How to Order Filipino Food in Halifax: A First-Timer's Guide to Barrios
New to Filipino food? How to order at Barrios in Halifax: share plates, keep rice on the table, and build a first order around sisig, kare-kare and pancit.
Barrios Restaurant & Bar
10/13/20266 min read
How to Order Filipino Food in Halifax: A First-Timer's Guide to Barrios
If you have never ordered Filipino food before, our menu at Barrios in downtown Halifax can look like a lot at once. New words, three kinds of pancit, pork on half the page, and a server asking whether you want chicken, pork belly or shrimp with your noodles.
It is simpler than it looks. Filipino food is made for sharing. A few plates go in the middle of the table, everyone eats them with rice, and each person tries a bit of everything. Once you know that, the rest is just choosing.
Prices shown are from our current menu and may change.
Order for the table, not for yourself
The biggest change from a usual restaurant meal is that nobody needs their own main. At a Filipino table the dishes sit in the middle and people help themselves. Filipino families usually eat this way at home, and it is the easiest way to taste more than one thing on a first visit.
A good first order has some contrast in it: something crisp, something with a sauce, a plate of noodles, and rice to hold it all together. A table of nothing but fried pork gets heavy fast. A table of nothing but sauce has no crunch.
Rice is part of the meal
Rice is not a side you remember at the end. It is what everything else is eaten with. Most of our Filipino mains already come with it. Sisig, lechon kawali, kare-kare and beef caldereta come with steamed rice. Chicken inasal and bangsilog come with garlic rice. Crispy pata is the one to watch: it comes with a soy vinegar dipping sauce and no rice, so add some. Any dish that comes with steamed rice can be switched to garlic rice, or the other way round, if you ask.
Extra rice is not printed on the menu, but just ask. Steamed rice is $2.50 and garlic rice is $2.75. If the table is sharing several plates, ask for an extra bowl.
A few menu words that help
Pancit: noodles. Pancit bihon, pancit guisado and palabok are three of the noodle dishes on our menu.
Lumpia: rolls. Ours are lumpiang shanghai, the thin fried spring rolls filled with ground pork and vegetables.
Silog: a plate built on garlic fried rice (sinangag) and a fried egg (itlog). Bangsilog adds bangus, which is milkfish.
Lechon kawali: lechon usually means a whole roasted pig. Lechon kawali is pork belly, simmered and then fried in a kawali, a deep wok-like pan, until the skin crackles.
Kare-kare: a stew in a thick peanut sauce. The classic version uses oxtail. Ours is made with crispy pork belly.
You do not have to say any of these perfectly. Pointing at the menu works fine.
What to put on a first order
Start with something familiar
Spring Rolls, $9 for four. Crispy rolls of seasoned ground pork and vegetables with sweet chili sauce. Almost everyone at the table will know what to do with these.
Barbecue Skewers, $15. Three Filipino-style marinated pork skewers basted in barbecue sauce and grilled until sweet and smoky. They are marked gluten free on the menu. If someone at the table is nervous about the whole idea, start them here.
Add something crisp
Lechon Kawali, $19. Pork belly slow-simmered with spices, then deep-fried until the skin shatters. Served with steamed rice.
Crispy Pata, $27. Pork hock simmered in spices until tender, then deep-fried, with our homemade soy vinegar dipping sauce. It is the highest-priced Filipino plate on the menu, so ask your server how many people it suits.
Add something with a sauce
Kare-Kare, $22. Crispy pork belly, bok choy, eggplant and green beans in a rich golden peanut sauce, with steamed rice. It comes with bagoong, a salty fermented shrimp paste. The bagoong is where the salt comes from, so add a little at a time and taste as you go.
Beef Caldereta, $24. Beef brisket slow-braised in a Filipino tomato-based sauce with roasted carrots, baby potatoes and green beans, with steamed rice. If the table is new to all of this, it is the saucy dish that feels most like a stew from home.
Pork Sisig, $20. Chopped roasted pork seasoned with soy sauce and chili, sizzling on a cast iron plate with a raw egg on top, and steamed rice. Mix the egg through the pork straight away, while the plate is still sizzling, so the heat cooks it. Then squeeze the lemon over it. The egg is what finishes the flavour.
Add noodles
Pancit Bihon, $17. Thin rice vermicelli with fresh vegetables in a light savoury sauce. Pancit Guisado, also $17, mixes that vermicelli with chow mein noodles. Both come with your choice of grilled chicken, crispy pork belly or shrimp, and the price is the same whichever you pick.
