Mang Raul's Barbecue - BF Almanza

Ok, I've heard the buzz about this guy's barbecue on Facebook. Apparently he's got his own page, a lot of younglings seem to like to frequent his place.

We attempted to go the last weekend but the place was packed, at 6pm and had no more barbecue to sell. This peeked my interest even more. Why do people flock to tis place anyway? The place is very unfussy and down to earth. Very unassuming.

Mang Raul's is located in front of the BF Almanza Village Chapel in Las Pinas. His shop belongs to a small cluster of sari-sari stores. Since Mang Raul's often draws a huge crowd, and his stall is quite small, his neighboring stores decided to cash in and offer drinks, rice and smokes to the patrons. Rule of thumb is, if you get a table from any of the other two stores beside Mang Raul's, you have to buy your drinks, rice, smokes and in some cases hot instant noodles form that store. Everybody wins, see?

Mang Raul's is open from 3pm to 10p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays. If you are dining in, specially during dinnertime, I suggest you come early. The place is packed and people often order much more than they can eat (guilty!). One of the patrons who was in line ahead of me ordered over fifty pieces of each kind of barbecue. Yikes!

Mang Raul's cooks everything on site. The system goes, you fall in line, get a bowl from the counter, get your own raw barbecue from their selection of pork barbecue, chicken isaw (intestines), pork isaw (intestines), adidas (chicken feet), tenga (pork ears) and jubmo hotdogs.



You are the given a number and wait for your order to be grilled on an open charcoal barbecue pit. The secret, I think, is the sauce. The raw barbecue comes pre marinated and then dunked to Mang Raul's special sauce just before grilling. The barbecue then is dipped the second and third time as it grills. Maybe that's why the barbecue is very tender and juicy.



Upon serving, Mang Raul's Barbecue come to you with a dipping sauce of your choice: vinegar, hot and spicy, sweet spicy and sweet. They are quite generous with the sauce. I personally like the sweet dipping sauce. Hubby likes the sweet spicy. Although it's more spicy than sweet, ha ha ha. Just like hubby.



Anyway, the verdict on the food? The pork barbecue wasn't stellar, but wasn't bad either. It's on the average. Hubby and I didn't finish ours. Ok, ok, that's because we ordered eight!

The clear winners are the pork and chicken isaw and the adidas. They were very tender and tasty. I know that they are very bad for you, cholesterol wise, but, they were the best that I've ever tasted. The sauces are clear winners too. Most barbecue stalls only serve vinegar for dipping sauces.

Mang Raul, I'll be back! Maybe not soon but I will, once my arteries have recovered a bit.