Mama Fina’s

Mama Fina’s in East Village Serves Filipino Fare With Exquisite Results | Eater NY

"Serving Filipino fare in a casual counter-service setting at 167 Avenue A, south of East 11th Street, this spot—calling itself the “House of Filipino Sisig”—is a branch of an Elmwood Park, New Jersey institution open since 2005 and shares chef and co-founder Aming Sta Maria (who goes by Carmen) and her husband Samuel Sta Maria. I liked the unusual ordering: you walk up to a bar with a point-of-purchase device (there’s no liquor license yet), pick your food, then go down a hallway to a dining room that feels like the hold of a sailing ship with wrought-iron light fixtures and giant wood beams; dishes arrive piecemeal and sometimes a runner is confused about where to place them. Highlights included an all-day longsilog breakfast ($15) with sweet-and-spicy longanisa, two fried eggs, wonderful garlic fried rice, and a tomato-and-onion salad; lumpia Shanghai—just-fried spring rolls with crisp wrappers, a coarse pork filling, and a thick orange dipping sauce ($8); an exquisite kare kare ($22), oxtails in peanut gravy topped with green beans and okra and sided with a chunky, fishy condiment; and the namesake sisig ($17) served sizzling in an iron skillet, a richly flavored heap of chopped pig parts (including crunchy pig ear). The menu leans rich overall—barbecued pork and chicken, enormous roast pig feet, fried squid, snow peas sautéed with garlic and onions, and lechon kawali—but the chef even improvised a fine, not-too-sweet mais con hielo (shaved ice with corn and coconut milk) when desserts weren’t available. Service is still a work in progress, but the selection of stand-out traditional dishes at affordable prices makes it a place worth keeping around in the growing Filipino landscape of NYC." - Robert Sietsema