Palabok, $20. Rice noodles in a rich shrimp-based sauce, topped with boiled egg, shrimp and crispy pork belly.
If someone does not eat pork
Chicken Inasal, $22. Chicken marinated in citrus, garlic and spices, grilled, and served with garlic rice, a soy vinegar dip and pickled daikon and carrots. There is no pork in it.
Bangsilog, $17. Pan-fried milkfish with crispy skin, garlic fried rice, a sunny side egg and pickled daikon and carrots.
Beef Tapa, $18. Marinated beef, pan-fried, with garlic rice and two eggs, which makes it our tapsilog.
If someone is vegetarian
Pinakbet, $14, is the plate our menu marks vegetarian and vegan-friendly: mashed squash, stir-fried beans and okra, fried eggplant and crispy tofu. Pinakbet is often made with shrimp paste, but ours is made without shrimp paste or fish sauce. Torta, $12, is a Filipino eggplant omelette with pico de gallo, crispy onions and banana ketchup. It is vegetarian but not vegan, because of the egg. Pancit bihon and guisado can also be made vegetarian, with vegetables and tofu, if you ask.
How much to order
For two people, one starter and two mains is a good place to start, since most mains come with rice. An order of spring rolls, pork sisig and chicken inasal comes to $51 before tax, and gives you something crisp, something sizzling and something grilled.
For four people, try two starters, one noodle dish and two mains, then add a bowl of rice. An order of spring rolls, barbecue skewers, pancit bihon with shrimp, kare-kare, chicken inasal and one extra garlic rice comes to $87.75 before tax.
It is always easier to add a plate than to leave one half-eaten. Order a little less than you think, and ask for one more thing if the table is still hungry.
Dessert is an occasional special
We do not have a fixed dessert list. Desserts are occasional specials the chef puts on, so some days there is one and some days there is not. Ask your server. When halo-halo is on, it is $12: shaved ice with sweet fruit, beans and jellies, evaporated milk, ube halaya and house-made leche flan. Mix it all together before you eat it. Leche flan turns up the same way.
Tell us about allergies before you order
Kare-kare carries two major allergens on one plate: peanut in the sauce and shellfish in the bagoong. It is also the only Filipino dish on our menu with peanut in it. Palabok is shrimp twice over: the sauce is made from a shrimp-based stock, and it is topped with shrimp. Shrimp is also one of the protein choices on the pancit bihon and guisado. If anyone at the table has an allergy, tell your server before you order, not when the food arrives, and ask about the sauces as well as the toppings.
Just ask
Tell your server it is your first time with Filipino food and what you usually like to eat. That one sentence does more than reading the whole menu in advance. Ask what a dish tastes like, how many people it suits, and what goes well with it.
Most Filipino dishes are not chili-hot. Of the mains on this page, the sisig is the one with chili in it. And if someone at the table is not ready for any of it, the menu also has burgers, tacos, fish and chips and salads.
Planning your visit
We are at 1571 Barrington Street in downtown Halifax. We open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:30 AM, closing at 9 PM Tuesday to Thursday and 11 PM on Friday and Saturday, with the last seating at 10 PM on those two nights. We are closed on Mondays. Sunday is our Filipino brunch, a self-serve spread at $29 per adult, from 10:30 AM to 4 PM, which is another good way to try a lot of dishes at once.
Book a table at barrioshfx.ca/reservation or call 902-444-2515. If you want to look before you come, the menu is online.
Quick answers
What should I order at a Filipino restaurant for the first time?
Something familiar to start, like spring rolls or barbecue skewers, then one crisp dish, one dish with a sauce, a pancit, and rice. Share all of it.
Should everyone order their own main?
No. Filipino food is eaten family style. Put the plates in the middle and share.
Do the mains come with rice?
Most of our Filipino mains do. Crispy pata does not. Extra rice is $2.50 steamed or $2.75 garlic.
What does silog mean?
It joins sinangag, garlic fried rice, and itlog, egg. Bangsilog is milkfish with garlic rice and a fried egg.
Is there a vegetarian Filipino dish?
Yes. Pinakbet at $14 is marked vegetarian and vegan-friendly on our menu, torta at $12 is vegetarian, and pancit bihon or guisado can be made vegetarian if you ask.
Is halo-halo always on the menu?
No. Desserts are occasional specials the chef announces. When halo-halo is on it is $12, so ask your server.