Date Budget: PhP 300Actual Spend: PhP 304
Quality: 4/5
Service: 4/5
Accessibility: 3/5
Fun Factor: 5/5
Overall Experience: 5/5
Highlights
- Beef Wanton Noodles in a BIG bowl!
- Beef Ampalaya that is BIG in size, and BIG in taste!
- White Rabbit soft milk candy: a childhood favorite
- Weird-looking but great tasting tea boiled egg
The Experience
We have already raved about Binondo food a couple of times but we simply just can't get enough of it!
After a lot of walking at 168 and 999 malls looking for wedding stuff, we were so hungry that we needed something big to eat. Good thing there's Big Bowl Noodles.
Big Bowl noodles is your everyday Binondo noodle house. The feel is pretty much similar to Dong Bei. They specialize in another food type though: noodles and rice meals.
We got a serving of their Beef Wanton Noodles. The serving size lived up to the restaurant's name. The big noodle bowl was filled with a lot of meat, veggies, and good quality noodles packed with big taste.
We also had a service of their Beef Ampalaya Rice. The bitterness of ampalaya was offset by the thick tausi-based sauce. Rice served was the size of a bowl (not your usual rice cup size).
Aside from our Big Bowl lunch, we also grabbed a few other Chinatown exclusive. A really striking one was this tea-boiled egg from a stall near 999 Mall's food court:
It's just plain egg boiled in tea instead of plain water. The dried leaf concoction was so strong that turned the egg white black. It was insanely good! Never though I'll find much joy in this simple snack.
We also spotted a childhood favorite: White Rabbit candy! This is the original soft creamy and milky one with a plastic-like edible inner wrapper. It's not that easy to find it even in Binondo and it is almost extinct elsewhere. We were happily munching this while walking.
Though we got a relatively high dose of MSG and melamine that day, it was well worth it. We'll still be back for another Binondo episode!
Spend Breakdown
| Beef Wanton Noodles | 110 |
| Beef Ampalaya Rice | 120 |
| White Rabbit Milk Candy (1 pack) | 50 |
| Tea Boiled Egg (2 pieces) | 24 |
| Actual Spend | 304 |
How to get there
- From LRT United Nations Ave. Station, ride a jeep going to Divisoria
- Get off before Binondo Church. Turn right to Ongpin. Turn right to Yuchengco St. (first corner, after Eng Bee Tin). Look for Big Bowl Noodles' yellow sign with red font.
Landmarks: Binondo Church, Ongpin St., Divisoria, Manila China Town, Plaza Ruiz, Sincerity Chicken
Address:
517 Nueva (Yuchengco) St., Binondo, Manila
Contact Number/s:
(632) 244-8755 / 244-8644 / 245-7292 / 244-8766
Operating Hours: 10 AM to around 8 PM
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