Let’s set one thing straight: If you’re looking for a Filipino restaurant, you’d be hard-pressed to find one in Historic Filipinotown. You can get a fascinating history lesson on the misleading name later. To feed our craving now, we’re heading straight to Eagle Rock, presently flourishing with Filipino culture.

Don’t let the Westfield tag repulse you—the Eagle Rock Plaza is filling up with stores and restaurants better known in the Philippines than the United States. Most notable is Jollibee, a fast-food joint more popular than McDonald’s in the Philippines, but with only 12 locations in this country. Flavor combinations may freak out patrons not used to the Filipino sweet tooth (banana ketchup, anyone?), but the place is always packed. Chow King is another popular chain, serving Chinese-Filipino cuisine, a common subset of Filipino food.

Our fave destination in the mall is Goldilocks, where the fast-food interior belies the quality fare. The fish dishes are popular, the adobo is delicious, and they serve up "fresh lumpia," a burrito-sized, non-fried version of the classic lumpia stuffed with veggies and doused in peanut sauce. It’s a relatively light—and definitely flavorful—option in the midst of heavy Filipino cuisine. Goldilocks is also a bakery, where they make great use of the purple yam known as ube, flavoring cakes and muffins with the vibrant tuber.

Of course, not all Filipino food is in Eagle Rock Plaza. In another part of the neighborhood, Barrio Fiesta is jumpin’. This large, colorful restaurant serves up all the classics to a huge crowd. Saturday nights are especially busy, when the tables, topped with cakes from Red Ribbon Bakeshop, are jammed together for family birthday parties. (Imitator Fiesta Sa Barrio across the street? Not so crowded.)

Any one of these places would be a great place to start your Filipino tasting tour. For those just getting started, here’s a basic glossary of popular dishes to help you navigate menus and get eating.

Pancit: Most stir-fried noodle dishes, which probably came to the Philippines with Chinese immigrants. Pancit can be topped with anything from a simple hard-boiled to egg to whatever’s in the fridge.

Sotanghon: A vermicelli-noodle dish with bits of meat and vegetables thrown in, sotanghon can be a dry dish or a soup. Barrio Fiesta makes a nice version of the former.

Adobo: Perhaps the most famous Filipino contribution to world cuisine, and rightly so. Cuts of chicken or pork simmered in a sauce dominated by soy sauce and vinegar—the more vinegar the better, we think. The mixed adobo (a mixture of chicken and pork) at Goldilocks is fantastic, but don’t expect low-fat meat. It’s all about the flavor from bones and fat.

Ube: It’s kinda like a yam with an intense purple color, and is used in a great many desserts—usually in pudding, ice cream or baked goods like puto or small rice muffins. The color is natural, but a home cook will have a hard time finding enough of it to get the rich color found in bakeries and restaurants. Our current favorite way to get ube? Chef Andre Guerrero—native son of Eagle Rock’s Filipino community—has an ube milkshake at the Oinkster that is, in a word, awesome.

Halo-halo: The preeminent dessert or sweet snack. The name means “mix-mix,” and the dish is made with shaved ice, condensed milk, beans, jellies and fruit. It’s usually topped with crisped rice; we always request ube ice cream on top. At Barrio Fiesta, the halo-halo is almost addictive; bits of sweet cheese are added to it, and why not? A dessert that has kidney beans might as well have cheese too.

Katherine Spiers is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.