Four Corners explores local markets selling hard-to-find ingredients from around the globe. Got an idea for a place we should check out? Tell us in the comments.
Area diners have recently been lining up for pop-ups held by the owners of Bad Saint, the Columbia Heights Filipino restaurant that is one of the most anticipated openings of the season. When it opens this winter, it will be the only Filipino restaurant in the District. But Filipino cuisine is no stranger to the Washington area. There have always been Filipino restaurants in the suburbs, and there even used to be one in Georgetown, if memory serves, in the space currently occupied by Pizzeria Paradiso. If I never went to any, it was because nothing could compare to my mom’s’ cooking.
Both my parents worked at the Philippine Embassy, where my mother used to cook, so when I was growing up I saw all sorts of Filipino markets in the suburbs; crowded little markets that smelled of things I refused to eat, like the fermented shrimp paste bagoong. With that generation gone now, I’m willing to try some of the food that I wrinkled my nose at as a first generation youngin’ who wanted to assimilate. And I might even try to cook some of this stuff at home. When that time comes, Manila Mart will be there.
Like most of the area’s best ethnic food experiences, Manila Mart is tucked away in a nondescript strip mall, in this case just off Route 1 in Beltsville—look for the old Wonder Bread factory, which is a development experiment just waiting for a prospector ready to move into the near ‘burbs.
The market is bigger than the ones I remember from my childhood, and it has plenty of ingredients and treats I remember. Sky Flakes brand saltines, powdered milk candies with jackfruit (an acquired taste I have yet to acquire), and a Filipino powdered ginger tea mix that the shop was unfortunately out of when I visited last weekend. The aisles are stacked with strange and colorful snacks—my sister-in-law swears by the cheese rings—as well as powdered mixes for cooks looking for a shortcut to homemade filipino cuisine. I recently stumbled upon na Filipino cooking channel on Roku, with a young cook freely using mixes for his adobo and sinigang.
Sinigang is a sour, tangy soup made in a tamarind-based stock. (Don’t forget to add patis, my favorite fish sauce). Adobo is a popular marinated dish that takes its name from Spanish and can be found in other cuisines. But this is a very filipino dish, and even among filipinos the individual recipes can vary wildly. The base is vinegar, soy sauce and garlic, and you can pick up Mama Sita’s brand adobo or sinigang mix here, try your own at home, or bring home some of Manila Mart’s own tasty variety.
Because Manila Mart isn’t just a market, but an inexpensive Filipino restaurant, whose handful of tables were all full when I visited at lunchtime on a recent Sunday afternoon. Their dishes vary depending on when you visit. Some dishes are cooked to order, some are kept in a buffet, some packaged to take home. Buffet offerings when I visited included sinigang na Baka (with beef neck), chicken afritada (a tomato-based stew), and kare kare, an oxtail stew Packaged offering included pancit palabok, a rich noodle dish made with shrimp and pork rinds (when you go, see if they have any pancit bihon, made with thin rice noodles that are like Filipino vermicelli—the delicate strands are my favorite noodle). On Fridays the kitchen makes fish siniang, and bangus (milkfish).
But let me tell you about Filipino soul food.
That’s what I think of when I get their lechon kawali, crispy pata and barbecue skewers. The pata is deep-fried pork thigh and trotters with cripsy skin, and for those of you like me who love greasy animal skin it’s a must. One of the more expensive items on the menu, a whole thigh will run you $14.99, but it’s a huge artery-clogger for two. The lechon kawali is tender deep-fried pork belly with more of that crispy skin. The lesson that seems to be taught by my people’s cuisine is that you’d best not mess with a Filipino, or else they will deep-fry your body and eat your skin and make you come back for seconds. Come to Manila Mart for the snack food, stay for the home cooking (it’s not like mom used to make, but it’s good!), and come back for more skin.
