4/8/2023 0 Comments Words rock scramble patch(Meat plays a prominent role in the cuisine.) The wings are a shade of red that suggests you’ll be biting into TNT, but they turn out to be more smoky than explosive. The other small plates of note include fried guajillo pepper chicken wings and skewers of grilled pork. (An average of 3,000 spring rolls fly out of the kitchen each week.) The snacks come with banana ketchup, a red dipping sauce the owners get from the Philippines that dates to a time around World War II when tomatoes were hard to find and bananas were pressed into service. ![]() But this appetizer from “Mama Alice” became so popular, Cleary had to start making them, too. Early in the restaurant’s life, the cigar shapes were made by Cleary’s mom, who shipped her goods to Purple Patch via FedEx. Probably the best-known Filipino dish is lumpia, spring rolls filled with beef, pork and shredded carrots and fried so that each bite resonates in your head as much as your mouth. The Filipino recipes are courtesy of her mother, a caterer in Corpus Christi, Tex., while the cooking is performed by an Indian chef, Surag Gopi. Open since March, Purple Patch, co-owned by Cleary’s husband, Drew, a native Australian, takes its name from an expression used Down Under designating “a place of success” or good luck, according to Patrice. And by all means, order anything with a Filipino accent at Restaurant Eve in Old Town, where chef Cathal Armstrong has been inspired by his wife’s heritage. See Bad Saint, a pop-up poised to become a restaurant in Columbia Heights, and Bistro 7107, the Crystal City retreat whose consultant is a celebrity chef in Manila. Unless you’ve been eating under a rock, you know that sisig and dishes like it are now go-to flavors. At Purple Patch, vinegar and lemon juice infuse the meaty scramble, introduced by a cloud of steam and angry sputter, with serious tang. Abroad, “sisig” refers to snacking on something sour. A signature Filipino dish, the juicy stir-fry of chopped pork (shoulder and belly), aggressive birds’ eye chilies and sweet onion hits multiple pleasure points on the tongue. We decline her invitation but ask for our remaining sisig to be packed for transport. Nodding to the diners around us, she says her Filipino customers tend to get their fish extras wrapped up, for making soup at home. “Would you like to take the head home?” asks Patrice Cleary. The debris from a whole fried red snapper on my table catches the eye of the co-owner of Purple Patch in Mount Pleasant. ![]() This review was published in The Washington Post Magazine on Aug. Staff at the Philippine Embassy come here for a taste of home, too. The lumpia, made by the owner’s mom and flown in from her home in Texas, are exemplary. Veer from the Filipino dishes and you might hit a wall Caesar salad, for instance, drowns in its Parmesan-miso dressing. Sour accents get a lot of use, as in sinigang, a strapping soup crowded with braised pork, potato chunks and long green beans that doesn’t stint on the lemon juice. The second is a sputtering stir-fry of chopped pork, bird’s-eye chilies and sweet onions that play-wrestles with your tongue until you cry “uncle” - or finish off the dish, crowned with a fried egg. The first is braised chicken flavored with vinegar and soy sauce and fleshed out with potatoes. Remember when lumpia - spring rolls filled with beef and pork - represented what a lot of diners knew about Filipino food? New emissaries, including this two-floor Mount Pleasant hideaway, are helping expand our horizons (and vocabulary) with adobo and sisig. ![]() ![]() This review appears in The Washington Post’s 2015 Fall Dining Guide. A group digs into a spread at the Purple Patch that includes pork sinigang soup, red snapper escabeche and pancit bihon.
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