The owners of Red Baron and Megawatt are behind Templo, which is located on a quiet segment of Dapitan St., between D. Tuazon and Cordillera St.s in the Banawe neighbourhood.
While I have not eaten at Red Baron, I have at Megawatt, and some of the same, quiet special touches are there. It is not a big space, but it has an interesting display of items for sale that hew closely to the restaurant's theme. They have some pretty Chinese jewellery, good luck charms, and religious temple items for sale, if I recall correctly.
Take a look at the display near their prep counter/cash register area, where there are lots of drinks to pick from that aren't listed on the menu. They've launched a line of local iced tea called Lick, and it comes in a number of fun, interesting flavours.
They've also got specialty snacks, slightly hidden in the back, like Stips' salted egg chips, for sale.
We started our hosted meal with Pork Ear Vinaigrette, which like the classic (not sizzling) sisig, is a vinegar marinade-based dish, followed by salted egg squid. The Pork Ear Vinaigrette was served chilled, tender but still chewy, and makes a liquor pairing inviting. I found the salted egg squid coating somewhat salty.
Then we had two stir-fried meats - a Beef Brisket with carrots, mushroom, and bamboo shoots, the meat of good quality, with fat in the right places; and Szechuan Pork, thickly sliced, and with curry undertones. They went well with the XO fried black rice we were given, an upgrade from regular XO fried rice if you add P65.
For me, the highlight of our meal lay lay with the Emperor Soup, a glossy, delicious soup with several kinds of mushroom, ginseng, dried scallop, and yin yang huo (an herb in English known as barrenwort, or epimedium). Put together, these ingredients are rich sources of zinc, which is essential to boosting the immune system - five times more zinc, they say, than Soup No. 5. It is expensive, but their servings are good for four, maybe five people also eating two or three other items.
Their Halibut Chongqing spicy grilled fish soup came a very close second. Our Halibut soup was at maybe a medium spicy, to accommodate the group's spicy tolerance. The halibut was flaky tender, very well cooked, with firm tofu and green vegetables, submerged in a brightly coloured, floral-scented, and somewhat oily broth, which is typical of these preparations. You'll need rice for this, and a good drink! There's Chinese beer (Tsing Tao), a selection of iced and milk teas, and premium sodas.
One can request all dishes to be cooked at any level of spiciness, and they are prepared to make your dishes very spicy if you want to.
Quezon City has gotten very strict about street parking, so you'll have to squeeze into their parking lot and off the street. Fortunately, their security guards are very helpful about this.
Thank you to Zomato and to Joyce at Templo for having me.
#zomatofmu
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