Carvajal Street in Binondo is another food haven for those looking for a different kind of culinary adventure. To any certified foodie, Carvajal can be a very intimate and charming street market. It's a really narrow street that has been closed to traffic. In fact, it looks more like an alley than it does a street!
Among the Binondo locals, Carvajal is still called Ho Sua Hang, which is Hokkien for umbrella alley. That's because the main product of the street used to be umbrellas rather than food. Well today, one can find seafood, fruits and vegetables, as well as ingredients for Chinese dishes. If you need a hard to find ingredients for a Chinese dish you've been wanting to cook at home, it must be in Carvajal!
I can't stop raving about Dong Bei Dumplings! It's along Nueva Street (well they call it Yuchengco Street now). There are times that I'd drive all the way to Binondo just to buy my stock of frozen dumplings and pancakes which I could easily cook at home when I crave for them. The dumplings are actually from Northern China (most Chinese dishes we see here in the Philippines are from Fujian Province).
You can choose what you want inside your dumplings, from plain vegetables such as kutchai and cabbage, to dumplings with mixed pork and vegetables, plain pork, or shrimp and vegetables. You can also order them steamed or fried. Both are actually good!
Binondo is a food paradise. And Benavidez Street is a treasure trove of restaurants and hole-in-the-wall stores which serve some of the best Chinatown goodies. If you want some cheap but delicious dimsum, troop over to Wai Ying Fastfood!
Everything is great! But since our stomachs could handle only as much, we couldn't pick them all. We had (1) kutchai dumplings, (2) hakaw, (3) thaipao, (4) beancurd roll, (5) beef mami and (6) wanton mami. Even with the black gulaman and almond jelly, our bill was less than PHP500!
Here is the answer to your late night shabu-shabu cravings! Last March, the Philippines hosted the Asia 21 Young Leaders Forum. Among the delegates was Minnesota state senator Mee Moua who had mentioned to us over dinner that she was hoping to visit Chinatown before leaving the next day. On short notice, we rang Ivan Man Dy of Old Manila Walks to give her a private night tour of Binondo!
After exploring Binondo, we went for late night shabu-shabu at Golden Fortune Seafood Restaurant which closes at 1 a.m. daily. What's even better is starting at 9 p.m., they give a hefty discount for shabu-shabu (30 to 50 percent depending on the ingredient), dimsum and seafood. The same discount is offered from 2 to 5:30 p.m.
We've always known the Cantonese version of the Lunar New Year greeting which is Kong Hei Fat Choi. It means "congratulations and be prosperous" and not "Happy New Year" as most Filipinos assume. But since most Chinese Filipinos trace their ancestry to Fujian province, the residents of Binondo are popularizing the Hokkien version which is Kiong Hee Huat Chai! This holiday is not only celebrated by the Chinese but shared by the Koreans (Seollal), Vietnamese (Tết), Mongolians, Tibetans (Losar), the Nepalese and the Bhutanese as well.
Yesterday was the eve of the Lunar New Year. As I was nearing the Binondo Church, I bumped into dragon dance group making its way along Ongpin Street. Anyway, my tokayo (Filipino term for person with the same first name) Manila streetwalker Ivan ManDy had a tour scheduled in the afternoon so I waited for him at the church lobby. He arrived at 2 p.m. together with two other bloggers, Anton Diaz and Sidney Snoeck. Anton and family joined his morning tour while Sidney bumped into their group. Since I've already been on his walking tour (check out this old entry on the Big Binondo Food Bowl), I decided to join Anton and Sidney for a walk around the place to look for some action.
And it wasn't difficult to look for dragon and lion dance groups since they were all over the place. The lion dance is often confused with the dragon dance. If it's just one or two people, it's a lion. We finally found a big dance group and decided to follow them since we figured they knew which shops to stop at. And our hunch was right since we were led to a shop with a load of firecrackers hanging in front of it.
Since the afternoon sun was quite hot, there were not that many groups yet. So we decided to rest a bit and have dimsum at President Tea House on Salazar Street near the corner of Ongpin. I had hakkao, polonchai dumplings, spinach dumplings, japanes siomai and taupe rolls. We saw the mango shakes on the other table and couldn't resist ordering for ourselves too. Thanks to Sidney for the treat! We also bumped into Señor Enrique there.
