There’s an obscure fine restaurant at one of the side streets by Gilmore Avenue in New Manila called The Big Little Store. Seemingly lost in the hub of IT shops and computer centers, there is (paradoxically) a local feel to their mostly inexpensive Korean, Chinese and Japanese dishes.

I spent less than an hour during my first dining adventure there yesterday, but it was long enough to ascertain that I’ll be back. The carenderia-type food counter from which you can order features a wide mix of courses (spicy adobo, spicy sautéed pork chops, sushi/ maki, kikiam, siomai in perhaps the only perfect chili sauce I’ve known), and among these you must simply try the lumpia shanghai. There are also tasty alternatives served in healthy servings: miki soup, fish ball soup, crab egg, quail eggs, (huge!) tofu, and an assortment of mixed vegetables you’d be hard-pressed to simply call “chopseuy”.

All right, maybe the glimpse I’ve offered of the menu isn’t that special, but rest assured, The Big Little Store is not your ordinary oriental cuisine restaurant. And it’s far more than an authentic street food store. It’s an Asian market, in every sense - I felt as if I was in one among a row of Japanese bistros. There are Aji Ichiban-type stalls and racks from which you could bring home the perfect pasalubong (even though I was unable to decipher the scrawls on the packages): haw flakes, imported green tea, hopia, all sorts of Chinese cooking ingredients, bottles of wines and spirits, and other such things you wouldn’t find in your local palengke.

Careful on the appropriately detoxifying green tea, though. It kept me up all night.

For more information, please call 723-6881.