Purple Yam restaurant in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn is now open.

Cendrillon, a Filipino pan-Asian restaurant previously located in SoHo, New York City, closed March 2009.

Scroll down for Dinner & Brunch menus

Purple Yam now open!

1314 Cortelyou Rd (between Rugby & Argyle), Brooklyn, NY 11226

Q or B train Cortelyou Rd. stop

(718) 940-8188

Get ready for a triple whammy weekend in February:

Valentine's Day, Chinese New Year & Presidents' Day

We will be offering special dishes to celebrate Chinese New Year

for the week of Feb 15 - 21, 2010

This year, Valentine's Day (February 14) coincides with the Lunar New Year.

And don't laugh, 2010 is the year of the GOLDEN TIGER.  And to quote a website on what the year of the tiger means:

"The Tiger is the 3rd sign in the cycle of the Chinese Zodiac which consists of 12 animals.

It is a sign of courage.  This fearless and fiery fighter was revered by the ancient Chinese as the sign

that wards off the rhree main disasters of a household: fire, thieves and ghosts.  On New Year's Day itself,

it is beneficial to celebrate, to be happy, to have smiling faces, and to refrain from scowling, quarreling or criticizing anyone."

Sounds like a good plan to me.  Well, we have something more enjoyable to ward off bad luck on Valentine's Day:

Bring your fave partner to Purple Yam for great music (jazz and love songs) and food and drink to match.

VALENTINE'S DAY MENU

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Two seatings: 6:30 - 7 pm & 9 - 9:30 pm

$ 65 prixe fixe for 5 -course meal

(does not include beverage, tax and gratuity)

LIVE MUSIC:  THE MARY ANN MC SWEENEY TRIO:

Mary Ann is a local Ditmas Park resident who plays regularly at Lincoln Center.

Last December 2009 she was invited to play at the White House for the Christmas Party

honoring the Secret Service!

                                                           Natalia Bernal                                               Mary Ann Mc Sweeney

Natalia Bernal (vocalist from Chile) and Mary Ann McSweeney (bassist),

will perform jazz standards and songs from South America with a special guest on piano for Valentine’s Day.

www.maryannmcsweeney.com

natalia Bernal

MENU

Lobster & leek dumplings in broth

Grilled seabass in banana leaf with crispy seaweed

Poussin Inasal with mushroom & bamboo shoot rice

(Visayan barbecued organic baby chicken marinated in pineapple vinegar & spices)

Purple Yam noodles with fresh water chestnuts & peashoots

Barbecued organic baby chicken (poussin) southern Philippine style

In the Visayas, barbecued chicken is called inasal.  Traditionally, the Visayans marinate their chickens with

sinamak (coconut sap vinegar with chilis, garlic, ginger, galanga, black peppercorns)

and put the chicken on a spit to grill on hot coals.

Homemade pineapple & chili vinegar to marinate the baby chicken.

We don't have sinamak, but we can make our own version of spiced vinegar

flavored with fresh pineapple.

Desserts

Kalamansi (Philippine lime) soufflé

Chocolate macadamia sans rival with chocolate rum ice cream

(macadamia dacquoise torte with chocolate buttercream)

Kalamansi (Philippine lime) souffle right out of the oven

Call (718) 940-8188 for reservations or email amy@purpleyamnyc.com

*********

UPDATE: CHECK OUT OUR NEW BRUNCH MENU (scroll down after Dinner menu)

MORE NOODLES & STARTERS TO CHOOSE FROM.

And now back to more thoughts of food;

Romy has brought back the avocado ice cream as a dessert special.

If you grew up in the Philippines, the avocado was always used as a dessert not as a salad ingredient.

We would open up the avocado and scrape the flesh into a bowl, mash it up with evaporated milk and sugar

and put in some ice to make it into a nice, refreshing end of a  meal treat.  We would sometimes put this into ice cube trays

and have little cubes of avocado treats to suck on like popsicles on a hot day (LOTS of hot days there).

Romy has also discovered heirloom apples from one of the farmers in the Sunday Cortelyou Rd market.

He made a special heirloom apple bread pudding last week.  let's keep those heirloom apples coming.

Buy them from the farmers and help support these farms!

Jap Chae (sweet potato noodles) with beef tapa (air dried beef marinated with vinegar, lime & soy sauce)

Great marriage of Korean and Filipino food.

A great bookend image to the avocado ice cream: a steaming bowl of wheat noodles

with mussels & shrimps topped with cilantro and scallions . Perfect antidote to the freezing winds outside.

Email address: amy@purpleyamnyc.com

Our hours: 7 days a week, Monday - Sunday

No lunch YET: Only dinner, Mon - Fri, 5:30 - 10:30 pm

We have brunch Sat & Sun, 12 - 3:30 pm

Saturday dinner, 5:30 - 11pm

Sunday dinner, 5:30 - 10 pm

WE HAVE A BEER & WINE LICENSE.

