White Rice — Restaurant in San Diego

Came here on a whim and I’m so glad I did! Their menu is simple and straightforward, so ordering isn’t overwhelming. They offer Filipino classics like lechón kawali, tocino, sisilog, pancit bihon , and longanisa . They also have ube pandesal and I’ve cookies.

Today I chose to have the lechón and the pandesal to eat and the kalamansi iced tea to drink. The lechón was perfectly cooked; crispy outside and soft melt in your mouth inside. Of course it comes with mang Tomas sauce, so you know it was good! I also loved the portion size. I was definitely full after my meal. I’m glad they included atchara because it balanced the fattiness of the lechón perfectly. All around a great dish.

The ube pandesal came with an ube butter spread. The pandesal was delicious on its own, but if you really want the ube flavor, you have to use the spread. It was really good!

They have a decent amount of seating outside, so it was nice to enjoy a bit of the fall sun while I ate. I came here during the week in the early afternoon, so parking was ample on the street. I can imagine though that it gets pretty busy as people get out of work or on the weekends, so plan accordingly.

Overall I love this place; I’ll...

Was visiting SD from LA and came across White Rice Bodega, and WOW I wish we had this here in LA!

It’s pretty rare for a spot to get Filipino food right - but Brian and the WRB staff takes the cake. Food was perfectly seasoned, nothing was overcooked, and easily fed a group of 4 hungry peeps.

We ordered 4 silogs to try: mushroom + tofu sisig - vegetarian option, so well seasoned & textures were everything chopped pork belly - so tender!! sweet pork sausage - seemed homemade, not too fatty or too sweet crispy pork belly - flavor bursts in your mouth!

With calamansi juice as a treat. Everything but the mushroom + tofu had a fried egg, and the garlic rice was subtle but garlic-y enough for us garlic lovers. The chopped pork belly also came with Atchara (pickled unripe papaya) which was the icing on the cake for my nostalgia.

When our food was ready, we were pleasantly surprised with free ube pandesal (fluffy & light, not too sweet)!! If you’re lucky, there’s plenty of free street parking on Saturday mornings. Seating options are shaded too.

We will definitely be coming back....

Place might be good for a quick bite/small lunch, but if you’re looking for a meal this is not the place. Only outside seating by the way. Now this is the part that upsets me. Their sides are about a cup which is fine for an appetizer or sampler, but again, not good for a full meal, and this is all they offer. Now if the price was reasonable this would have been ok because I could’ve just ordered 3 or 4 sides, but it’s $10 dollars for one small single cup side! That’s like 4 bites of food. You can get about 4X that portion at anywhere else for roughly the same price. So yeah, this is definitely not a two dollar sign ($$) restaurant, more like a triple dollar sign ($$$) restaurant when you consider price per portion. I’m not spending $40 on seasoned pork that I can get for $10 dollars anywhere else. I don’t care how well you cook it, it can’t be that much better. The menu is also extremely limited so there’s not much to choose from, and the menu names are Americanized so if you’re looking for variety and authentic Filipino dishes you may wanna try...