 The rice is boring, this is how you make it exciting. I'm in New York when I crave for Filipino food. First thing you go through is go to Woodside. You'll always see something interesting in Queens. Oh! Ready, not a buzz, we all side. Welcome everybody to a special Filipino episode of Fung Bros. Food. Today we're out in Little Manila, Woodside Queens. We are here with none other than Coast to Coast Filipino, Ryan Benson. What's up guys, it's so good to see you. I'm so excited today guys, I'm showing you where I grew up, right here under Roosevelt Station in Little Manila guys. So you grew up in this area as a child? Yes, I used to walk here from 58th and Broadway where my Lola lives, and we would walk here every single day to pick up Ihawan, crispy bata, barbecue pork. I know that this area is fighting for the legal representation to be called Little Manila right now, right? Out in LA you have historic Filipino town, and given that, I definitely believe that this street right here, given the history and the culture with all the Filipino immigrants, definitely deserves a designation as Little Manila. All right, so you know we covered a lot of Filipino food out in Manhattan, but we had to come to the source, come to the traditional area. We're gonna hit up some spots that you grew up going to, we're gonna hit up some spots that are maybe a little bit newer, but overall we are about to go on a journey through Little Manila. I will tell you this, every time I'm in Queens, I always see some stuff where I'm like, man, that's pretty interesting. Woodside Queens, Little Manila, let's go. Hey, what's going on everybody? I know we're eating some pork in that video, but I gotta tell you about plant-based pork. Yes, you heard it, and that brings us to our sponsor of today, Omni Foods. They are Asia's number one leading plant-based meat brand and they are now making it to the States. They're in sprouts and whole foods nationwide, so click on that link down below to find one. All right, so Omni has a whole diverse product line with a lot of different types of meat, but I'm gonna be showing you two quick recipes with the luncheon meat, aka spam. You know what it is, spam over rice and kimchi jjigae. Omni pork luncheon is a healthier alternative to spam as it's rich in protein, provides a lot of calcium, potassium, and dietary fiber with zero milligrams of cholesterol. They're 50% less sodium and no added nitrates. All Omni Food products are non-GMO certified. I'm just so happy this Hong Kong brand is now being sold in a ton of stores here. I mean, look at it. It looks and cooks just like spam. I cannot wait to try the other products. Wow, it's actually meatier than spam. It tastes almost like a mixture between beef and spam and it's a lot less salty. Listen, I know spam is good, but Omni luncheon pork is coming through with the flavor. It's more healthy, less sodium, and it still gives you that same vibe. So I'm telling you, you've got to check it out. And your sprouts and whole foods, it's worth a shot. If, you know, you're looking for a plant-based alternative. All right, you guys, we've arrived here at Ihuan and you're Ms. Jackie, right? Yes, I am. And you're the daughter of the owner here? Yeah. Can you tell us about the spot? Well, my parents started this 27 years ago and we just started with really like the pork and the chicken barbecue. I'm sure you know that. It became so popular really quickly that we've expanded the menu and actually expanded the place about two times. I know definitely Ishbama and Iskblola. Wow. So you remember Ryan when he was a kid? Oh, yes. You were the host of kids. I was your mom. This gigantic platter has arrived on a banana leaf here at Ihuan. Yeah, so Ihuan, they brought up the big guns for us. I mean, we got the staples here. We have the crispy pata, we have the barbecue pork, the barbecue chicken, the garlic rice, the pancit, the karikare with the bagaong. The crispy pata here is Milolo's favorite crispy pata. I used to come here all the time to have it with him. And if you guys didn't know, crispy pata is fried pork knuckles. Oh my God. Any type of pork knuckle, man. Barbecue chicken. Mmm. Oh man. I love that char. That's really strong. That's some of the better barbecue chicken I've had in a while, bro. It has like this nice little sweet flavor and then the charcoal really comes out. Barbecue pork. My grandma would come to Ihuan and would come back with a stack of like 20 of these because my cousins and I all grew up in one house and we would all clamor for the barbecue pork skewers. I'm telling you, this is like the best Filipino barbecue you can have. This is good. Shanghai lumpia. That crazy. That is one of the best lumpia I ever had. This is my favorite lumpia. I'm telling you guys, like, when it comes to Filipino