I think you're sauceome.

So, I pass this place on my bike almost every day. It looks a little dumpy on the outside, but it always smells amazing. I’ve been curious about it for a while. I don’t know much about Filipino food. Okay, I know almost nothing about Filipino food. But I know a little more about it today than I did yesterday!

The lunch special at Uni-Mart is $6.99 for a generous scoop of rice, and a huge ladle-ful of any two of their dishes. I picked the Adobong Pusit, which is squid in adobo sauce; and the Waknatoy, which was a slightly sweet bbq-ish pork stew, with lots of red pepper and sliced chorizo in it. We also picked up some BBQ skewers, some Lumpia Shanghai (tiny eggrolls with perfectly spiced ground meat inside), a few Longanisa sausages (a sort of sweet and spicy chorizo), and a crispy turon, which is essentially a banana lumpia, very slightly sweet, and brushed with a honey glaze deep fried in brown sugar on the outside.

Guys, this lunch was seriously out of this world. I’m 100% in love with Filipino food right now. The dishes were simple, but the flavors were perfectly balanced; the spices were complex and interesting without being punch-in-the-face spicy. If this is what Filipino food is like, I absolutely do not understand why there aren’t as many Filipino restaurants in every US city as there are Thai places.

Anyway, if you’re in the Chicago area, I highly recommend venturing into a Uni-Mart and getting the lunch special. There was no menu, and no labels on any of the dishes, but the employees were incredibly helpful and more than happy to explain what everything was.