I wonder how many dislikes for foods are due to our first encounters with badly made first dishes/exposures.
As a small child I ate some
REALLY REALLY bad lasagna. It was about 10-15 years before I let someone convince me to try it again.
A long time ago I knew a Filipino family well and helped them fix up their house. Naturally I ate whatever they had to eat. One of the things that they "home made" was a raw fish/vinegar/something? sauce. I looked at the raw fish pieces floating in the bottle and had to tell myself that it didn't kill them, so why not? I don't know what it was but it was great! I'm willing to bet that if I even could find a Filipino restaurant that the sauce would be bland and uninteresting at the least.
Great news! For me at least. I've given up looking for such a restaurant, but I just did a check and found the
Manila Bay. You guys have no idea how much I hope it's good!