food, you have to come to Ihuan. Yo Ryan, so when we're talking about the region of Pampangas, it actually sounds like now that I realize it, a lot of the restaurant owners are from Pampangas. So, Pampangas is known for the best food in the Philippines. And so when you look at restaurants, you know, out here in Woodside or in LA or wherever you are, the majority of them, at least the good ones, are gonna be from Pampanga. Pampanga seasick. The thing I love about seasick, the pigs now, the cheek, the jowl, the best parts of the pig, the fattiest parts, all in one dish. Alright you guys, we have two really different dishes, the kare kare and then the pancit, right? The pancit has a little bit more of the Chinese influence, but I feel like this is pure, you know, island. Kare kare, I believe, is one of the only peanut butter dishes, I would say, in Asia. You don't really see that many stews that have peanut butter. And it has oxtail, which is one of those ingredients that really need to cook for a while. I'm going in, because you know, there's the, wait, wait, wait, guys. You forgot. The bago. Oh, the bago. You guys got to do one thing to really make me happy, and let's try this avocado shake. You swear by this avocado shake? I swear by it, it is my favorite drink. Okay, I could see why. It's a dick thing, I'm telling you. The avocado has already been blended with something sweet already, so I thought it was going to be straight up, just raw avocado with that very healthy vibe to it. The avocado has already been desertified. As far as traditional Filipino restaurants I've been to, this is the best one. Right, I'm so glad we got to come here. Not only is it dear to you, but actually the food lived up to it. What a great start to our journey. Yeah, man, I'm happy that you guys gave me the opportunity to show this place to you. It means so much to me, and thank you guys. All right, moving on to our next spot that's right around the corner. It is Casina, and introducing the new spot, we got Harry B from the Bronx. What's up? Hey guys. Harry B, you're from the Bronx originally, but you lived in the Philippines for a number of years, right? Yeah, so I lived in the Philippines for six years. The nursing school, like every other kid that wants to get a better education, from numb chiefs. But the quality of care is the same, right? If you would have... The quality of care, I mean, don't count. There's mad Filipinos in the house. That was not authentic representation of a nursing staff in Gray's Anatomy. It was not. We got to get into Casina because, Brian, I heard that they have some really unique looking dishes, right? Yo, so Casina is really famous for this gigantic calamari that hangs from this little skewer thing. I'm so excited to try it. I love squid. I don't know about you guys, but... It kind of looks like something out of a movie, right? Yeah, it kind of looks like this little alien-looking thing. Well, let's check it out, man. We got to check it out, Casina. It's more like bar music and a bit of dancing. We do a lot of Filipino kind of songs here now. So during the ninth time, we're going to have fun, enjoy like now. And also, we serve the local Filipino here. So basically, you'll feel like you're in the Philippines. Do you have red horse here? We have red horse. Okay, all right, guys, are we going out in the Philippines tonight? We're going out tonight. We're going out in Manila. I guess if we were at a nightlife place, we got to sing a karaoke song. I'm still some cover chef, some skit. I need my beer. Glasses shawting us in a moment. Don't forget about your twist of it. They're both your I-min. It's a good morning and never want to leave. Guys, we're at our number two spot. What are we looking at? Yo, so we got the Kalamari gigante here. It is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's almost like an alien predator type thing meets KFC. This is like a real squid game. This is the real squid game right here. Yo, tell me that doesn't look like KFC ready, no real thing. Dude, it was some of the tentacles were falling off and I was just like, yo, this is like crazy. What I think is cool about Christina is that it's trying to recreate Filipino nightlife, right? Like the stuff that you would see in Manila. Gigantic Kalamari. This is Filipino bar food and it's fine. It's got a dip dash in vinegar. The breading on this is so crispy. It's so fried and the vinegar complements it perfectly. It helps cut through that fattiness, that real richness of the fried. So Terry, you're familiar going to these Filipino bar spots, right? So like back in the day when I was going to nursing school, we used to go to the spot called Central. It's like, it's not really low-key because it's mad packed and there's like picnic tables everywhere and everybody