I am thrilled that Phoenix Lechon Roasters is offering pandesal with ube and cheese for Father’s Day weekend. I ordered these delicious rolls for my hubby’s birthday last month. It took us (ok, me. It was me) less than 24 hours to polish off half-a-dozen rolls.
I loved having pandesal for breakfast on my first trip to the Philippines. I was 13.
My dad booked us a room at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila in Makati City. It felt like a fancy resort. Staff members treated us like royalty. Breakfast options included a classic silog dish with rice, eggs and meat options, like plumb longanisa sausage links or tocino pork pieces.
But I wanted buttery pandesal rolls.
Filipino cookbooks and food personalities will tell you pandesal traces its roots back to the Spanish phrase “bread of salt.†The rolls I’ve had in the Philippines and back in the States tasted sweet and moist.
At the Hotel Intercontinental, they were served piping hot with small ramekins of butter. The bread didn’t flake like biscuits. Instead, the rolls felt dense and doughy. I enjoyed every chewy bite.
I felt so sophisticated sitting inside an elegant restaurant at the heart of the hotel, buttering pandesal rolls.
Pandesal became part of my scavenger hunt when I moved away from California. Comfort food like these dense, buttery rolls could ease my longing for familiar faces and places: I missed eating at my parents’ kitchen table, skating inside my home rink in Anaheim and walking along the pier at Newport Beach.