So please try our wine list with lots of exquisite wines at good value prices.

Eventually, we will be doing a lot of food and wine pairing events at the restaurant.

YES we take reservations. To make reservations, pls call during the late afternoon around 4 pm down. We will remain closed for lunch

indefinitely. But we can open for lunch for special parties during the holidays.

There are many businesses who hold office parties during lunch so keep Purple Yam in mind when the

holiday spirit is near.

TAKEOUT: Yes. However, we will be honest with you if we cannot do this on days and times that the kitchen is extremely busy.

Since we are now open at 5:30 pm for dinner, we would advise people who want to do takeout to order early before the dinner rush

which is usually between 7 - 8:30 pm. 

DELIVERY:  NOT YET.  We will do this as soon as we can do this properly.

Many people have asked for a copy of the menu. Here it is and it is a much more ecological way of sharing our menu with you.

The menu is a mix of Cendrillon classics and new dishes we are trying.  As usual, Romy wants to challenge the diner by

arranging the dishes in this manner.  Just have fun and try everything.  Asians do not think in terms of appetizers, main courses and

desserts.  We like spreads done family style and you pick the dish you want when and how you want to eat it.   We all have a lot to

learn about the Asian customs of eating.

Purple Yam Dinner Menu

Ask your server for our daily specials.  Many of you have requested fish dishes and we have been offering either trout, seabass,

mackerel or cod.

              Sambal, Chutney, Nam prik, Kimchi

$ 15 • Tamarind shrimp with suman sa pandan (rice cakes wrapped in pandan leaves)

$ 13 • Duck leg betutu with taro leaves (slow cooked in Balinese spices and coconut milk wrapped in banana leaves)

$   9 • Korean meatballs with kimchi in purple yam pockets

$ 10 • Spicy tofu & Manila clams soup

              The pig

$   6 • Tocino (sugar-achuete cured pork) sliders in purple yam pan de sal, served with pickled persimmon

$ 12 • Sisig (pig cheeks, ears and snout in lime & chilies)

$ 18 • Lechon kawali (deep fried pork belly) with pickled papaya

$ 18 • Barbecued spareribs from our Chinese oven

               Veggies

$ 12 • Green market veggies in green curry with Asian greens

$ 12 • Bibimbap with shitake, spinach, squash & gingko nuts (made with Philippine heirloom rice from the terraces)

$  9 • Breadfruit & lotus root chips with eggplant caviar

$  8 • Pomelo, green mango & jicama salad

              Sides

$  3 • Haegeen’s homemade kimchi of the day (red or white kimchi, baby radish, scallions... the possibilities are endless)

$  3.50 sml / $ 5 large • Kimchi fried rice

$  3.50 sml / $ 5 large • Bagoong fried rice (Philippine fermented shrimp)

               Cendrillon classics

$   8 • Ukoy, (vegetable & shrimp fritter)

$   7 • Fresh Lumpia (sautéed Napa cabbage, leeks & mushrooms in a rice crepe) served with peanut

and tamarind sauce

$   10 • Beef tapa  (air-dried beef) salad

$   12 • Goat curry with fresh rice pancakes

$   13 • Wild boar pizza

$   16 • Chicken adobo (braised in vinegar, garlic, soy sauce)

$   12 • Pancit bihon (Philippine rice noodles with chicken, pork

& veggies)

$   17 • Oxtail kare kare with bagoong (braised in peanut sauce & veggies. Served with fermented shrimp paste)

               DESSERTS

$   6 • Pandan leche flan (steeped in pandan leaves)

$   6 • Halo halo (Philippine iced dessert with sweet beans, palm seed, cocogel, agar agar, coconut sport, jackfruit topped with flan and purple yam ice cream)

$   6 • Buko pie (young coconut) with a scoop of macapuno ice cream

$   6 • Champorrado (sweet rice in chocolate & cream) topped with coffee ice cream

$   6 • Apple tart  with macapuno ice cream

              Homemade ice creams / SORBETS

$   2 / scoop • Purple yam, jackfruit, banana rum, coffee or macapuno (coconut sport) ice cream

$   2 / scoop • Guava, mango or passionfruit sorbet

$   6 /  3 scoops  (check available flavors)

Purple Yam Brunch Menu

             Starters

$   7 •  Ukoy, (vegetable & shrimp fritter)

$   6 •  Fried pork & chive dumplings with black rice vinegar dip

$   7 • Lumpia Shanghai (deep fried springrolls with pork, mushrooms, carrots, jicama) & sweet-sour pineapple sauce

