Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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Purple Yam: Filipino, Just Like Mom's


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It’s hard not to be leery of restaurants that try to please too many palates.

When dishes as disparate as bibimbap, goat curry and wild boar pizza pop up on a menu that’s supposed to have a distinct Filipino bent, you get the distinct feeling that something’s got to give. Korean and Filipino dishes, after all, can be complex undertakings.

At Purple Yam, the new Filipino/pan-Asian restaurant in Ditmas Park by Chef Romy Dorotan (who shuttered his well-regarded Cendrillon in Manhattan earlier this year), the menu is that varied. But there’s a lot to like about Dorotan’s food so far.

Well, as long as you stick to the Filipino dishes.

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What The Dead Eat


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There is a deep belief in these parts that the dead may be dead — but that little detail shouldn’t get in the way of serving them a good meal.

And so in Singaporean wet markets, alongside stalls selling vegetables and plump pigs’ trotters, you’ll find little places that hawk food of a different kind. Shelves will be filled with boxes of paper dumplings, chicken feet and other dimsum treats — the idea is to burn them as offerings so your deceased loved ones will get them on the Other Side.

I hadn’t seen one of these in a while, mostly because when I’m in these markets I tend to race over to stalls that sell food that I can actually eat.

Like, now. Not when I’m in the Big Upstairs shamelessly flirting with River Phoenix.

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