My personal favorite is the Bacon Mozza Melt which has a veggie patty, veggie bacon bits with mozzarella and a light mayonnaise.

Good Burgers pricing is very reasonable, with their basic veggie burger coming in at P60 for a single patty or P85 for a double patty. If you go for something more fancy like the Bacon Mozza Melt, you’re looking at P95 for single patty or P120 for double patty.

With branches in C5 Pasig, Kapitolyo, Greenhills and Sikatuna, their minimum order for delivery is just P200 which is a conveniently low amount.

They’re even featured on the website of PETA Asia-Pacific!

Good Burgers Menu

What started as one man, Mr Fernando, occasionally selling vegetarian goods and supplies to friends and acquaintances has turned into a full time business.

Veggie Boutique sells a whole range of meat alternative products such as vegetarian burgers, sausages, nuggets, meatballs and what seems like an endless list of other products.

The owner Mr Fernando is extremely knowledgeable on the individual preparation and cooking instructions for each product. You’d be lost without his advice, so make the most of it while you’re there! He was also kind enough to give me a fair large free sample of a vege product his friend is making.

Product and price list (Updated Feb 2010)

The product is made by Geltech Hayco Inc. in Mabolo, Cebu city.

Cost

According to the packaging, 1 Kilo of Meat Magic, which costs around 250-275 PHP will expand to 4 Kilos once hydrated (soaked in water). From my limited use of it, I’d say the cutlets don’t expand more than double their size and therefore 1 Kilo of meat magic probably works out to about 2 kilos. This is pretty economical pricing.

Storage and preparation

The meat magic cutlets are easy to store and convenient to prepare. Provided the cutlets are stored in a an airtight container, they’ll keep for up to a year.

The packaging gives the following advice on preparing the cutlets:

Soak in hot water, broth or soup stock at 1:2 ratio (1 cup of meat magic to 2 cups of preferred soaking medium) until fully swelled. Drain and squeeze out all the excess liquid, then marinate Meat Magic like you would with real meat (i.e., adding seasoning and spices), and cok as recipe requires.

Step 1 - Remove the cutlets from the packaging and soak them in hot water. For every 1 cup of cutlets, add two cups of hot water.

Step 2 - After 15 minutes, the cutlets will have swelled. You should drain and squeeze out the excess liquid.

Step 3 – At this point, you can slice the cutlets in to halves and marinate overnight. Being impatient, I chose to coat the cutlets with breading powder with a little Cayenne pepper powder mixed in.

Step 4 – You can prepare the meat magic just like you would real meat. I chose to fry the cutlets. It took quite awhile before the cutlets lost their toughness and became tender enough to eat. Masarap, very tasty! The texture is similar to beef.

Tofu steaks in sweet soy sauce

You’ll need:

• 500 grams of firm tofu
• 50 grams of flour
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/4 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon of fresh cracked pepper
• 100grams of butter

	Hopefully you’ve followed the tip above about freezing your tofu before hand to give it a nice texture. Slice your tofu into steak size pieces. Personally I find they work quite well at about 6 inches long, 3.5 inches wide and about an inch thick.
	Next you should mix your flour, salt and pepper in a bowl and dip each slice into the mix so its well covered on all sides.
	Now add a little bit of oil to a frying pan and fry each steak on low, turning as required until golden brown on both sides.
Ready to serve, tofu steaks with sweet soy sauce and curry flavoured rice	The final step is to make the sweet soy sauce which will cover our steaks. For this you should add your soy sauce and sugar to a cup and stir thoroughly. Next, add the butter to the frying pan and as soon as it melts add the soy sauce mix. Move the pan around so everything mixes well and when it starts to become a little more solid, remove it from the heat and pour it over your steaks. Serve with rice and enjoy!

Chickpea veggie burgers

You’ll need:

• 1 can of chickpeas
• 3 medium sized potatoes
• 1 large carrot
• 1 bell pepper (red or green)
• 1 onion
• 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of canned corn kernels (drained)
• 1 cup of canned green peas (drained)
• 1 table spoon of Soy sauce
• A pince of salt and pepper

	The first step is to finely grate the carrot. onion and potatoes. We start with the carrot and then the onion before the potatoes since they’ll go brown if you leave them sitting around while you’re working on the other ingredients.  The carrot will act as a good binder for the burger, add a slight flavour and of course help you see better in the dark.
	The next step is dice a large bell pepper (green or red).
	Add the chickpeas, corn kernels and green peas into a large bowl and mash using a fork. or fine masher.
All ingredients ready to be mixed by hand	The final step is to add all the previously prepared ingredients into one large bowl along with one cracked egg, the breadcrumbs, a tablespoon of Soy sauce and a pinch of salt/pepper.Mix all of this thoroughly by hand.
	Once you’ve finished mixing everything together you should form a ball of the mix in your hand and place into a frying pan. Flatten the ball into a burger shape and fry lightly to ensure the patty keeps its composure.
	After you’ve lightly fried all the patties you can store in a container and freeze until you’re ready to eat. Simply remove from the freezer and grill or fry as you would any other burger.

You’ll need:

• Canned kidney beans
• 1 Onion
• 1 Clove of garlic
• 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon of hot suace
• A cup of bread crumbs
• 2 eggs

	Start by filtering the water from the canned kidney beans and add them into a large bowl. Use a fork or other utensil to mash the beans.You can exchange these beans for others that you may have available such as Chic peas.
	Next dice up an onion, you can dice it finer if you’re not so keen on onions. Add it to the mix and continue to stir.
	The next step is to add 1 table spoon of hot sauce (e.g Tabasco) and 1 table spoon of cayenne pepper and a crushed and diced clove of garlic.
	Now separate the egg white and yolks from two eggs. Add the egg white into the mix and dispose of the yolks.
	The final step before being able to fry the patties is to add bread crumbs, These act as a binder to help keep the mixture firm.
	Ensure everything is well mixed together and begin to shape the mix into burgers and add into a frying pan with a little oil.