A year ago, when our annual restaurant guide appeared, a reader called to chide me for including only one Filipino restaurant among the more than 200 in the book. (That was perennial 'Ilima Award winner Elena's Home of Finest Filipino Food, famed for its adobo pork fried rice omelet.) What could I say? I took my lickings and promised to remedy the problem.

I began my course of study in the library and spent time with gracious members of the Filipino Women's League, learning to cook simple home standards and tasting everything from cane sugar to bangus (the Philippines' aquacultured equivalent of moi).

In recent weeks, I've eaten my way through Chinatown, Kalihi and Waipahu. Although I am married to a man of Filipino ancestry, I didn't grow up eating Filipino food and neither did he, except for the occasional family party. We came at this like explorers landing on new shores.

And we found that Filipino food can be as complex and interesting as Vietnamese or Thai cuisine. Much of it is as homey and comforting as a loco moco. Some things are unforgettable. Who knew I would sing the praises of goat meat?

And here's an irony. One reason Filipino food isn't popular outside its own community is that people are scared they'll have to eat something weird, or something that tastes nasty. But from my experience, you're more likely to find Filipino food blandly familiar than scarily exotic. Many dishes are related to cuisines familiar to us, such as Chinese stir-fry. Many restaurants dilute their flavors to appeal to a wider audience, or assume that if you're not Filipino, they better go easy on the fish sauce. Here are two spots that are good first steps for the timid.

QUEZON CITY ROOTS

Don't go to Max's of Manila as a twosome. Invite friends. Preferably big eaters. Otherwise, be ready to lug home a big "people bag." Because at this Waipahu eatery, the first Hawai'i branch of a Philippines-based chain, everything is served in suitable-for-sharing portions. Even a $2.50 "small" order of garlic rice is three large scoops on a platter. This side dish was a hit, by the way: long-grain white rice flecked through with perfectly caramelized (not burned), deliciously nutty minced garlic.

Max's dates back to a restaurant founded by Maximo Gimenez in Quezon City in 1945. The place catered to American G.I.s and its specialty, from a recipe devised by Gimenez's niece, Ruby, was fried chicken — bone in, skin on, fried and cut up. Today the chain calls itself "The House That Chicken Built." You can order a half or a whole chicken or choose a chicken combination plate. This isn't Southern fried chicken — it more closely resembles a roasted bird. Beneath crispy skin is moist meat and the flavor is uncomplicated — just good, fresh-tasting chicken. (It's usually served with the Filipino favorite, banana ketchup, but we didn't get any — maybe we looked too haole.)

Today the third generation of the family operates more than 100 restaurants in the Philippines, California and now the Islands. The pleasant space is done up in muted earth tones, dark wood furnishings, colorful prints of Philippines farm scenes and photographs of the countryside, and a sepia-toned mural showing early-days scenes of Max's. Each setting has a placemat that declares "Sixty years of sarap to the bones." Sarap, our cheerful waitress informed us, means "delicious."

I was intrigued by sinigang, a sour soup made with tamarind and various vegetables, meats or fish. Max's offers three varieties in two portion sizes — bangus (milkfish, a farm-raised Philippines staple); baboy (pork) or nipon (shrimp). Talk about value: The $7.95 "small" arrived in a serving bowl teeming with whole, head-on shrimp and greens swimming in a rich, tangy broth, not at all fishy.

Kare kare, oxtail and beef shank in peanut sauce, was less interesting. Perhaps with Indonesian-style spicy peanut sauce on my mind, the dish seemed bland. Still, it gave me my rice-and-gravy fix. The blandness solution is an ominous-looking dish of bright red, pungent bagoong (fish sauce) — this one in ginisang style, made with tiny whole shrimp. I'm sure folks who grew up eating this dish would say it's better with bagoong, although the sauce was a bit too salty and fishy for us.

Ensaladang talong, an eggplant, tomato and onion salad, proved to be half a steamed eggplant alongside a pile of sliced tomato and a mound of chopped raw onion, lavishly laced with minced garlic. This time a splash of fish sauce (the translucent patis type) or, better yet, slices of kalamansi (Filipino lime) would have perked up flavors.

Our meal ended not with halo halo (coconut and fruit dessert) — which everyone around us ordered — but with a dense, lightly flavored leche flan. Sarap is right!

GOAT IS GOOD

Opened late last year, spacious Loulen's is known (like Max's) as a place for large family celebrations. But at 6:30 on a Friday night, we were the only table going; one other group came by before we left around 8.

It was here I encountered my first goat — the so-called Billy's Special, more properly known as kilawen kalding. Kilawen (kill-AH-wen) is Filipino ceviche, in which ingredients (raw shrimp or roasted goat are common) are tossed with citrus and vinegar, as well as such flavorings as ginger, fish sauce and soy sauce. Like many Filipino dishes, this one doesn't look like much: thin slices of gray roasted goat and goat skin tossed with onions and a scattering of green onion garnish. But the flavor flares in the mouth, the meat rich and interesting. A standout pupu with beer.

We rounded out our meal with fish escabeche (batter-fried fish drizzled with a Chinese-like sweet-hot red sauce); a dish they called chicken pot-a-feu but that was really chicken tinola, a chicken-and-green-papaya stew; and pork adobo because my brother insisted that's the true test of a Filipino restaurant. Of these, the gingery chicken tinola, with its thin but rich broth, was by far the best. The escabeche — a beautiful presentation — was just a nicely done fried fish. And the adobo was puzzling: not at all the mouth-puckering, vinegar-laced dish we were used to, but rather chunks of bland stewed pork.

This time, we ordered the dessert standards: banana lumpia and halo-halo ice cream. The multicolored halo halo won out: The shocking purple coconut ice cream kept calling my spoon back for another dip into the tall glass. I'd go back to explore more of the menu but wonder why they're so shy of business (on a lunch visit, I was again the only customer).

Next week: Familiar Filipino favorites

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.