We are always on the lookout for good places to eat in the wee hours of the morning. It’s just a by-product of a past in the call center industry that still being awake at 4AM means nothing anymore. Habib Persian Cuisine was a place that J was always curious about, passing by it often when his cab takes a shortcut inside the Greenfield District in Mandaluyong.
After a movie at Shangri-la and lots of talking (mostly by me), J felt hungry and suggested that we try this place.
I wasn’t expecting such a nice establishment in this part of town. I still remember this area from its Edsa Central days. But the area is now a bit more developed, with a few call center offices and the requisite 24-hour convenience stores and fast food restaurants. There are guards now, and you’ll see groups of call center agents on their break huddled smoking. Parking is free sa tabi-tabi beside the delivery motorcycles of the nearby fastfood chains (it was in the wee hours of the morning) but felt safe enough, and we didn’t park too far from the restaurant.
Looking at the menu, the price seems reasonable. To give you an idea, Regular Shawarma is P95.00, Beef Biryani is P245.00.
I wasn’t that hungry so we didn’t order a lot.
We ordered the Keema P80.00, Chelo Khoresh Sabzy P230.00, Basmati Rice P55.00, and Sweet Youghurt Shake P90.00. The word Khoresh in Chelo Khoresh Sabzy just kept reminding me of Waco, but I digress. Also, they had a sign saying that they serve Jasmine rice instead of Basmati rice because of the big increase in Basmati rice prices. If you want Basmati rice, it’s additional P20.00.
Here’s the Keema (no eggplant). I was dismayed when I saw it because I expected a bigger serving. On the plus side, it was pretty good though, especially with the yogurt sauce. Their garlic yogurt sauce is really good – thick, creamy and garlicky! It wasn’t watered down.
I think the cook made a mistake and forgot we ordered rice instead of bread, but he had already prepared it, so they gave us the bread anyway, for free 
But the yogurt shake still had big chunks of ice 
This is the Chelo Khoresh Sabzy with Basmati rice.
The Chelo Khoresh is beef stewed with some green leaves and beans. It reminded me of something. I couldn’t put my finger on it, until J suggested, “laing?” Why yes, it did remind me of laing! Not in a bad way. It’s good and different and we liked it, but we thought it needed a little bit more salt, which was easily remedied by sprinkling some table salt.
It looks oily in the picture, but it’s not really oily or ma-sebo. It actually tastes fine.
We’re happy that we found a new go-to place to eat in the wee hours of the morning. We both like Persian/Indian food because we like the blend of different spices, which may not necessarily be hot. The food is good, seems authentic and is not watered down. We like that there is a variety of dishes to choose from that we won’t get bored with them quickly. The prices are reasonable, too. We can’t wait to try different dishes next time!
They also deliver to nearby Mandaluyong with a minimum order of P500 and a delivery charge of P50.00 if they have to take public transport.
Habib Persian Cuisine
Unit 3 & 4, The Portal Greenfield District Mandaluyong City
Contact Numbers: 570-2185 / 0915-8885649 / 0922-8082852
They are open until 5:30am! They open again at 11am.
2 responses to “Habib Persian Cuisine – Our New Answer to Midnight Hunger”
A booking for hell
Regrettably, just before the New Year I made a booking for 15 people at this restaurant. Everything went wrong with the service except the food which was adequate. Firstly, it was only few hours before the booking they told me what we expect to get from what we requested. Seeing that the cost is more expensive than the other restaurants in the area we requested free ice tea for drinks and small piece of desert. The annoying thing is that they did not inform us about their decision to decline the request until it’s too late to look for alternatives. Second, the area assigned to us was not arranged as promised so everybody was really crammed in a corner. The service was totally unfriendly and inefficient, to say the least. To top it all, when we asked for an itemized receipt they said that the printer was out of order. Hence we have no idea what we paid for. Needless to say we won’t be heading that way even though it’s the last restaurant in Manila
Oh, sorry to hear about your bad experience 🙁 It is a small restaurant and obviously not as professionally-run as other restaurants.