Hot Meal: Filipino Prix Fixe at Citizen Cake

Lumpia came with a soy-based dip (left) and sweet-and-sour pineapple sauce.

 Last night's Filipino dinner at Citizen Cake (399 Grove at Gough) carefully balanced haute with homey. Okay, maybe haute is too strong. Aided by his mom and sister, Cake chef William Pilz engineered a series of familiar Fil-Am dishes (chicken adobo, pancit, lumpia) with flavors calibrated to appeal to diners squeamish about patis (that's Filipino fish sauce).

The best dish we tasted? Deeply flavored shrimp sinigang, with turnips and Chiniese long beans in a tomato-flecked broth that played the sour snarl of tamarind against a subtly bitter vegetable broth. Pilz' chicken adobo (not his mom's recipe, but a coconut-milk-fortified one he picked up from Romy Dorotan, chef of Cendrillon in New York) sublimated the taste of vinegar via a soy-dominant sauce reduced to glaze status. And while the chef's pancit showed off perfectly firm-soft bean-thread noodles and a kind of ambient veggie sweetness, it was the one dish that called out for more seasoning.

But hey, we appreciate how hard it is to translate food you grew up with into coherent restaurant dishes, especially for a crossover audience, and Pilz' one-night dinner only succeeded in making us hungry for more. And speaking of more, we've got additional pics after the jump.

Shrimp sinigang showed lovely balance.

 

The pancit: A tad underseasoned.