Philadelphia’s Filipino scene gains a bright new voice at Baby’s Kusina + Market

It’s easy to see why the lines are long for weekend brunch at Baby’s Kusina + Market, the modern Filipino restaurant and cafe in Brewerytown.

The buko pandan hotcakes are so popular that the kitchen was scrambling at noon on a recent Sunday to make a new batch. But when they finally arrived, they seemed to defy gravity, with an airy coconut batter that puffs into a tall stack beneath maple-glazed bananas and crunchy rice chips. Inside the Rich Tita breakfast sandwich’s pillowy house pandesal roll is a sweet, garlicky patty of longanisa sausage tucked between a cheesy egg, peppery arugula, and the citrus-pepper zing of a chili-mansi aioli.

As K-pop tunes pulse through this deftly rehabbed industrial space, mingling with the steam-wand whistle of an espresso machine working overtime, customers’ patience is rewarded with coconut milk lattes, iced coffees, and caffeinated tonics festively tinted ube purple, matcha green, and mocha brown with malted Milo chocolate syrup.

It all feels so perfectly on point — energetic and casual, framed by the understated elegance of marble-top tables and rattan pendant lights — for a Brewerytown retail strip that’s more than ready to embrace something distinctive for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The married co-owners, chef Raquel Villanueva Dang and Tam Dang, live nearby and wanted this space, previously Ryebrew, to be a flexible, accessible addition to the neighborhood, whether for coffee; Filipino specialty products from its market shelves (Theo & Philo chocolates, macapuno coconut, pancit noodles); updated Filipino classics; or a sit-down dinner adventure of rarely seen regional specialties.

The crispy Kanto Sando chicken sandwich, the lunchtime pet project of chef de cuisine Iman Reyes, dunks a chicken thigh in hot chile oil before being breaded in panko and served with pickled cabbage and aioli. It delivers a numbing warmth that glows but doesn’t overwhelm as you bite into the soft, lightly sweetened pandesal roll, a comfort-food winner that should draw a wide audience focused on Philly’s hot chicken sandwich wars.

While Baby’s Kusina may have been crafted with such mass appeal in mind, its core mission is to celebrate Filipino culinary traditions. “For me, going into food was not just a form of creative expression, but really to give my culture an opportunity to be more understood here in Philly, and for other Filipino Americans with hyphenated identities to feel seen,” says Villanueva Dang.

The many deep-cut touches linking to regional Filipino foodways are what I find most thrilling. From the Philippines-sourced Barako (Liwetan) coffee beans, roasted to a nutty chocolate hue by Kensington’s Câphé Roasters, to a host of contemporary takes on Filipino dishes that go beyond the most familiar touchstones such as lumpia and adobo, such as the pinakbet and dinakdakan — these are what give Baby’s Kusina a destination status that should resonate far beyond this stretch of Girard Avenue.

At brunch, for example, I couldn’t resist the colorful varieties of sweet bibingka rice cakes that emerged warm from the kitchen pink with strawberries, pale with young coconut threads, or purple with ube. But the dish I could not stop thinking about was the tortang talong, a charred Asian eggplant that’s fanned, dipped in eggwash, and sautéed into a pancake-flat omelette slicked with tangy brown banana sarsa (smokier than sweet bottled banana ketchup) and scattered with the crunch of minced red onions, cucumber, and tomatoes.

Another unlikely star was the dinakdakan, a mound of pork cubes tossed in liver sauce that was completely magnetic despite its frumpy look. My friend John, a Philly lawyer who was born in Quezon City, the most populous city in the Philippines, was fascinated that he’d never encountered this dish before because it is so regional, drawn from the Ilocos region in the north.

Neither of us could stop eating it thanks to the dual textures of the pork — some cubes grilled soft, others fried into crispy lechon-like bits — and a gingery brightness in the chicken liver mousse garnished with the crunchy heat of long hot pepper rings and a colorful crudité side of watermelon radishes for scooping.

“It’s not meant to be sexy,” Villanueva Dang said of the dinakdakan. “But there are so many great Filipino dishes that don’t get the love they deserve because they’re maybe not so good-looking.”

Villanueva Dang, 37, a first-generation Filipina American who grew up in North Jersey, came to Philadelphia to study at the University of the Sciences before embarking on a 12-year career in the pharmaceutical industry. She left that job in 2022 to travel in the Philippines for a month to visit family, reconnect with her roots, and focus on a pursuit she was more passionate about: food.

She and her husband, Tam, a first-generation Vietnamese American and a firefighter in the Air Force, had already launched a pop-up series called Tita Emmie’s in 2018, named for her mother, Ermelita (also known as Emmie, or Tita Baby). Their quest to open the brick-and-mortar space that became Baby’s Kusina was a two-year saga of contractor and permitting headaches.

