Sifton: 'Purple Yam is a perfect neighborhood restaurant.'

As at Cendrillon, the result is more than the sum of its parts. Purple Yam is a perfect neighborhood restaurant.

True to its aesthetic, the menu is resistant to easy division into appetizers and main courses. There are kimchis and chutneys to order. There are vegetables and side dishes. There is pig — almost every part of it. And there are Cendrillon classics, ranging from a sublime chicken adobo to a faintly ridiculous wild-boar pizza....The menu is studded with the sort of offerings that inspire craving. (Cravings are a key component to a successful neighborhood restaurant.)

There is that chicken adobo, for instance. Adobo is a national dish of the Philippines, with probably as many recipes for it as there are islands in the archipelago. Some are soupy braises of chicken or pork in soy sauce and vinegar. Others are cooked down until almost dry.

This is Purple Yam’s version: the chicken braised in rice vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and Thai chili pepper, and served in a vastly reduced pool of that liquid, now cut through and softened with coconut milk. Eat it with a bowl of fried rice anointed with bagoong, a kind of fermented shrimp paste, and it’s possible to imagine it on the level of a neighborhood staple, up there with pizza or rotisserie chicken.

Other necessities include those glassy rice noodles with chicken and pork, a plate of oxtails stewed in tomatoes and peanuts and another of deep-fried pork belly with pickled papaya. There ought to be sisig on your table as well, the restaurant’s fantastic, crisp meat salad: chopped pig snout, ears and jowls, crisp and fatty at once, in a slightly fiery lime dressing. (Go on: try it.)

You’ll want some kimchi. Maybe a salad of jicama and green papaya, too. In a depressing nod to market trends, there are “sliders” on the menu, Korean-style meatballs in small buns flavored with purple yams. (These aren’t necessary. Nor are the restaurant’s Chinese-style ribs.) There is slow-cooked duck leg, almost a confit, wrapped in banana leaves.

And there are marvelous desserts: rice pudding flavored with coffee and chocolate; flan rich with the nutty flavor of pandan. Best of all, there is halo halo, the Philippines’ answer to an ice cream sundae: a parfait glass of sweet beans, palm seeds, all manner of coconut products and jackfruit, topped with flan and purple yam ice cream. The combination is hilarious, like an umbrella drink gone mad, and extremely delicious.