Monday, May 25, 2020

Take-Out Review: Grill City - Irvine


This is the Grill City silog: A meal I’ve enjoyed before the pandemic, during the shutdown, and will continue to enjoy for as long as there is a Grill City.

What is a silog?

A silog is the Filipino answer to the American bacon and egg breakfast.

It’s a portmanteau of two words: sinangag (fried rice) and itlog (fried egg). Together they form the suffix for what you see pictured: a tocilog, which features tocino, a cured pork product cut from the fattiest parts of the pig.

What is tocino?

Tocino is a breakfast meat that glistens like no other. It beams with a ruddy color almost akin to Chinese char siu, but thanks to annatto it's even brighter, as if it's been dipped in Maraschino cherry syrup.

Once cooked, tocino takes on a candy-like sheen and char.

Imagine beef jerky married with barbecued baby back ribs. Now imagine eating that with two fried eggs, and a ton of garlic-festooned fried rice.

Yes, it’s heavy. This after all is a meal designed as fuel for a day of hard labor in the fields. The silog is second only to the full English breakfast on calorie count and fat.

To beat back the richness, I dribble on spicy vinegar the consistency of bottled Italian dressing.

And since I had tomatoes, I threw some in to offset the carbo and protein load.

But you should know that what you see in my picture is actually half of the portion that Grill City serves for $4.99. It is, without question, the best meal deal in Irvine.

And if you take advantage of their buy 3 for $12.99, it’s even cheaper, and you’ve effectively secured 6 meals for a little over two bucks before tax.

For $1 more, you can add a bag of Jeprox to the order, which, for me, completes the whole silog experience.

What is Jeprox?

It’s planks of deep-fried dried fish. And as much as I’d like to find an analogy to something American, there just isn’t one.

Jeprox is Jeprox.

And it is good!

Grill City & Crispy Town
2180 Barranca Pkwy
Irvine, CA 92606
(310) 834-9700
seafoodcity.com

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