The shops outside were also loaded with fruits, "lucky" plants and new year decorations and good luck charms. Of course, tikoy was in abundance too. There were long queues to buy tikoy, hopia and other goodies at the more popular outlets.
We continued our walk and found even more action. Along Ongpin, the crowds were increasing as they watched the different groups perform in front of the shops. The shop owners would place a bowl of candies and coins in front of their shops for the lions to "eat." The lions would then "spit it" to the crowds who all rush in to grab the goodies. Of course, the end of the routine would be the lighting of firecrackers. In fact, the lions would play around with the other end of the firecraker belt, "biting" it with its mouth. This time, the fumes were just too much for me to handle and I ended up coping with an asthma attack.
At 5:30 p.m., we parted ways and I ended up joining the tail-end of Ivan ManDy's tour which was a visit to the Guan Gong Temple. After the temple visit, we made a left on Nueva Street (the Lord Mayor of MayniLA changed the name to Yuchengco), and entered this alley which is known as Carvajal Street. The alley is a food haven with its myriad of hole-in-the-wall tea houses and vendors who sell anything from fruits, vegetables, fish and other delicacies.
We ended up in Quintin Paredes and our last stop, the New Po-Heng Lumpia House in the Uy Su Bin Building. Of course, their fresh lumpia is healthy and delicious. After the tour, I asked my tokayo to accompany me to my favorite dumpling shop along Nueva Street, Dong Bei Dumplings. I took home frozen xie ping (fried stuffed pancakes) and chui kio (dumplings). From there, we went back to Ongpin where I bought a box of tikoy and ube hopia from Eng Bee Tin.
As I've mentioned over and over again, that uninteresting mall beside City Hall used to be where the elegant YMCA Building designed by Archt. William Parsons stood. Right beside it is an early post-war government building, one among many decrepit heritage buildings near City Hall, the former GSIS Headquarters. It was a pity looking at the building. From the architectural details, I could imagine just how chic it was during its heyday.
One thing the City Government of Manila lacks is creativity. There is such a thing as adaptive reuse Mayor Atienza. The GSIS Building could have been by used for the Unibersidad de Manila, and it would have been an elegant school building at that, instead of constructing that boring building in Mehan Gardens.
Anyway, right in front of UDM itself was another heritage government building that could also have been used by the UDM. But the National Waterworks and Sewage Authority building was obviously as derelict as GSIS. What a waste of architectural treasures right beside City Hall!
At the end of the road was the jewel of all decrepit heritage treasures in the vicinity of City Hall, the Metropolitan Theater. Need I say more?
I hope they are able to bring back the grandeur of that charming edifice which has Art Deco written all over it. But sadly, as early as now, one could already see that declared structures such as the Metropolitan Theater won't be spared by the elections. Attention Comelec, not only did Gabriela place their posters outside the designated posting areas, they violated PD1505 by desecrating a national historical landmark and had the gall to place their posters right beside the NHI marker at that!
At least across the street, Liwasang Bonifacio (formerly known as Plaza Lawton) had already been rehabilitated. Beside it, another imposing Manila landmark, the Central Post Office stands like a proud sentinel of Manila's former glory (before the city was carpet-bombed by American forces in the final days of the Second World War, it was among the great cities of Asia and the world). I guess there is a glimmer of hope for Manila's heritage.
I continued my walk across the Pasig River via the Jones Bridge. It's sad that they did not restore this bridge following the original plans of Archt. Juan Arellano. From the west side of the bridge, you could see Intramuros on your left and Binondo on your right. Again, amidst all the urban chaos, two buildings standout: the El Hogar Building and Pacific Commercial Building. I hope they restore these buildings soon.
At the end of the bridge, the Philtrust Bank Building (another grand pre-war building that should be restored) and a welcome arch greets visitors as they enter Chinatown. Along Quintin Parades Street, more Art Deco buildings still stand. And it was a pleasant surprise to see many of these old buildings freshly painted. And I also noticed that they are foreign banks, namely Citibank and HSBC which chose to locate in chic pre-war buildings. I guess it's because they know the value of the said buildings. 
