Push Admin

Filipino bistro brings happy, messy eating to New York City

Article (news)

Ligaya Mishan, The New York Times

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2019/life/11/27/ny-filipino-restaurant-2.jpg"/><figcaption>Homey Filipino dishes appear at Kusina Pinoy Bistro alongside street-food snacks like whole deep-fried squid on a vertical skewer in New York, Nov. 15, 2019. Each spoonful of ginisang munggo — mung beans steeped with tinapa (smoked fish) — is a quiet insistence on stopping and slowing down. Ellen Silverman, The New York Times</figcaption></figure></div>NEW YORK — You can see the calamares gigantes coming from across the room, tall and swaying, a fountaining of deep-fried squid. A skewer, planted vertically, holds it all upright, with the tentacles massed at the top, curling upward and suggesting a wild-haired puppet.This is a street-food snack across Asia, found at night markets in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, to be torn off the stick with the teeth. At Kusina Pinoy Bistro, a Filipino restaurant in Woodside, Queens, scissors are provided, to aid in sharing.Still, eating it is a messy (and happy) business, oil glossing the fingers. The experience is less about the specific flavors and textures, although those are pleasing enough — pliant flesh, rugged crust, punctuations of salt and pepper — than the festive comedy of snipping and catching tubes and tentacles, to dole out around the table.The teetering towers of squid are everywhere at Kusina Pinoy Bistro, which opened in March on a block dominated by storefronts catering to Woodside’s immigrant Filipino population: turo-turo (point-point) steam-table joints and shipping offices specializing in balikbayan (loosely translated as “homecoming”) boxes packed with presents for relatives back home.The restaurant — run by a team that includes a nurse, a physician assistant in interventional radiology and an industrial engineer, all moonlighting here — is a touch fancier than its neighbors, with a long, broad dining room, black banquettes, bamboo-hooded lamps and a galaxy of rainbow twinkle lights above. And while the menu focuses on the same homey fare found throughout this area, known as Little Manila, the kusina (kitchen) is also attuned to newer developments in Filipino cooking at home and abroad.<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2019/life/11/27/ny-filipino-restaurant-3.jpg"/><figcaption>The interior of Kusina Pinoy Bistro in New York, Nov. 15, 2019. The experience is less about the specific flavors and textures, although those are pleasing enough — pliant flesh, rugged crust, punctuations of salt and pepper — than the festive comedy of snipping and catching tubes and tentacles, to dole out around the table. Ellen Silverman, The New York Times</figcaption></figure></div>Bulalo is traditional, almost folkloric in its depth, a heavy stew of beef shank cooked bone-in, so the collagen melts into the broth, and served intact, with its marrow — to be sucked, not spooned out. But here, too, is bulalo steak, an innovation of a couple of decades back, in which the meat is simmered for two hours with lemongrass, bay leaf, black peppercorns and celery, then slaked with a gravy of thickened bulalo broth and crowded with mushrooms and lopped disks of corn cob on a sizzling plate.Bicol Express is another classic, pork grown indolent in coconut milk and needled by chiles. The dish is named after the overnight sleeper train that once ran south from Manila to Naga City in the Philippines. (Service has been suspended for years because of typhoon damage.)Here, ordinary pork is swapped out for bagnet, a specialty from a different region, Ilocos, in northern Luzon. This is pork belly, boiled and then deep-fried in its own leached oils, with the skin pricked before frying, creating little escape routes for the liquefied fat, to maximize crunch. It’s flesh and chicharrón at once, defiantly crispy even submerged in coconut milk.Skewers of chicken inato come charred and dripping with a turmeric-stained marinade. The dish is cousin to chicken inasal, a style of barbecue that originated in Bacolod City in the Visayas region and notably shuns the soy sauce deployed elsewhere in the country, relying instead on vinegar and earthy-sweet ginger. (Inato is a contraction of the phrase atin ito, or “it’s ours,” popularized by the Visayan-based chain Jo’s Chicken Inato.)The chef, Noriel Satira, from Pitogo in Quezon province, does honor to old favorites: kaldereta with its rich base of tomatoes, minerally liver spread and cheddar, spiked with pickles; laing, taro leaves still bearing their faint note of iron, wallowed in coconut milk and bagoong alamang (fermented shrimp paste); and ginisang munggo, mung beans steeped with tinapa (smoked fish), each spoonful a quiet insistence on stopping and slowing down.For dessert, slabs of soft tofu slowly sink in a tall glass of dark cane sugar syrup, topped by swollen sago (tapioca pearls). Ube halaya, purple yam cooked down into something between custard and jam, is rolled into a lumpia wrapper and dropped in the deep fryer; under a fork, the shell crackles and the insides ooze out, vivid and royal.Or hark back to the swelter of summer streets with a tube of ice candy, a meld of milk, sugar and maybe cantaloupe or avocado, depending on the day. It’s slapped down on a plate in a narrow plastic bag, knotted at one end; you’re supposed to gash it open with your teeth and half-sip, half-chug it. There’s no way to share, so it’s all yours.<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2019/life/11/27/ny-filipino-restaurant-1.jpg"/><figcaption>A dish offered at Kusina Pinoy Bistro in New York, Nov. 15, 2019. Each spoonful of ginisang munggo — mung beans steeped with tinapa (smoked fish) — is a quiet insistence on stopping and slowing down. Ellen Silverman, The New York Times</figcaption></figure></div>—<div>KUSINA PINOY BISTRO</div><div>69-16 Roosevelt Ave. (70th Street), Woodside, Queens; 347-924-9977; kusinapinoybistro.com</div>Recommended: Calamares gigantes; ginisang munggo; laing; chicken inato; beef short rib kaldereta; ube turon; dessert trio; taho.Drinks and Wine: Full bar; calamansi juice and sago’t gulaman (tapioca and jelly cooler).Prices: $6.95 to $22.95.Open: Monday to Tuesday for lunch and dinner; Wednesday for dinner; Thursday and Friday for lunch and dinner; Saturday and Sunday for breakfast, lunch and dinner.Reservations: Accepted.Wheelchair Access: The entrance is on the same level as the sidewalk. The restroom is spacious but not equipped with a handrail.<div> 2019 The New York Times Company</div>

Kusina Pinoy Bistro brings calamares, caldereta, bulalo and Bicol express to New York.

Kusina Pinoy Bistro brings calamares, caldereta, bulalo and Bicol express to New York.

Filipino bistro brings happy, messy eating to New York City

News

Entertainment

Lifestyle

Sports

Metro.Style

More

Traffic

Manila

Horoscope

Lifestyle

Filipino bistro brings happy, messy eating to New York City

Ligaya Mishan,

The New York Times

Published Nov 27, 2019 02:43 PM PHT

Read More:

The New York Times

New York

restaurant

Filipino food

Kusina Pinoy Bistro

ABS-CBN is the leading media and entertainment company in the Philippines, offering quality content across TV, radio, digital, and film. Committed to public service and promoting Filipino values, ABS-CBN continues to inspire and connect audiences worldwide.

Corporate

Investors

Governance

International Distribution

Corporate

Governance

Investors

International Distribution

NPC Seal of Registration

Privacy Policy

AI Policy

Terms of Service

Advertise with Us

© 2026 ABS-CBN Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

NPC Seal of Registration

Privacy Policy

Terms of Service

AI Policy

Advertise with Us

© 2026 ABS-CBN Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

NPC Seal of Registration

Privacy Policy

Terms of Service

AI Policy

Advertise with Us

© 2026 ABS-CBN Corporation. All Rights Reserved.