For the past three months, I’ve taken many a trek to one of Daly City’s Filipino food hot spots.
On just about any day you’ll find this place so busy, lines wrap around the building of the little family restaurant that sits atop the hill. For the past 13 years, Fil-Am Cuisine has served the Daly City’s construction workers, business people and the local Filipino community looking for a taste of home.
Coincidentally, Daly City hosts the largest population of Filipinos outside of the Phillipines. Thirty-five thousand people, which accounts to about 35 percent of Daly City’s population, are Filipino.
The order-as-you see spread of adobo, kare-kare, fried shanghai lumpia (similar to egg rolls) and other daily specials make this place difficult not to fall in love with.
This charming little eatery captures the essence of Filipino food: family. Young school children roam the tiny plate lunch shop, playing, while their parents feed the passerby. Men man the grill, gloves and all, constantly flipping lightly charred skewers of pork and chicken ($1.99 apiece). Woman work the register and answer phone calls for take-out orders. Everyone has their role. Boy, do they play it well.
And if you don’t fall in love with the food (which I doubt), you’ll definitely fall in love with the light skinned Filipina taking your order.
What’s best about Fil-Am Cuisine is that it’s busy. The food here is always hot. You can smell the smoke from BBQ pork and chicken skewers from a block away. They dish hundreds of these things out e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y. Fil-Am Cuisine offers the choice of one or two selections served over rice for $2.99 and $5.29, respectively.
They also offer an excellent sisig, (a mixture of chopped fried pork, onions, calamansi and sliced red chili) that’s still served with the tangy crunch that it’s supposed to.
This place never lets me down. It’s no wonder it’s been around for so long .
This is the perfect place to grab a bite, grab a seat and chat it up with the Daly City regulars.
For more information, call Fil-Am Cuisine at (650) 992-6191
-Off Thee Chain is a foodblog by Rhys Alvarado