The cuisine of the Philippines brims with distinctive sweet, sour, and meaty flavors, displaying Spanish, Chinese, American, Dutch, and aboriginal Malay influences that date back over five centuries, making for one of the world’s greatest melting-pot cuisines. There’s pork galore, fermented fish or shrimp paste dubbed bagoong, seafood in sinigang (tart tamarind-flavored soup), and smoky grilled fish and meat. At most places, one can find sisig, a dish incorporating myriad pig parts, with lots of alternate versions deploying milkfish, tofu, or chicken. Another standard is halo-halo, a whimsical frozen dessert layered with jackfruit, evaporated milk, coconut gel, rice flakes, and coconut shreds, topped with ice cream flavored with ube, a purple yam.
In NYC, the number of Filipino restaurants is steadily growing, as the cuisine breaks out of its historical neighborhoods. One of those is a five-block stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, known as “Little Manila.” And while Jersey City has a concentration of Filipino restaurants and bakeries in two distinct regions, the East Village and Lower East Side have a number of establishments, too. Here are some of the best Filipino spots around the area.
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