Malasa, which means Tasty in Tagalog, is a pop-up housed at the Crawstation space in Inner Sunset. It is open for weekend brunch and serves modern Filipino cuisine. The results of my meal were somewhat mixed- the food was tailored for Instagram at an economical price, though the flavors couldn’t quite catch up to the presentation.
What I liked:
Arroz caldo- the rice porridge was cooked in a chicken stock. The porridge was flavorful with a pronounced chicken aroma. Topped with shredded buttered chicken, a piece of chiccarone and a sliced hard boiled egg. Delicious.
The Drinks- dalandan juice and pineapple-mango cooler. Very refreshing.
What I didn’t like as much:
Smoked trout, 63 degree egg. The smoked trout was better served as a small side dish for taste rather than as the main protein, as its salted for preservation. I was not able to finish it due to the salt. I couldn’t figure out what was in the mushy tomato salad on top of the trout, but it was delicious.
The combination silog allowed one to sample the three types of meats available on individual silog plates- tapa (beef), tocino (sweet pork) and longanisa (sweet sausage), egg, pickled slaw, fried rice, and a vinegary dip. The meat were all quite sweet. The beef, in addition, was very salty as well. It’d be better if there was a bigger separation in flavor profile, and the sugar/ salt was scaled back significantly so they didn’t overwhelm the other flavors on the plate. The garlic fried rice was quite flavorful.
Chicken skin chiccharones was savory with the hot sauce, though also salty.
Kitchen was a bit slow. Service was very enthusiastic.
