Pansit Bihon (Pat Padua)

While Columbia Heights residents are waiting for Bad Saint to open (they’ve launched a Kickstarter to help with structural improvements), diners who don’t feel like heading to the suburbs for Filipino food will do just fine in Mount Pleasant at newly opened Purple Patch (3155 Mount Pleasant St NW).

The restaurant, named for ube, a purple yam that turns up on their dessert menu, is in the space formerly occupied by Tonic. Co-owner Patrice Cleary has teamed up with her husband Drew to be the first to bring Filipino food to D.C. Cleary has passed her family recipes on to chef Jason Smith, and he’s done a fine job with them, though he defers to Cleary’s mom for a popular appetizer.

Those would be Mama Alice’s Lumpia. Mama Alice makes them in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Fed Exes a batch overnight every week, a thousand at a time, to be fried up to order in the restaurant’s tiny kitchen. Five of these thin, pork and beef-filled rolls come to a plate, and it doesn’t seem like 200 orders is enough to go around for a week, especially with the ketchup and banana sauce that accompanies them.

You can order lumpia as well as a few other Filipino staples in the spacious bar area downstairs, but for now, the full Filipino menu is only available in the small dining room upstairs. You may have to wait, but it’s worth it, and that small kitchen turns out food quickly. Pansit Bihon is an old favorite, a kind of Filipino lo mein: thin rice noodles (bihon, my favorite noodles ever) mixed with vegetables and your choice of pork belly, chicken, or bok choy. The mix is flavored with soy sauce and a touch of lemon, and you get a portion generous enough to share with friends or to have leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.

They serve bar food too, like tender steak frites and juicy fried Guajillo pepper chicken wings that aren’t too spicy. But I came here for the Filipino food, and on two visits with family I’ve sampled a variety of it. The escabeche is a delicious one-pound whole fried snapper served with the head on, just like mama used to make. It comes with green and red peppers and a ginger soy sauce. Chicken adobo is another staple of the cuisine, with variations more numerous than the islands in the homeland. Purple Patch’s version of the vinegar and soy-based marinade is solid, and so is their pork sinigang, a tangy, tamarind-based Filipino soup.

Pinakbet (Pat Padua)

But what I want to talk to you about is a dish that I never ate when my mom made it: Pinakbet. It’s an intense stew with eggplant, ampalaya (bitter melon, which we grew in my back yard when I was a kid), butternut squash, long beans, shrimp essence, and three huge shrimp. It’s a powerful-smelling and tasting combination that’s not for everybody. Pinkabet is something you can imagine hearty Filipino captains chowing down on and getting caught in their beards as they mispronounce their p’s and f’s, spraying a dark red broth in the general direction of passersby. Wash it down with a San Miguel and “peel” authentic. I hope they add lechon to their menu, which seems like it would be more palatable to American tastes than pinakbet; pick some up at Manila Mart if you’re ever in Beltsville.

For dessert, Purple Patch serves their namesake in ice cream and cupcake form, but you may want to head straight for the more decadent, creamy leche flan (which I thought was called “plan” for years because of my mom’s accent) or a mango and condensed-milk float that I’m starting to drool about as I type this.

Purple Patch temporarily closed for a few days after a sprinkler malfunction but they reopened Wednesday. I’ve been twice and plan to go again; you should too.

Purple Patch is located at 3155 Mount Pleasant St. NW.
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 5:30 – 10 p.m.