A new fast-casual restaurant has opened on the first floor of Courthouse Centre in downtown Sarasota, serving up Filipino classics in a build-your-own $20 box that includes a protein, garlic fried rice, two lumpia and two turon. Tastes of the Philippines recently opened at 1987 Ringling Blvd., and the response from the community has already been loud.
According to heraldtribune.com, the restaurant served more than 1,000 customers during its two-day soft opening. Owner Patrick Takano estimated that about 70 percent of the people who showed up that weekend were of Filipino heritage, and he has said he did not realize how many Filipinos lived in the Sarasota area until the doors opened.
The menu itself is built around that $20 box, which, per srqmagazine.com, lets diners pick a protein alongside garlic fried rice, two lumpia as an appetizer and two turon for dessert. Takano and his crew cook everything to order from scratch, the outlet reports, with much of the cooking happening over an open flame in full view of customers at the counter.
A Menu Built on Char and Tradition
Protein options include Filipino BBQ chicken skewers, charred over an open flame and glazed in a sweet, smoky mix the restaurant's menu describes as banana ketchup, soy sauce and citrus, according to tastesofthephilippines.com. There is also lechon kawali, deep-fried pork belly that the menu describes as having crispy, crackling skin, prepared by first simmering the pork belly before frying it. Chicken adobo is braised with soy, vinegar, garlic and bay leaf until the sauce reduces into a glaze, and the box also comes with an adobo tofu skewer for vegetarian diners.
Beyond the box itself, the restaurant's broader menu stretches into pancit bihon, sinigang and Ilocos empanadas, along with longanisa, the sweet, garlicky Filipino breakfast sausage. Lumpia on the menu are thin, crisp spring rolls, while turon wraps banana in a spring-roll wrapper and fries it until the sugar inside caramelizes. The drink menu includes an ube matcha latte and a coffee drink called Filipino drip.
Family Business, Franchise Ambitions
Takano owns Tastes of the Philippines and runs it alongside longtime business partners Conor Doherty and Conor McHugh. He has compared the restaurant's counter-service setup to chains like Fresh Kitchen or Cava, and told The Adventurist Magazine that hiring a mostly Filipino staff was a deliberate choice meant to keep the flavors genuine. The restaurant's build-out reportedly cost about $200,000, and its decor leans on natural materials intended to reflect Philippine culture.
Takano has discussed franchising the concept further down the road and has floated the idea of a second location in Bradenton, though for now Tastes of the Philippines operates out of its single Ringling Boulevard storefront. SRQ Magazine's report lists the restaurant's hours as Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
A third-party inspection listing from FloridaFoodWatch shows an October 7 inspection resulting in a Department of Business and Professional Regulation disposition of Inspection Completed – No Further Action, with zero high-priority violations, one intermediate violation and zero basic violations noted, according to floridafoodwatch.com. For now, the bigger story downtown is the line out the door for a $20 box that is introducing a lot of Sarasota to Filipino cooking for the first time.
