu items that I've seen them advertise on Instagram (namely sisig and halo halo). Ordering is done at the counter, while food is brought out to your table in a mix of fast food baskets and stoneware bowls. Plastic forks, knives, and spoons are already at the table, but I think I would have liked to see them use real utensils (for easier use and also a greener environment).
While baos aren't necessary Filipino, it's a handy vessel for the fillings that are. ST and I shared an order of the Bao Bae ($15.50). Each of the baos comes in portions of three, which would be incredibly ambitious for one person to tackle alone, so sharing is definitely encouraged. Pieces of fried chicken are sandwiched within the steamed bao, along with a spread of red pepper mayo, pickled cucumbers, fried garlic, and green onions.
The chicken is deliciously crispy, almost bordering on crunchy territory (yes, there's a difference between crispy and crunchy in my eyes). The bao was a touch dry on the surface but I loved the contrast in textures between the soft bao and the crispy fried chicken. The red pepper mayo also added a good amount of heat and flavour, and when it almost felt like it'd be too much, the freshness and acid from the pickled cucumber was a nice little surprise to cut through the richness.
We can't talk about street food without talking about meat on a stick, can we? We shared an order of the pork BBQ ($8.50), two skewers of marinated, grilled, and glazed pork loin. There's also chicken and beef, and a pork belly option.
The marinade is slightly sweet, and the meat is given a light char while grilled. Our server also recommended adding on a bit of the vinegar condiment on the table, another neat trick to open up new flavours and cut the richness.
We had the skewers alongside talangka fried rice ($8.00). In Filipino cuisine, Talangka is a small crab prized for its tomalley (roe). My family would fight for this stuff whenever we would have crab on the table. Talangka crab paste is added to the fried rice at Kanto, which lends a subtle layer of flavour. What ST and I enjoyed most about the dish was the crunchy bits of rice. It's almost burnt, but in a purposeful way, like what you would get in Chinese claypot rice or in a sizzling bowl of Korean bibimbap.
Filipino cuisine isn't exactly in the Western mainstream, so I'm happy to see Kanto introducing the flavours to a new audience in a fun, approachable way. It's a-bao-t time.
(I'll see myself out.)
Kanto 98 St. Eatery
Edmonton, AB
(780) 244-7388
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