Phil-Am Food Mart

Before Little Manila had its street sign, it had this shop. Phil-Am opened on 70th Street in 1976, when there were only a handful of Filipino businesses in the neighborhood, and the family that started it still runs it. The aisles are a map of a Filipino pantry: imported staples, chips and snack cakes, and tablea, the cocoa tablets for thick Filipino hot chocolate.

Come for what is made fresh. Pandesal, ensaymada and monay arrive daily; the counter keeps kakanin — sapin-sapin in its three colored layers, kutsinta, cassava cake, suman wrapped in leaves — and the meat case holds house-cured longganisa, tocino and tapa for a silog breakfast at home. There is a small hot bar in the back for whatever was cooked that day.