http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/dining/2nd-city-west-village-swell-dive-bedford-stuyvesant.html 2016-09-15 19:55:48 Filipino Food Arrives, in a Taco, at 2nd City and Swell Dive Two New York restaurants attest to the new cachet of an underdog cuisine. === Filipino food was once an underdog among Asian cuisines. Five years ago, it was little known in New York City outside ethnic enclaves like Little Manila in Woodside, Queens, and a cluster of groceries and restaurants along First Avenue in the East Village that catered to families of Filipino nurses. There had been early outliers like Cendrillon in SoHo, which started out pan-Asian in 1995 and gradually shifted to a more Filipino menu, and These days, you can find Filipino flavors at restaurants that don’t identify themselves as wholly Filipino, like The near-simultaneous opening this year of two “Filipino taquerias” suggests a tipping point. Filipino has become a culinary label recognizable to and valued by non-Filipinos, so much so that it can be applied, as an enticement, to food with only the faintest resemblance to its origins. It is the chop-suey moment. Filipino food has arrived. First to open was 2nd City, in May in the West Village. The chef, To begin, there are chips made from lumpia wrappers, quick to shatter, with ossified bubbles. These are best dunked in a salsa called 2nd Base (1st and 3rd are also available), which is not salsa at all, but suka, the recipe courtesy of Mr. Andino’s grandmother: Datu Puti cane vinegar muddled with onion, garlic, serrano chile, sugar and calamansi. This is strong and good. But a side dish of pancit bihon came with the rice vermicelli clipped short and sodden. And the flavors of chicken adobo were overpowered by kimchi rice in the tight swaddle of a burrito. Some of the better offerings are more allusive, like fried-chicken sliders with Japanese katsu sauce, transfigured by a bright streak of calamansi. Tacos — one of barracuda poached in clarified butter, another of slow-braised short rib — are anointed with sinigang, a tangy tamarind soup, and turned prickly with perforated curls of chicharrones. Mr. Andino calls his cuisine “AmAsian,” short for American-Asian, giving himself wider scope. The restaurant, equipped with one exceedingly narrow table and bar stools, feels like an extension of Mr. Andino’s personality. “Hours of Awesomeness” are posted in the window. The staff wears aloha shirts. A fever dream of a mural, painted by his mother and her brother, juxtaposes a jeepney, a pink carabao and “I eat rice,” Mr. Andino’s onetime AOL screen name. Menu items are written on skateboards, the chef’s main mode of transportation. The website includes a shot of him jumping naked into a pool. He said he hopes to turn 2nd City into a mini-chain, with Bushwick, Brooklyn, as the next stop. Swell Dive Mr. Mendoza initially consulted his mother and his aunt, but found he had to make significant changes to their recipes. “We eat everything with rice,” he said. “The flavors were too intense without it.” Best among the brief menu’s tacos is one with skirt steak pliant from a daylong marinade, brought just shy of burning in a pan. Mr. Mendoza wanted it to taste as if it came from a street cart in the Philippines, and it does. But chicken adobo was watered down so much, I couldn’t tell what culture it came from. Spam, dipped in egg wash, breaded and deep-fried, is mostly comic relief. Better is the simplicity of tilapia, pan-seared so it still tastes like itself. The Tex-Mex side of the menu is more distinct. Flour tortillas, made daily by hand, are elastic and chewy. Some tacos are liberally strewn with French’s crispy fried onions. And Ms. Stanford’s queso sauce, fervent with cumin and Hatch green chiles, manages to sustain a state of melt, although you should still eat it as quickly as possible. Mr. Mendoza layers nachos with queso and sisig, traditionally a hash of pig head but here made with more approachable pork butt. The meat is patted down with a proprietary rub (Mr. Mendoza alone knows the formula), smoked for hours, then minced with onion, ginger and jalapeños and doused with soy and lime. The taste is pure smoke and heady, but I couldn’t detect the sting of citrus, and I missed the crunchy, caramelized nubs from the customary hot-skillet finish. Swell Dive is perhaps best appreciated as a bar, with food designed to abet drinking. Small booths are backed by wooden peaked-roof frames in weathered tropical colors, with pictures of beach scenes like views from windows. (Mr. Mendoza, an architect, was thinking of cabanas.) Footage of big-wave surfing is projected on a wall. Diners can borrow Jenga or Scrabble to play in the backyard, partly covered by an old sail. Like Mr. Andino, Mr. Mendoza never intended to make strictly Filipino food. “I didn’t want people to compare it to what they grew up with,” he said. “I could never compete.”