My Girlfriend and I were walking down the road. We just came out of the theaters, watching one of the most talked about movies of December 2016. Suddenly, dazzling lights and full-blast music can be seen and heard from across the road, grabbing our attention.

There it was. The Marikina Carnival Food Park.

Who can miss that?

2 weeks later, I returned here with my uncle and cousin to eat for lunch. So I have pictures of the place while the sun is up and during the night.

Food parks are cropping up near and within Manila, and this is one of the latest to open. Is it a good place to visit? Read on to find out!

How to Go to Carnival Food Park Marikina

The food park is located along Mayor Gil Fernando road, in front of Tata Motors dealership and right next to a Shell gas station. If you’re commuting from Manila, you can ride a jeep from Cubao going to Antipolo Simbahan or to Cogeo/Padilla. Then, alight at Sta. Lucia Mall, cross the bridge to the other side and ride another jeep to Marikina Bayan. It’s less than 5 minutes away from there.

Most of the food stalls open at 4pm, while a few others opened an hour later. Even before the opening, there were already a lot of people outside, taking their pictures by the entrance.

I’m pretty sure news about this place spread by word of mouth, but it also recently got featured in GMA’s Good News. The Marikina Carnival Food Park is just over a month old, but the size of the crowd that I saw in both times that I’ve been here indicate that their momentum is not gonna stop anytime soon.

The Food Stalls

There are around 10 stalls within Marikina Carnival Food Park. All of them are on the ground and the roofs are used for extra tables. It is free seating, so you can buy from any shop and sit anywhere. Here are the restaurants available.

Rice

Kuxina offers Pinoy food cooked differently. With food fusions in the menu, you can get a taste of “Fried Sinigang” or “Crispy Kare-Kare” that I doubt you can find somewhere else. Even if you’re not hungry, the curiosity might be enough to get you to eat here.

Chicken Way and Chix PH serve fried chicken as finger foods and as rice meals. Too bad I haven’t tasted food from either yet but the menus look very appetizing!

Meat lovers have more to choose from thanks to Karneval, Grillax and Rustic Box. Each one offers their own meat dish so you have different options for your protein.

Pasta, Sandwiches, Etc.

As you can probably deduce from their signage, Señorita serves Mexican cuisine like burritos, nachos and Enchiladas.

Sushirrito serves Japanese food, but the twist is that their sushi servings are bigger than normal. As big as a burrito actually, hence the name.

Hungry Heroes serves burgers and chips, and they use superhero names for their menu. Them sandwiches are as large as the ones in Zark’s!

Planet Sausage serves hotdogs with rice, with salad, or in a platter with other munchables.

Another merienda place is It’s a Wrap. It was already closed when I went there with my girlfriend, but they serve baked shawarma with unique flavors.

Brewskie Pasta Hub is the go-to for pasta. They have a varied menu with descriptions so you know what’s going to be in your Italian. This is actually the first food stall that I ordered from on my first time at the Marikina Carnival Food Park.

Desserts

That’s right! Milkshake Lab is there to serve ice-cream infused drinks.

Ice Box is a frozen desserts place near the entrance of the food park. Get yoghurts, Ice cream, and cakes that are chilled with liquid nitrogen.

Lastly, Dips ‘N’ Fry serves churros with a variety of dips.

Some of the Food that We Tried

From Brewskie

I actually already forgot the name of the pasta, but it’s a Fettuccine with white sauce topped with bagnet. I really like how it was given a Filipino touch with the bagnet, but the pasta itself is already flavorful and is really creamy.

On the right is a fish and mushroom fillet that rather looks like oversized chicken necks. It tastes rather bland by itself, but dip it in the honey mustard or aioli (garlic and cream dip) and we have a winner!

From Señorita

I’ve been craving Mexican food for a while now so I was very grateful to see Señorita when we came to the Marikina Carnival Food Park. I thought I can finally satisfy my wants! And they have a pretty varied menu too so I had a lot to choose from.

First, I ordered the ‘Antagonist’ Nachos which has spicy beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and sour cream. It looked really large when it was served at the table but the chips were actually only propped up to make it look big. Still, it was good for the appetizer and there were so much toppings so you won’t have those ‘lonely chips.’

My main order was the ‘Blockbuster’ which is a chicken and beef burrito plate. A lot went into the presentation of the dish, but for me, it lacked flavor. I was comparing it to the burritos from Army Navy and I have to say, the ones from Señorita loses in the taste department.

Inside the burrito is some java rice, garnish, chicken strips and ground beef. It’s not really bad; it just didn’t have that Mexican ‘kick’ that I was looking for. I just used the sauces for the burrito instead of the chips.

One thing is for sure though, this meal is heavy on the stomach!

From Sushirrito

Sushirrito is sitting beside Señorita so that’s where my cousin and uncle went to order.

This one is the California Maki. I don’t have anything for scale, but I would say a half-slice is almost as big as a soda can. The high-quality rice has large grains, and the filling is a mix of carrots, lettuce and crab meat that adds a mellow taste. It tastes better with a little soy sauce and calamansi.

This one is the Pork Shogayaki which is traditionally a Japanese dish with pork and ginger. When I had a taste of this one, I didn’t notice any ginger. Instead, it had the same garnish and rice as the Maki, but switching the crab meat for fried pork. It tastes okay for the most part, but they can certainly improve the filling-to-rice ratio.

From Ice Box

For dessert, we ordered from Ice Box as the Milkshake Lab was not yet open. This one is called the “Dragon’s Breath,” which is cake on a stick dipped in liquid nitrogen. I don’t think this one is very good because the cake was VERY HARD! You might lose some teeth if you try to bite into it immediately after taking it from the cup. I don’t know why, but the liquid nitrogen disappeared into the air rather quickly.

This last one is Vanilla Ice Cream with some crushed cookies sprinkled on top. The taste was okay, but it felt more frozen than creamy. No gimmick here.

Miscellaneous

It’s a beautiful place without a doubt, but if you came for food, you’ll need at least 200 pesos to eat something decent. Also, don’t go here when you’re already REALLY hungry because in my experience, the service was rather slow. I waited at least 15 minutes for the food. The longest meal took 30 minutes (this was the chicken and beef burrito) before it was served.

The stalls are fitted in container vans, which I imagine will be very hot when summer arrives (tipong tirik pa ang araw kahit hapon na). There are a lot of seating options, but if you come here during night time, I would suggest sitting on the roof so you can really get a good view of the place.

You might also want to stay away from the seats in the center of the Marikina Carnival Food Park, because that’s where the only drinks stall is located so there’s always a lot of people. It’s also where the speakers are located so you better sit somewhere else if you don’t want to get deaf.

There are also karaoke rooms available, but there were no guards or instructions or anything so we just came in and sang a few songs. It was really cold inside and the seats are very comfortable. Songs are also semi-updated so you can really have a good time. I’m just not sure if these are actually free or we just happened to be lucky law violators at that time.

Also, you might want to think twice before bringing a car because there are very limited parking spots.

Action Plan

Because of the sheer number of stalls, it’s hard to choose where to eat on your first visit. I can’t really recommend anything either at this time because I feel like the shops that I tried were serving average food.

On my next visit, I would want to try something from Kuxina, Tori Joint, or Karneval. How about you? Have you already tried going here? What’s your foodie pick? Share on the comments below!