Since finally opening this year, Baby’s Kusina + Market has added a distinct new voice to Philly’s growing Filipino dining scene, alongside the homey fare of Kathy Mirano’s Tambayan diner counter at the Reading Terminal Market, Lou Boquila’s kamayan feasts at Perla, and the bagoong-spiked Caesar salads and ube sundaes of Chance Anies’ bustling Tabachoy BYOB.

The space itself is a unique draw from the moment you step inside the large wooden door to see the striking painting of a woman gazing dreamily out from a mango grove, commissioned from Brooklyn artist Casiella Santos-Gaerlan. A mezzanine wraps around the room’s exposed brick walls to create both extra space and a sense of intimacy for the 44 seats, including a family table upstairs ideal for groups, and counter seats perched beside the balcony where solo diners peer over the railing to the cafe below.

The kitchen covers a lot of ground with four different menus, and the focus at breakfast, lunch, and brunch gravitates toward updated comforts, like the bistek of thin-cut brisket braised in tamari and lemon over rice and pickled veggies, or the sweet-and-savory tocilog of chicken cured in pineapple soy. An affogato scoop of ube ice cream topped with a shot of Barako espresso is one of my top wake-up desserts this summer.

The most ambitious plates are reserved for dinner, which only recently shifted away from counter to full service. This food deserves the extra attention: The beautiful kinilaw na kampachi is one of my new favorite raw fish starters, a confetti of diced yellowtail and colorful produce — mangos, cucumbers, and spicy Bird’s eye chiles — mounded over a coconut-milk broth. Add a squirt of sweet citrus from the fresh calamansi on the side, and pile this ceviche atop the included fried dumpling wrappers.

Baby’s shows a whimsical creative touch by stuffing its fresh longganisa sausage into dumplings, a non-traditional presenation for the classic Filipino sausage that my Quezon City friend John noted was, “new to me!” The shatteringly crisp chicken wings, which get marinated in dehydrated calamansi peels and pink peppercorns before they’re double-fried, come with a mango-chili dipping sauce: “Like Jollibee, but better,” said another guest, referring to the iconic Filipino fried chicken chain.

Part of Villanueva Dang’s mission is to show that meat-heavy Filipino cooking can also feature vegetables in exciting ways. Her light-handed riff on pinakbet vegetable stew is proof. Not only does the medley of kabocha squash, eggplant, and green beans maintain its texture as its tumbles over rice with fried leeks and okra, it gets an inventive umami boost from kelp salt and mushroom bagoong, a vegan take on the seasoning traditionally made with fermented shrimp. (Another vegan offering, called Green Diyosa, was disappointing, though, its soba noodles overcooked.)

Perhaps the most memorable dish at Baby’s Kusina is a pescatarian variation on the sizzle platter classic known as sisig, which replaces the usual chopped pork with a whole milkfish (bangus) that’s been deboned, deep-fried, then flaked into a briny mash with hot chiles on a cast-iron platter bookended by its head and tail.

It’s bold as is. But it hit another level of vivid harmony when I added in all the fixings — a squeeze of calamansi, dabs of Maggi-scented aioli, a splash of mango-chile vinegar — and scooped it over the warm coconut-pandan rice.

Because milkfish is so labor intensive to debone, its availability was limited until recently, when Dang decided to offer it every night they’re open. That’s good news for an operation that, after two years of construction delays, has proceeded cautiously as it steps beyond being a casual cafe to polish its vision for dinner with greater explorations of lesser-known dishes.

As Baby’s Kusina continues to grow and expand its scope, there have been logistical challenges to conquer. Its fledgling table service is a work in progress, with the pacing, portions, and flow of multi-course meals still being refined. Even preparing enough food to get through a standard brunch still occasionally presents some hurdles. Yes, diners can be unpredictable during Philly summers, but running out of half your menu by 12:30 p.m. on a Sunday isn’t ideal.

But such demand is also the kind of good problem that validates Dang’s decision to abandon the pharmaceutical industry for a career in food. The road to Baby’s Kusina has been full of delays — yes, even for my buko pandan hotcakes — but it has absolutely been worth the wait.

2816 W. Girard Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19130; babysphl.com

Hours: Breakfast Monday, Thursday, and Friday, 9-11 a.m. Lunch Monday, Thursday, and Friday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Brunch Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner Monday and Thursday, 5-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, until 10 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

Menu Highlights: Breakfast and brunch: Rich Tita sando; torta talong; buko pandan hotcakes; bibinka coconut rice cakes. Lunch: Kanto Sando; bistek. Dinner: pepper mansi wings; longanisa dumplings; kinilaw na kampachi; dinakdakan; bangus sisig; ube ice cream affogato.

There is baking onsite there are also several gluten-free options (pinakbet, bistek, tocilog) thanks to the use of gluten-free tamari.

Dinner entrees, $17-$38 (milkfish sisig for sharing).

BYOB

Wheelchair accessible.