Delectable Asian Food with a Distinct Flair at Your Local’s Pop-Up

The Balmori Suites is slowly becoming our new favorite monthly haunt

With new (and exciting) restaurant pop-ups every month, The Balmori Suites at Rockwell is surely becoming one of our favorite spots.

This month, Your Local is calling The Balmori Suites its home until November 26th, giving thrilled foodies the chance to savor new dishes from Chef Patrick Go and his team. They haven’t even finished their first week at The Balmori when the extension was announced — it’s that good!

Chef Patrick Go

The menu is concise and definitely on brand with Your Local’s flair for Asian cuisine with a distinct twist — that Your Local touch that we love over the years. I personally think it’s amazing how this restaurant has kept its unique identity no matter who’s steering the ship, whether it’s Nicco Santos & Quenee Vilar, Natalia Moran, Noel Mauricio, and for the past two years, Patrick Go.

The pop-up menu has several small plates to start your meal, mostly seafood-driven. For our first visit, we tried got three small plates to share.

Tuna Toast has minced Tuna tossed in miso with grapes and served over crispy fried mantou. The whole thing is covered in local parmesan.

The refreshing Chili Crab Somen features chilled meat of local Blue Crab and cold noodles served with flavorful toyo-mansi dashi broth and sweet chili.

The Trout Kinilaw had us wondering how to make kinilaw this good at home. It has cubed Ocean Trout with crispy alamang and chunks of pomelo cured in coconut tuba vinegar.

To wash it all down, I had the Panulak, a refreshing cocktail made of tuba, watermelon juice, tequila, lime, and basil.

For the mains, I was most excited to try the Pork Kare-Curry, which has fall-off-the-cartilage roasted pork softbone in a wonderful peanut sauce mixed with Japanese kare sauce and topped with bagoong slaw with herbs and onions.

But it was the Beef Lechon Donburi that stole my heart. It’s got slices of perfectly cooked beef short ribs with black vinegar glaze served over truffle rice with corn and shiitake mushrooms.

For seafood lovers, the Roasted Halibut (made with Greenland Halibut from Cold Storage) hit all the right spots. The roasted halibut is served over burnt kalabasa, bonito X.O. Sauce, coconut water, and cauliflower.

We paired the mains with Alamang Fried Rice (bright orange fried rice, thanks to the lemongrass-atsuete combo, with baby shrimp and garlic confit) and Asado Rice (fragrant rice studded with pulled roast pork, sweet soy sauce, and scallion).

Though Your Local only has three desserts, everyone at our table (well, there were three of us) had a favorite.

My personal favorite was the Mais con Tres Leches. It's literally a Tres Leches Cake with butterscotch, cornflakes, lots of corn foam, and a touch of salt just to emphasize the corn flavor. It's worth the dig!

The Avocado Tart has a cashew crust filled with chilled avocado mousse and topped with milk crumbs and a generous snow of Grana Padano.

Lastly, Choco na Gatas has toasted milk ice cream with dark chocolate mousse (I think) smeared on the bowl (very Your Local, if you ask me) and crushed banana chips for texture.

Make sure to catch this pop-up while they’re at The Balmori Suites to enjoy these exclusive dishes. You won’t find these anywhere else.

The original Your Local spot along Esteban Street is temporarily closed for renovations while the pop-up is ongoing.

Catch Your Local at The Balmori Suites until November 26, 2023. They’re open for lunch (11am-2pm), afternoon tea (2-5pm), and dinner (6-10pm). For reservations, contact 0977 487 9236.