drinks. Everybody gets like seasick, things like that. So it's more like, this is like bar, drinking food, something you can like peek-a-peek-a, that's what we call it, you eat with your hands. So everything's like peek-a-peek-a, you pick up, you eat with your hands. Like that, I would eat with my hands. The squid, I would eat with my hands. Peek-a-peek-a, like Pikachu. Yeah, it was like that. Peek-a-peek-a, computer with Pikachu. You guys gotta get down on the cheese muscles. Do you know what's different? You know what's different? They use cheddar cheese, but it's sharp cheddar. Here's the cheese, you're so perfect with it. You gotta have a nice, sharp cheese to kind of stand up to the flavor of like the sauce. Okay, we are here with Filipino bar food expert, Carrie. What are we looking at? Because you were insisting that we get the garlic rice or white rice with this dish. So honestly, what you gotta do is you gotta take this and you gotta smother all that sauce with your rice. Take a little bit of shrimpy, you know what I'm saying? And this is shrimp with salted egg yolk, right? Yes, so all of it, it's like sweet, savory, creamy. You were saying that this dish to you sort of like embodies the whole Filipino flavor palette. You know what? Every Filipino dish, I feel like it's very distinct, but they all have to carry like a lot of flavor, like things like that, like you have to, because the rice, if the rice is boring, this is how you make it exciting. Your entree, you gotta make it exciting with this. Like everything gotta have salsa. You gotta have salsa on it, that's like to soak up. I don't know how to say it, it's like you soak up the rice and things like that. With the sauce. With the sauce. Juice, juice is temporary. Sauce, the sauce is forever. All right you guys, this is the salted egg yolk shrimp. They do it really good here. And you get that like coconut flavor with the salted egg yolk. It's a nice like flavor balance. Wow, oh man. You know what's good when you want to eat the shell. All right you guys, this spot has a lot of new desserts. Traditional, but I think the presentation is like. A little fusion. A little new, I wouldn't say fusion, but a little new age. Right here, we have my favorite Filipino dessert. We have toron, which is plantains, and sometimes jackfruit wrapped in an egg wrapper, and then fried. We got the bico, right? Kind of looks like a toffee pudding. So they actually make it in the banana leaves, like the rice, the sticky rice, and then they have like round sugar things like that. And I guess they put it on a sizzling plate, just to keep the like the hotness with the ice cream. That should, that's, I've never seen this before. They do the toron really nice here. The wrapper is actually super thin. So a lot of what you get is just the plantain. It's so good. Yo, this kind of a, yeah, does taste a little bit Spanish with the plantain. It's essentially like a madoro inside of an egg roll wrapper with ice cream on top. It's actually really, really good. Oh, that might be one of the best things I ate today. Bring the bico, bico. I'm bringing it back. David, don't get hit with the bico. Oh, you got a bico charge. That's what you guys are saying? They got a bico charge. No, everybody was like, what? I caught the federal's bico. Sorry. I was like, wait, what's going on? All right, you guys, we're wrapping it up. We just had like the ultra traditional food where there was a lot of like grandmothers there at Ihuan. Then we came here. It was lit like Manila 2021. Where are we off to next? We're about to hit the philand market and see what little goodies we can procure. All right, so the next spot we got to go to, I heard that you guys just told me it's like the Filipino market. In fact, it's called Phil Am. So literally I've been going to this spot since I was like basically born. If I'm New York and you're Filipino and you first came over here, then you know this is this spot so you're gonna get all your shit. But you probably ran into each other as kids here, but you guys just didn't know each other. I'm 94. I'm 93. Why? You're about the same age. I'm sorry, sorry. And you're both mixed Filipino. You're half Irish, half Filipino. You're half Bronx, half Filipino. You're ready to know the vibes. We all side. All right, yo, John John came through, man. Yeah, what's up, New York City? Let's fucking go. Oh. Save the Philippines come through. Manila all day, baby. John John, what do you know about Phil Am market here on the corner in Woodside? So Phil Am has been here for many, many decades even before I was here in New York. I'm originally from the Philippines, came out too. I'm pushing that old age. But say he's been here about roughly about four to five decades taken through. Pretty much this is the staple for people