MaLou serves up traditional food, Filipino fare

Mary Lou Eden was a very hard woman to find.

For years she ran a restaurant called Manila Bay at 10th & O streets, where she served up marvelous food from her native Philippines. Manila Bay was one of the few restaurants I would visit weekly, so we when it closed in 2004, I experienced a minor crisis. I had become accustomed to ordering the chicken adobo, a pan-fried mix of chicken, onions and spices served over steamed rice. It was amazing. I couldn't just all of the sudden give up my adobo.

For a while I could get it in the Haymarket at Chloe's, a second Filipino restaurant she opened, named after her gorgeous granddaughter (coincidentally the most beautiful human I have ever seen). Then she ran a Chinese place at Great Scott's Food Court out by the airport, but she would still always make me a special order of adobo. Then I lost track of her.

So I talked to the Nebraska Restaurant Association. I emailed the Downtown Lincoln Association. I called the Health Department. No one could give me any information about Mary Lou.

I went to the manager of the building where Manila Bay had been. She told me she thought Mary Lou's husband worked for the post office, so I went there and left a note asking him to call me, in hopes he was one of the disgruntled type of workers. Nada.

Finally, as a last straw, when I heard the Bayanihan Philippine National Dance Company was coming to town, I called the Lied Center for Performing Arts and told them to call me basically if any Filipino came in who had any idea of who Mary Lou was. I officially had become a food stalker.

Lo and behold, two days later, a Lied Center staffer called and told me that the elusive Mary Lou had just opened up a sandwich shop. Nothing short of a miracle of God.

MaLou, at 427 S. 13th St., named after the illusive woman herself, is open for business. I can finally have my adobo again.

"I just missed the people and missed serving," Eden said. "And I want to introduce people to my food."

Eden took over M13's old spot at 13th & K streets and serves sandwiches, just like they did, at very reasonable prices: either ham and cheese, roast beef, turkey, chicken salad, tuna or egg salad for just $3.95. She also has salads ($1.95-$3.95), fresh fruit, homemade brownies, popcorn, nachos and ice cream. But Eden always makes sure to have at least one authentic dish from her homeland on the menu every day: either the fried pork dish called pancit; lumpia, the Philippines' version of the egg roll, served with sweet sauce (so good!); or that delightful adobo.

Because MaLou is more of a takeout lunch spot, Eden doesn't serve the full plate of dinner-style adobo to be eaten with a fork. Now she wraps the adobo and rice into a flour tortilla with beans, lettuce and tomato, a la Oso Burrito. Is the new $4.95 adobo wrap inferior to the traditional plate from Manila Bay? Not in the slightest. In fact, it may be even better.

Eden started in food service when she was 8 selling snow cones on the streets of Luzon, her hometown in the Philippines. In Nebraska she owned two Filipino restaurants; a Chinese restaurant; El Taco Grande, a mainly Mexican restaurant; and now a sandwich shop. She just couldn't be kept away from the kitchen.

"It's in my blood I guess," Eden said. "It's a good addiction to have."

I have eaten at Filipino restaurants in New York and California, and not one has been able to compete with Mary Lou's cooking. See for yourself at MaLou's, and you'll become an adobo believer - maybe even a stalker.