When we start calling Anaheim home to OC's own Little Manila, the epicenter of it all will be the plaza at the corner of Euclid and Crescent. When Jollibee and its sister Red Ribbon joined Kapit Bahay and LBC (the balikbayan box courier used by Filipino expats to send care packages to the Philippines), the 99 Ranch-anchored shopping center instantly had the greatest density of Filipino businesses and eateries outside Artesia/Cerritos.
Now more are coming to join them.
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Valerio's Bakery, which seems to have branches in just about every Pinoy
neighborhood in LA County, from West Covina to across from the
Cerritos Jollibee, doesn't directly compete against Red Ribbon. They
don't do cakes as does Red Ribbon. Valerio's is a bread maker, specialists
in the Filipino dinner rolls called pan de sal. A dozen will cost a
measly $2.25.
The best way to have them is to wait for a batch to come
out of the oven. Tear into while they're still
steaming, and you'll be treated to a milky, cotton-light fluff of a crumb
with a faintly sugary flavor. When they're this fresh, they can and
should be eaten plain. Consume a few in the car, and the sweet fumes of
the freshly baked, bite-sized loaves will intoxicate you all the way home.
They've been open for scarcely four weeks. For now, you won't see much
more than the aforementioned rolls, a refrigerator with meat-filled
siopaos, some turon (banana-filled egg rolls), and a hot box with
stuffed pans de sal. And they're also still adjusting. The batch of pan
de sal I was given could've used a little more time in the oven. They
were taken out a few minutes early because the cashier saw the ravenous
glint in my eye and didn't want to keep me waiting.
A few steps away, inside the 99 Ranch Supermarket, Manila Sunrise, the
Filipino takeout counter that I assume is associated with the
long-established restaurant of the same name in Carson, serves a small
but impressive array of turo-turo food. I saw banana cue (deep fried
bananas) and karioka (sticks of chewy, deep-fried coconut rice balls)
among them.
To Manila Sunrise and Valerio's, I say, “Mabuhay!”
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.