I sometimes surprise myself with how far I would go to try something new. I heard about Totong's Dynamite from a coworker at this old food blog that I used to write for. Actually, she wrote a review and I was very intrigued because her pictures showed a lot of people lining up for this nondescript little food cart. I lived in Manila at that time, and I had no business being in Kapitolyo, so it was quite a big thing to have gone all the way to Pasig from Taft Avenue just to get my hands on some fried goodness.
Totong's Dynamite is hardly original, though they do it well here. I think the idea of wrapping some ground beef in a lumpia wrapper, with cheese and a deseeded green finger chili was invented somewhere else (a friend of mine suggested that Gerry's Grill did it first), but Totong's concentrates on their dynamite lumpia and there is nothing else on the menu apart from the chicken dinuguan and some drinks. For P18 pesos, you get to sample a really tasty snack that is spicy, cheesy, meaty and crunchy at the same time. The dynamite lumpia pairs well with steamed rice, though it is also good when eaten by itself. I could say that it was worth the trip. I had about five of these babies and I was sweating in the heat. If you are craving a spicy lumpia fix, order the iced tea to cool you down after the snack.
To find Totong's you have to go into Kapitolyo's San Antonio Village, a small gated community between Capinpin and Malvar Streets. You can ask the guards around the area because they know where it is. read more