Linda Falkenstein
Kanto Fiesta's pancit.
The noodle dish pancit comes with crunchy lumpia.
Since Global Market and Food Hall opened in 2020 in the pre-vaccination era of the COVID pandemic, it’s steadily gained fans. When I first visited in January 2021 I described the vast dining area as resembling “an airport at 3 a.m.” — and even now, the large food court can still seem underpopulated. But on weekends and as dinner rolls around, activity picks up. The food hall has always, despite its “global” tag, skewed Asian (currently the only non-Asian food vendor is Holisac Taste of Africa).
A bright spot is Kanto Fiesta, a Filipino stall, that opened in the food hall in January and adds welcome variety to the lineup.
Madison had a brief fling with Filipino cuisine back in 2014-15 with the short-lived Mabuhay on South Park Street and the Masarap food cart. Some food trucks appeared in that gap before Kanto Fiesta launched last year, with appearances at Taste of Madison and the Black Business Hub, before opening at Global.
Filipino cuisine is fusion by nature, with Polynesian, Chinese, Spanish and sometimes American influences. Owner Camille Poliarco has said she tries to make Kanto Fiesta’s dishes like homestyle Filipino. That especially comes into play with the fairly extensive and ever-changing weekend specials menu, and these specials — available later in the afternoon on Friday through Sunday — are often the most interesting dishes on the menu. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This is true at any time: Start with the lumpia. These ultra-crispy spring rolls are not that different from Lao or Thai versions and come with a sweet chili dipping sauce. While the stuffing is listed as ground pork, cabbage, carrots, onion, bell pepper, eggs, and cheese, it’s all ground so finely it’s impossible to tell exactly what’s there. It’s really all about the crunch, the shattering, crispy lumpia wrapper, and that is immaculate. Lumpia are available as appetizers (four to an order) and also frequently come as a side with entrees. Appetizer lumpia orders also come “saucy,” with spicy yum sauce, and “loaded,” which is a whole event — bacon, green onions, jalapeños, sour cream and creamy cheese sauce — i.e., spring rolls crossed with loaded nachos.
Daily entrees include pancit, a pleasant stir-fried noodle dish that could have used more chicken pieces, and chicken adobo — a nice piece of chicken with plenty of meat that could have used more tangy adobo sauce for the plentiful white rice (a Filipino staple) it comes with.
There are mainly two ways to go re: protein at Kanto Fiesta — chicken and pork. Pork is the richer and tastier option (when is it not, really?), though I wouldn’t knock the crunchy Kanto fried chicken (an appetizer). Pork, in the pork belly adobo bowl and the barbecue skewer, seems to absorb the sauces in a more extravagant way.
Vegetarians and vegans will not find much on this menu. Vegetarians accompanying meat-eating friends may end up with an order of the shake shake fries, a southeast Asian street food of french fries that, I’ve read, the customer usually shakes up in a bag of a seasoning dust. I was, for some reason, really looking forward to that interactivity, but Kanto Fiesta’s shake shake fries come pre-shook. But these are some great crispy fries, and, with a glass of the calamansi juice (from a fruit native to the Philippines that tastes like a combination of every citrus fruit ever) would be a great snack, if not exactly dinner.
On to weekend specials. The daing na bangus is a panfried butterflied milkfish (the national fish of the Philipines) marinated in vinegar/garlic/pepper until it has the concentrated flavor of salty tuna and then grilled crispy. This simple but sensational dish held amazing flavor. Just give me more — the amount of meat on the thin milkfish is, well, modest. It’s served with a traditional fried egg, white rice, and a vinegar sauce, so there’s enough to eat, but I wish it came with the option of adding another fillet.
Another recent special, lechon manok, featured grilled chicken on a plentiful bed of white rice, a side cup of lechon sauce, and a side of pancit. The chicken had a pleasant I’m-at-a-picnic grillout vibe, but it could have used some more of the thick, sweet/sour lechon sauce to spread over the chicken and the heap of rice.
Other weekend specials at Kanto Fiesta have included kare-kare, a pork belly and peanut stew; pork sinigang, a tamarind-based soup; grilled pork belly; dinuguan, a pork stew; bicol express, pork and chili peppers in coconut milk; and beef kaldereta, a stew. And that’s just the start. If nothing else, the rollout of more and more dishes is a reason to keep returning to Kanto Fiesta.
Kanto Fiesta
2161 Zeier Road
608-230-5079;
facebook.com/p/Kanto-Fiesta-61571585626626
Open Wednesday-Sunday
$5-$20
