To say that rice is important to Filipinos is certainly an understatement. Writer and professor Doreen G. Fernandez put it best in her book Palayok: Philippine Food through Time, on Site, in the Pot (Bookmark, 2000).

"Rice -- steamed, white, fragrant and mild -- is the Philippine staple food... (It is) a shaper of tastes. The very salty, the very sour, the very spicy are possible to savor -- in fact are especially savory -- when eaten against the mild background rice provides."

This is probably why rice meals (rice and viand) continue to be popular choices at many restaurants today. A month ago, the owners of Anonymous Kitchen, Ricco Ocampo and Rikki Dee, added a dozen new rice meals to the existing selection of rice bowls that includes chopped crispy catfish and a vegetable omelette, both served over steaming hot rice.

The 12 new dishes with imaginative names include On Barbie's Cue, a chicken, squid and beef kebab; Too Good it's so True, pan-fried salmon belly topped with onions and a Bistek Tagalog (beef steak tagalog style) sauce; Undercover, their version of the Thai dish, chicken in pandan (fragrant screwpine) leaves; and Sea Food Diet, shrimps, clams and fish in a coconut and chili sauce.

Salmon Says is salmon head cooked in miso and garnished with fresh vegetables; Buttered Up is the fish of the day served with a lemon-butter sauce; Grounded for Life is their take on Arroz a la Cubana -- ground pork, peas, and diced carrots and potatoes with a side order of fried sweet saba; and Ribbit is not a rabbit dish but actually deep-fried pork spareribs with a garlic sauce.

Sirloin Swirloin is grilled sirloin with a sweet-salty glaze; Sheepish Grin is lamb chops with a red wine sauce; Shawshank Redemption is osso bucco with peppercorn sauce; and Loose Leggings is their version of Hainanese Chicken Rice with three dipping sauces. Prices for the new dishes range from 120 Philippine pesos (US$2.352 at PhP51.005=$1) for the Arroz a la Cubana to PhP295 for the lamb chops.

On two separate occasions, this writer was able to sample three of the restaurant's new dishes namely Ribbit, Too Good it's so True, and Shawshank Redemption.

It was a good thing my dining companion and I were told by one of the staff that the dishes were good enough for two people. We thus decided to split the spareribs.

Our order that arrived on a big white platter consisted of two chunks of fork-tender spareribs, rice that had been tinted pandan-green, and a side order of sautéed sigarilyas. Although tender, we noticed that our spareribs seemed to be more pork fat than meat.

On a 2nd visit, this writer tried the salmon that consisted of four thin strips of salmon belly, rice and this time, steamed kangkong (swamp cabbage) topped with a bit of bagoong (shrimp paste). My companion and I liked the osso bucco cooked kaldereta-style better because aside from the flavorful tomato-and-peppercorn sauce it had been cooked in, the generous portion could have fed more than two people. It actually did; we were able to bring home a good-sized portion.

Anonymous Kitchen is located at the Greenbelt Mall (Makati City in central Metro Manila) and at the Megastrip of Megamall Bldg. B (Mandaluyong City in central Metro Manila).