to come and get their Filipino needs, their food. If you want to wire money, you can either wire here across from the Filipino bank or even here itself. So pretty much mom and pops all grew from here itself. If you go up in New York and see Woodside for what it is, pretty much it attains this real Filipino culture and value starting here. All right, guys, we are inside Phil Am market right now. What are we looking at? So if you go into Phil Am market, when you would care, you're going to look to the left because they got all the chips here. This is designed for the children. You have the prawn crackers right here. You got the cracklings. Nah, I got to see, where's the piatto? Oh, those were fire going on. You got to see. I used to put these on my fingers like they were rigged. Yeah, and then you just bite them off. You bite them off. All right, so right here, we have the bakery section. You have ensaimada, you have pandesal. Yo, I remember eating these at Krista Cobb's house all the time. I think I might have to get one of these. This was my favorite pandesal growing up. You take this, you warm it up a little bit, put a little butter. Oh man, it is heaven. So Christmas in like the Philippines, they call it the Burma. So once it hits September, November, October, December, all that shit. All the Burma, that's when we start coming out with these pearls. So because it starts getting cold, so they'd be like Burr. If you've ever been to a Filipino's house, you'll see this bottle everywhere in their house. Suka Vinegar. This specific brand, you put it on everything. This is the OG Wallace, or the OG weapons that your mom used to beat you with. Buru, that's the one that all the comedians always talk about? Yup, this is the one. This is the one. Is this like a broom or what is this? It's a broom, it's made out of bamboo, shredded bamboo. But as you guys know, if you've ever been hit with bamboo, that shit, it snaps, it hurts. This is not fun to get hit by. But it gets in all the crevices. This is my Lolo's favorite snack. This is a Tito Al Chicharrones. You take this, you put in a little bit of Suka. It is delectable, guys, you gotta try this. All right, you guys, I got the Ube and Samada. You got these chashu vows, right? The Filipino sea vows. Sea vows with asado. And then we got the Ube Butter Crackers, right? Dried mango. You said number two exporter in the world, right? These are literally my favorite things, my favorite desserts. I don't know what to say, but I know how to grow, I think they're all American, but I mean, I'm both. My father speaks Tagalog, growing up, you know. And that's all, you know, he didn't know English coming over here. And I spoke to him in both languages. Jago, you go, go, go off on some Tagalog. You know what I'm saying? Scarf Berks from my Philippines, I hear. So all the Filipinos out there, come long Dito, support your Filipino voice. What it is. They want to see what Balot is. Balot makes you hot, man. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha. I need the Baloo. Yes, I need that, you're gonna get it. Two Baloo. Just one, you won't get hard. Oh, man, you went with the knuckles. Oh snap. Ready? You went too much. Add some juice in there. Whoa, here we go, here we go, stop. Baby. In the mouth, here we go, here we go. Are you a little salt? Oh, oh, get in there, boy. Wow. It's starting to wrap up, but we got like one or two more spots, man. Where's the next one? This one we're going to Purple Dough, let's go, baby. All right, you guys, we're at Purple Dough, we're with Mike, we're going to Purple Dough, we're a Filipino-American bakery. What are your most famous dishes? Well, it's the Ube Leche Van, I hope you guys can come in and check it out, it's a half-bun, half-cake kind of thing. All right, you guys, Purple Dough, Mark, please break down for us what we're looking at. We have the Ube Cupcake here, our signature item, the Ube Leche Van, the half-lateral cupcake, and we got our cake donuts here. It's a cake-based donut, a dough donut, and we have the coconut pandan, that will be obviously with the toasted rice for a coffee event, and the calamansi, which is a Filipino lemon one. Oh! The calamansi cake donut. Calamansi donut. Guys, if you didn't know, calamansi is a fruit native to the Philippines or Southeast Asia. It's kind of like a lime, lemon mix. It's very small, and it's like super, super tart. Last spot on this little Manila Crawl, we actually went outside a little bit of Woodside, we are right inside of Sunny Side, which is right next to Woodside, and we're outside of Tito Rads. Tito Rads is known to do an elevated traditional Filipino food. They have really good sinigang, it's really known for. We got the really good Bicol Express, kare kare, laing, like things like that, like things like the