Noodle: Pancit PalabokSource: Manila Grove, Great Wall Mall, 18230 E. Valley Highway, Kent, (253) 347-4715.Price: $5.29I’ve often heard pancit palabok described as the Filipino spaghetti with red sauce. It sounds like the most comforting food ever: rice noodles, seafood sauce tinted orange with annato seed, crumbled pork rinds, hard-boiled eggs, green onions. It’s also one of those dishes that I order time and time again, trying to like, and every version seems boringly one-note. But one of the cardinal rules of reviewing restaurants is that when you see diners around you eating a dish, you order it. And some friends and I wandered into Manila Grove after making my third unsuccessful trip to visit a nearby Lao restaurant that didn’t seem to want to honor its posted hours. Even though the pancit was practically listed in small print at the back of this mall restaurant’s menu, half the diners were eating plates of it.It was certainly the best pancit palabok I’ve eaten yet. For one reason: pork density. The thick sauce didn’t have the tinge of seafood it often has — from crab, squid, shrimp paste, fish sauce, seems to differ depending on the maker — but the skinny white noodles were covered in a fine snow of crumbled fried pork rinds, so they tasted as if they were cooked in ham stock. Warning: As much as I enjoyed the pancit, it was so rich that half a plate was as much as I could take. If you go to Manila Grove, sneak in a flask of vinegar to swig between bites. Or order the pancit with Manila Grove’s bracingly tart sinigang, a tamarind-soured soup with chunks of pork and mustard greens.
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