DADS are often your best bet for a family food buddy. After all, who else is willing to blow a diet on a burger or polish off a pint of ice cream with you? This Father’s Day, treat your old man to something special—no run-of-the-mill tubs of ice cream or delivered pizzas on his special day. We rounded up our favorite “junk food” finds, although these gourmet goodies can hardly be classified as junk.

Burger Boys
We’d been seeing a few cheese-stuffed burgers for quite a while now, but Burger Boys ups the ante with the cheese, bacon and mushroom-filled mammoth that’s slowly becoming a jealously guarded secret with foodies everywhere. The Stuffed Burger is also available in an Angus beef version, but another one that’s making the rounds is the Beef-Bacon Burger, an unholy combination of one part bacon and two parts beef ground together in a single patty. Prepare to get your hands greasy and your arteries clogged, but it’ll all be worth it.

The house specialty: The Stuffed Burger. Don’t miss it.

Also try: They also offer buffalo wings, cheese fries, rib-eye steaks, and options for non-meat eaters, such as shrimp and fish fillet sandwiches.

Price range: The Stuffed Burger is P150; almost everything on the menu is below P200.

Where to find it: 32 Pasig Blvd. Sea Oil Gas Station, Pasig. Call 998-1249.

Burger Project
Chef Ed Bugia’s build-your-own burger bar is a dream for inventive foodies, but also provides suggestions for those who simply want to try a good burger. Classic combos feature items such as the Western Bacon Melt (a bacon burger with cheese, barbecue sauce and onion rings), but stay on the lookout for new ones. We’ve seen the Pinoy Adobo Burger (a chicken patty with adobo flakes, fried eggs and kesong puti) and the Chori Burger (a chorizo patty, pineapple, barbecue sauce, mozzarella) on the menu.

The house specialty: Whatever your appetite desires

Also try: A milkshake made with six—yes, six—scoops of ice cream, buffalo wings

Price range: A build-your-own burger can go anywhere from P100 to P250, depending on how crazy you go with toppings

Where to find it: 122 Maginhawa St., Teachers Village, Quezon City. Call 351-7474.

Merry Moo
One of the most popular stalls at the Mercato Centrale weekend market, Merry Moo’s flavors are playful and innovative. Kelvin Ngo, who develops the flavors, comes up with reliable staples such as Aztec chocolate, honeycomb, sea salt caramel, Earl Grey tea, and chocolate truffle—but it’s combinations such as Pop Rocks and marshmallows, rose with beets, and toasted almonds and pineapple that hit the ball out of the park.

The house specialty: Earl Grey, sea salt caramel

Also try: Strawberry basil, apple cinnamon

Price range: P70-75 per scoop; bulk orders upon request

Where to find it: Mercato Centrale weekend market, email [email protected], or call 09175289590. You can also visit them on Facebook

Pinkerton
It’s hard to resist Xandra Rocha’s Pinkerton Ice Cream—and why bother? She follows what she calls a “strict no skimping policy,” so each pint is packed with ingredients and lots of love. Diet-conscious dads can try the organic honey line, made with Bacolod honey and coco sugar (they have it in honey rosemary, honey coffee, and honey banana), but the ones that send people into blissful oblivion are her gourmet customized flavors, which are heavy on Nutella, cheesecake, peanut butter, and all those things that are oh-so-good-but-oh-so-bad.

The house specialty: Banana Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Banana Nutella, Vanilla Bean Carrot Cake with Honey Glazed Walnuts, Red Velvet

Also try: Food For The Gods, Tiramisu, Guava Basil

Price range: P305 for a pint, P610 a quart, and P1,220 for a half gallon

Where to find it: Email [email protected] or call 0917-3611329

Gino’s Brick Oven Pizza
With the premium ingredients and almost greaseless nature of Gino’s Pizza, you can’t even compare it to regular delivery pizzas. Hidden in the Mercury Drug building along Katipunan, it’s something that only people in the know will be able to enjoy, as they don’t even have signage to indicate its presence (so that’s more pizza for delirious foodies). Made in a brick oven, the pizzas turned out by Jutes Templo have a crispy, chewy finish—reminiscent of New York and Italian pizzas—unrivaled by local restaurants. The small menu is really all about pizza, with simple flavors and fresh ingredients taking center stage. They even make their own kesong puti and grow their own basil. They don’t do delivery because the pizzas are best enjoyed fresh on the premises.

The house specialty: Bianca Verde, made with kesong puti, ricotta, parmesan, arugula and basil; mushroom (cream, mushrooms, blue cheese, truffle oil), buffalo chicken

Also try: Salami Calabrese, prosciutto

Where to find it: 2/F, 341 Katipunan Ave., Loyola Heights, Quezon City (above Mercury Drug). Call 381-3963 or 0917-5386847, or email [email protected].

E-mail the author at [email protected] or visit www.twenteensomething.com.