ukoi, tokuat at Ba Boy, things like that that you'll see that we're gonna be trying inside some braised pork with soy sauce, you know, just a real mixture, multi-part of like Asian food, all together is gonna be right here in Tito Rads. I hear a lot of people talk about this spot, so let's go in. All right guys, so this is the first dish at our new spot, Tito Rads, it was established in 2006. This dish is called ukoi. Ukoi is like a fried assortment of vegetables, kind of like super potato cassava mung, and it's in a rice batter, and it gets super, super crispy, and then you put like a version of sukkah on it. Key to this too, it also has small shrimp in it. Ukoi. Take a look at what we got here. There's sprouts inside, usually I've never had deep fried bean sprouts. It's a perfect drinking food, like you get that like nice salty, crunchy, vinegary, and it washes down really nice with the red words. All right you guys, all the dishes have arrived here at Tito Rads. This is like the new hot spot, all the Filipino foodies talk about it. That's what we're looking at. We have sinigang, bamboy over here, we have deep-fried, like stress, goat, kind of like calderedda, as well as a jackfruit, shrimp, kind of, laing. So this spot is gonna be, what, a little bit more like a higher end, higher quality, or trying to be like a little bit fancier. I think this spot is just more well known. Everybody comes here to bring like their family friends, come over here, because the food is so good here. But we're not in Filipino town anymore. We kind of went like one mile, and then we reached here. So this is outside of the immediate Little Manila. And it kind of goes to show like, even though we're a mile out from Little Manila, the kitchen was slammed with orders. Not just people sitting in here, but people ordering. So that's how you know this place is legit. So I like to dump my rice actually inside the soup, because it just. You don't do that too. All right. You dump it, you get a little bit of everything, you cut it up, get the pork. Okay. Cheers and just eat it. Cinegong, here at Tito Reds. Oh man, that tamarind comes out really nicely in the cinegong. So sour. The meat's super tender. And then the vegetables are also really well cooked. And rainy day, and it's cold. It comes from Bicol, obviously. Bicol is our city. And then over here, we've got a goat curry, Andrew, this looks like it could be from a number of cultures, Vietnam, Jamaica. Yo, I just want to say like, I've had a lot of Filipino food. I've never had the spicy goat dish. Okay. It's got like potatoes in it. It has your sauce. It has kind of like your deep, dark spiciness. This is a deep cut. Bicol Express. Spicy goat. Those goat pieces were so big and juicy. Man, that was high quality, man. I'm telling you that. So our last two dishes here at Tito Reds is we have a soy sauce braised adobo pork. Okay. And then we hear, we have this creamy jackfruit latin. My stomach is so full right now. The one thing that about Filipino restaurants, they give you quite the portion. All right, you guys, that brings us to the very end of our first Woodside Little Manila Crawl. Man, it was such a dope experience. Very unique. What were you guys just made your takeaways? This episode kind of means a lot to me. I grew up here in Woodside, and it really brought me back to powder just to have all these little bites from all these places that I've been as a child. The crazy thing is it tastes just as good as when I was a little kid, if not better. Basically what I gotta say is like, because like I was born and raised in the Bronx, like coming to Queens was like a trip for us as a family. Like every Sunday we'll go like to crystals, OG Filipino spot in Woodside, or I just like coming to Queens in general because I can get my favorite like Filipino snacks. Hey, I think if you do everything that we did in the video or even half of the things, it makes the trip out of Queens super worth it even if you don't live in the area. But I gotta say, the food is all very fairly priced. I mean, we're in Queens, no frills. They keep it real. It's very cheap. It's very affordable and it's very authentic. No frills. And that's what I loved about Woodside Queens. No frills, keep it real. Iho Wan Grill. Ooh. If you know the vibes, like, subscribe, comment down below what you think was your favorite spot if I fucked up, if they fucked up, tell them if we fucked up on some shit. Let us know. We were in a hundred, but you know we gotta keep it a hundred. Let us know. All right, you guys. Hey, you guys, this was a very fun episode of Fun Bros. Food. Huge shout out to everybody. Follow the social down below. Benson, always thank you. Appreciate it, man. Till next time, we out. Peace. My look makes you hot, man. Santa Monica. Let's fucking go.