$   7 • Amy’s Springrolls (grandmother’s recipe with shrimp, tofu, pork & veggies) with rice vinegar dip

$   7 • Fresh Lumpia (sautéed Napa cabbage, leeks & mushrooms in a rice crepe) with peanut & tamarind sauce

$   6 •  Kimchi & scallion pancake

              Eggs

$ 10 • Tocino  (sugar-achuete cured pork) with garlic fried rice and eggs

$  9 •  Homemade sausage with garlic fried rice & eggs

$ 11 •  Beef tapa  (air-dried beef) with garlic fried rice & eggs

$ 12 •  Home-cured corned beef hash with home fries & eggs

              Noodles

$  9 • Pancit bihon (thin rice noodles with chicken, pork

& veggies)

$  11 • Pancit Luglug (rice noodles with ground pork & shrimps)

$  8 vegetarian / $ 10 Duck • Sotanghon (glass noodles with mushrooms & veggies) in a curry broth

$  8 vegetarian / $ 10 Beef • Jap Chae (sweet potato noodle) with shitake & woodear mushrooms, spinach, carrots & scallions

$  8 • Somen (thin wheat noodles with mushrooms & veggies) in a seaweed broth

$  8 • Swiss chard & tofu dumplings in squash soup

                 more rice & some roots

$  12 • Chicken adobo (braised in vinegar, garlic, soy sauce)

$  16 • Lechon kawali (deep fried pork belly) with pickled papaya

$   9 • Bibimbap with brown rice, shitake, spinach, Swiss Chard & fried egg (vegetables will change with the seasons)

$  10 • Balinese fried chicken legs with mashed taro & sweet potatoes

              Sides

$  3.50 sml / $ 5 large • Garlic fried rice

$  3.50 sml / $ 5 large • Bagoong fried rice (Philippine fermented shrimp)

               DESSERTS

$  6 sml / $ 9 large • Bibingka (Philippine rice cake topped with Gouda & French feta cheese)

$   6 • Pandan leche flan (steeped in pandan leaves)

$   6 • Halo halo (Philippine iced dessert with sweet beans, palm seed, cocogel, agar agar, coconut sport, jackfruit topped with flan and purple yam ice cream)

$   6 • Buko pie (young coconut) with a scoop of macapuno ice cream

$   6 • Champorrado (sweet rice in chocolate & cream) topped with coffee ice cream

$   6 • Apple tart  with macapuno ice cream

              Homemade ice creams / SORBETS

$   2 / scoop • Purple yam, jackfruit, banana rum, coffee or macapuno (coconut sport) ice cream

$   2 / scoop • Guava, mango or passionfruit sorbet

$   6 /  3 scoops  (check available flavors)

Check out new york mag restaurant openings

Thank you SO MUCH for all those phone calls, encouraging emails and personal visits

to the restaurant site when we were under construction. It has been one long, hard slog to get everything

together.  It has been eight months since we closed Cendrillon.  And in this tough economy, the only reason

Romy and I have survived this long drought was a combination of family and friends who all pitched in just

to see us through.  We dedicate this new and beautiful restaurant to them and we will make it up to them by

creating a home for everyone where food is the center of life powered by a philosophy that food is for nurturing

of people and the bond that unites a community.  We love Ditmas Park and our new neighbors.

At Purple Yam, we will bring them together with the Cendrillon friends who have lit up our lives forever.

We thank our architects, Claire Weisz and Rob Berry - our HEROES!  When you walk into our new space

and you say you love it, it is because of them and their vision to transform that 99 cent store into something magical.

We also thank our bamboo master and ultimate artist Perry Mamaril for reinventing the uses of bamboo.

I have to confess that when we first opened Cendrillon and being a Filipino, I swore off bamboo saying I would never

be caught dead with a bamboo restaurant.  Well. 14 years later, bamboo has made its revenge on me and

Perry has transformed our bar and backyard into a place some other than Brooklyn or New York.

It is simply Purple Yam.

We also want to acknowledge our beloved little Haegeen Kim who cooked Korean food for us and provided

us with delicious kimchi while we prepared this restaurant for the outside world. She was also the artistic spirit whose hand is

visible in every nook and cranny in this restaurant.  Look for the strie glaze on our bar wall,

the delicate little shelves she installed there where the brackets were carefully painted and glazed to disappear in the

wall.  Haegeen will also cook for us on a regular basis: kimchi, Korean pork balls, bibimbap, spicy tofu soup, etc.

And on some nights and brunches, she will also be your waitress!

Bamboo dissected and reconstructed into a fixture

Perry Mamaril on his nights off from Kuma Inn where he chefs on some nights

Haegeen working on those brackets.  Sheer genius in transforming

something so banal into works of art.

Chef Romy in his brand new kitchen beside the sweet pumpkin soup that

Haegeen made for us for dessert.

