Never Heard of It is a series about the places that shape how this city eats — corner spots, bakeries, strip mall dining rooms, and family-run kitchens that rarely make the glossy lists but have always mattered. These are stories about more than food. Each entry looks at how history, migration, and shifting neighbourhoods show up on the plate, offering a glimpse into the everyday culture that builds a city from the ground up.

For a while, a rezoning sign stood on Joyce Street like a warning — or a promise, depending on who was reading it. It proposed a gleaming 29-storey tower featuring commercial space, bike parking, and a library. However, the banner below it had other priorities: PROTECT OUR CULTURAL FOOD ASSETS was hand painted in black and yellow, alongside a small mango logo probably meant as a signature or tag.

This wasn’t just another real estate redevelopment site; it was home to one of Vancouver’s Filipino enclaves, sometimes called “Little Manila” – though it’s more like “Micro Manila”, since its entirety spans just two aging low-rise buildings wedged between a SkyTrain station and an assisted care home. It was also the location of one of the only places in the city where you could still sit down for sisig, kare-kare, or a breakfast of longganisa and garlic rice: Pampanga’s Cuisine.

That was 2021. At the time it seemed inevitable that the place would become another, all-too-familiar kind of routine casualty: quiet and tidy, procedural and irreversible. As if preparing for this eventuality, the owners of Pampanga’s did what many would do: they opened a second location, this time on Fraser Street, another hub for the Filipino community. But the thing about real estate — like everything tied to global finance – is that it moves in cycles. Interest rates rose. Investor confidence wavered. The market cooled. The rezoning sign disappeared; and the original restaurant never closed.

So now both locations remain open, holding two ends of a thread stretched across the city – from Joyce to Fraser; past to future; survival to something that might look like continuity.

Inside the Joyce Street location, not much has changed. The dining room is narrow and bright. A glass case up front displays trays of ulam (main dishes) under heat lamps – adobo, dinuguan, pinakbet, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, crispy hito. There’s a TV playing whatever the staff feel like watching (usually noontime variety shows), and from behind the counter the sound of people speaking Tagalog and Kapampangan mixes with the hiss of a ladle against a hot wok.

Pampanga, a province just a few hours north of Manila, is often called “the culinary capital of the Philippines”. However, at Pampanga’s in Vancouver, that doesn’t translate into one of those “elevated Filipino cuisine” spots that serve six courses of deconstructed sinigang (a sour soup dish). This is Pampanga-style food served assertively and oily, the same way it lives in the diaspora. But it’s not just Pampanga. The contents of the steam trays wander from Bicol to Ilocos and the Visayas. Pampanga’s serves a full survey of Filipino food, including dishes rarely seen in restaurants that cater to Western palates, including papaitan (Filipino-Ilocano goat and offal stew), kilawin (like a Filipino ceviche), and dinuguan (dark, savoury meat stew). This is food with funk and bitterness; food that still smells like something when you bring it home.

Pampanga’s original location is counter service only. There are no printed menus here – just a smudged dry erase board – and the daily menu is largely determined by the whims of the kitchen. Not that it matters, anyways. What matters is the taste – and that is one thing that is reliably consistent.

If it’s early enough, you can order silog (Filipino breakfast). Silog is a kind of shorthand – a portmanteau of sinangag (garlic fried rice) and itlog (egg) – and is usually served with some kind of meat. The most common variations are named accordingly; for example: tapsilog (with tapa, cured beef), longsilog (with longganisa, sweet sausage), or tosilog (with tocino, sweet pork). If you’re lucky, pancit palabok (pork and shrimp noodles) is also available – they don’t make it every day.

The sisig (pork and chicken liver) is finely chopped and pan-fried to a crisp at the edges, with enough calamansi and onion to keep it awake. The kare-kare (peanut stew) is thick and peanut-heavy, made with peanut butter instead of hand-ground nuts (a shortcut, but a common one). As for their version of the requisite lumpia (spring rolls; a typical gateway Filipino food): freshly fried so it’s still hot and extra crispy, it’s a far cry from the version you might have had at the office potluck.

By comparison, the Fraser location sits among a string of Filipino bakeries, remittance offices, and a dental clinic. It’s brighter and wider, with easier parking. The trays are warmer, the lighting is better, and the seating is more deliberate. There’s even a proper printed menu here, and the counter staff wear matching shirts. Still, nothing feels corporate – but with Pampanga’s Fraser spot, it feels like they’ve used their second chance to get things right.

On Fraser, the dishes are mostly recognizable and at least as consistent. The sisig still crackles, the pancit still disappears by early afternoon, and the kare-kare still comes with peanut butter and a side of bagoong (fermented shrimp or krill condiment). People line up for it, with some coming from just down the street, and others all the way from Surrey, Richmond or Port Moody. A few even come from Joyce – not because it’s better here, but simply because they can (or because it’s easier to find parking, or there’s more room).

As a Filipino, people often ask me where to find the “best” Filipino food in Vancouver. But, for me, “best” is beside the point. Context is what matters. When I was growing up, it was places like Pampanga’s – turo-turo spots with steam trays and fluorescent lights – that got stuck in my mind. Pampanga’s introduces you to Filipino food the way Filipinos actually eat when they go out to restaurants. It’s casual, generous, and familiar; which, in a city in constant flux, can be an enormous comfort. It’s good to know that, at least for the foreseeable feature, you can keep coming back.