Location: 1482 Dundas Street East, Mississauga
Website: https://www.kdlb.ca/
Kuya Don Lomi Batangas is a Filipino restaurant that started in North York and has recently expanded to Mississauga. And judging by the crowds, it’s already a hit — I showed up not long after they opened at 11:00am on a Saturday, and the place was already pretty full. By the time I left, it was packed.
They have a variety of Filipino dishes on the menu, but the specialty is lomi batangas (it’s right there in the name, so obviously you’ve gotta order that).
I can’t say I’ve ever tried (or even heard of) this dish, but I’m always game to try something new. Here’s how the menu describes it: “freshly made miki with caldo, sliced fish ball, boiled egg, pork liver, kikiam, rebusado, bola-bola, and garnish.”
In case you’re as clueless about Filipino cuisine as I apparently am (I understood fish ball, boiled egg, pork liver, and garnish in that description), here’s how that breaks down. Miki is a Filipino egg noodle, caldo means broth, kikiam is a type of sausage, Google is saying rebusado is fried shrimp (there was something fried in the bowl, but it definitely wasn’t shrimp — pork, I think?), and bola-bola is a meatball (which I don’t think was in my bowl? There were crispy pork rinds, however).
Whatever was in here was quite tasty, particularly those fried chunks of pork (?), which were well seasoned, nicely crunchy on the outside, and tender on the inside.
The soup itself has a really deep savouriness that’s quite satisfying, particularly once you add a squeeze of the calamansi they have on the side — this does a great job of adding some brightness to the very rich bowl. The soup is thickened, but not in a way that feels overly goopy. It’s quite good.
My only real complaint is that while the noodles do a great job of soaking up the flavour of the soup, they’re pretty mushy. I’m not sure if that’s the way they’re supposed to be or if something went wrong, but either way, that’s probably my only complaint about an otherwise very tasty dish.
Michael Eats 