We shall all see you soon at Purple Yam.

For all of you who think Brooklyn is another planet, it is.  But it is a wondrous planet

and we would love you to see it while we feed you, of course!

Thank you to the New York press for including us in your Fall Previews

NYT Dining Section Fall Preview

NYT Interactive link for photos, click on Purple Yam

New York Magazine Fall Preview

Time Out New York Fall Preview

Dreaming of Purple Yam

PURPLE YAM IS A FILIPINO PAN ASIAN RESTAURANT

iT IS NOT A KOREAN RESTAURANT.

it was quite amusing to read in a food blog that we have changed our concept and

will now turn PY into a Korean restaurant.  Just because we are exploring Korean home cooking

does not necessarily turn us into something we are not.

Romy and i consider ourselves liberated from any labels.

Just as we did with Cendrillon, we will cook the food that we love, that we remember from home

and new flavors that excite us. We have turned to our Korean waitress, who happens to be an

excellent cook and a talented artist, to bring us the home cooking of her mother who lives in Seoul.

And when the opportunity comes, we will explore other cultures and mothers' home cooking

when the right teacher-cook-artist comes along who shares our philosophy of food.

We look forward to continuing our love affair with

Keralan, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Indonesian food -- simply because we have very dear friends

who come from these cultures and who are excellent cooks themselves.

And along the way, we will embrace others who want to share their legacy.

What will the Purple Yam menu look like?

Tamarind Shrimp with caramelized onions & toasted mustard seeds

We learned this recipe from Maya Kaimal, a very dear and lovely friend who has

promised to come to Purple Yam to cook Keralan dishes for the new nabe.

Balinese duck leg or Bebek Betutu, a dish we learned from Sri Owen who lives in Wimbledon, UK.

Sri used to come to NYC many years ago and cooked her classic Indonesian dishes for Cendrillon.

Hopefully, we can convince her to come one more time for a delicious encore at PY.

Lechon Kawali, Philippine deep-fried pork belly.  yes, we hear the sighs of relief from

hungry Filipinos who have been writing about getting their fix of pork belly the last few months.

Brunch at Purple Yam will consist of Philippine brunch items such as homemade

sausage, air-dried beef (tapa) and achuete-cured pork (tocino).

But we will also have classics such as hash just like what Romy and I do for brunch at home.

Fingerling potatoes, green bell peppers, cipollini onions, eggs are all from the green market

at Grand Army Plaza.

We are quite astonished to find out that quiche, a mainstay of the 70s (we are dating ourselves)

is a very popular item among the young crowd.  When Romy was starting out as a cook

(earning a few more dollars as a student in Philly)

he cranked out hundred of quiches during brunch at La Terrasse in West Philly.

Romy can do a mean quiche and watching him work at the kitchen at the time

i always felt he could do them in his sleep.  He understands the delicate crust that can hold a

liquidy custard and the proportions of cream to milk, eggs and whatever you decide to put in the quiche.

He recalls that his ambitious experiment to make an avocado quiche was a failure.

But never mind, I suggested putting slices of avocado alongside a classic mushroom & leek quiche.

The classic mushroom and leek quiche  -- this one was quite special as we used organic

milk, cream and eggs. Hopefully, we can recreate this without breaking the bank.

Romy has been cooking for several Sundays with our Korean waitress,

Haegeen Kim, learning to make tofu dishes, different variations of kimchee and

experimenting with soju (Korean rice liquor) cocktails.

The classic Korean tofu soup.  Haegeen whipped this up in a few minutes using

cockles, shrimps and scallions.  Absolutely delicious!

Soju cocktails above with mint (mojito style), with umeboshi plums,

cucumber & dill, rhubarb, olives

Below the drinks are pa jun (Korean pancakes) and kimchee

(all recipes from Haegeen's Mom in Korea)

I am sure you are wondering why all these Korean delicacies.  Aren't we Filipino?

But Romy and i have always been very pan-Asian loving all the flavors from our part of the world.

Haegeen has been calling her Mom regularly picking her brain and learning all the secrets

of cooking from a different culture, time and space.

Below is Haegeen's own version of cold bibimbap:

made from a combination of Nishiki, black rice and millet:

ground beef, beansprouts, spinach, carrots, cucumber peel

These are Korean meatballs that Romy plans to make into sliders.

The plan is to make a purple yam pocket bread and slide these little delicious morsels

in it to make a sandwich with condiments of pickled jicama, cucumber & if you want, homemade kimchee.

When i get some decent photos of the restaurant as it is being finished, i will post them.

But right now, i thought it best to whet your appetite.

We plan on exploring other Asian cuisines selecting classic dishes

that can be transformed into the New York setting -- simple but good and all the memories of home in them.

Amy Besa