If you’re looking to stick to Filipino-inspired dishes, Purple Patch’s dessert menu is a treasure trove. The desserts highlight ingredients in Filipino dishes like mango, sticky rice and plantains.
I wanted to try a dish that complements the purple in the restaurant’s name, so I indulged in the ube bread pudding with ube ice cream ($9). Ube is vibrant purple-colored yam originally from the Philippines that tints any food a purple color.
Purple Patch is Filipino owned and operated and it’s easy to tell that tradition runs deep here. You’ll find a delightful array of classic Filipino dishes, mixed in with modern American fare. For starters, definitely order the fried spicy chicken adobo wings, which they serve with a sweet papaya salad. Then, work your way through a full plate of pork adobo. They braise it in soy sauce, vinegar and garlic. It’s delicious.
How do you pay tribute to the classics while simultaneously bumping them up ever so much? Just ask the Purple Patch. This restaurant delivers note-perfect Filipino food with just the right amount of playfulness.
Walking down Mount Pleasant Street several weeks later, Lambert, who knew James and had heard about the piano, glimpsed it through the restaurant’s basement window. He dropped a note at James’s house, several blocks away.
“Call me,” it read. “I have an idea for the piano.”
Within a day, the men made their pitch to Purple Patch’s owner, Patrice Cleary: An open-piano session from 7 to 10 p.m. every Wednesday. Pianists would play what they wanted, and — this was extremely important — there would be no amplifiers, no electric instruments, and no recorded music.
Washington, D.C. is quickly becoming the nation’s food capital. From classic eateries and upscale dining to cupcake shops and vegan diners, there’s a woman-run spot for everybody.
Serving an amazing brunch, Purple Patch is one of my favorite weekend spots in the city. Purple Patch specializes in Filipino food and their ube chicken and waffles is an amazing Filipino-American fusion dish.
If you’re looking for something a bit different from your normal French toast and eggs benedict brunch offerings, Purple Patch should be your go-to, especially if you’ve never gotten to try Filipino cuisine before.
If seafood is your thing, then you must order the incredible Escabeche – whole fried 1lb red snapper, sweet red pepper & green pepper in a ginger soy sauce with jasmine rice.
Purple Patch has become one of the major restaurants to visit because of their famous Lumpia dish made with beef, pork, and banana flavored ketchup dipping. Never had chicken wings with Calamansi sauce? You would definitely come for more of Purple Patch’s’ Calamansi sweet and spicy Calamansi sauce.
this amazing music community that started one year ago and has flourished. They just had their one year anniversary and I heard the story for the first time. Apparently two Mt. Pleasant neighborhood people noticed an unused piano at Purple Patch, and they approached the owner
Purple Patch is a bi-level Mt. Pleasant restaurant that was D.C.’s first Filipino restaurant at its 2015 opening. Since then, the restaurant has been named as one of the city’s best by top area food critic Tom Sietsma and has landed on Tablelog’s list of the top 10 best Filipino restaurants in the nation.
Ube is the star of this dessert concocted by Purple Patch owner Patrice Cleary. Combining her Filipino and Irish backgrounds, the treat features a springy bread pudding baked with granola and ube (pronounced “oo-beh”), a starchy tuber also known as a purple yam. The vibrantly colored ingredient has a mild and sweet nuttiness, similar to a pistachio’s, but with a creaminess. A drizzle of rich caramel builds on the pudding’s delightful gooeyness, and a cool scoop of bright ube ice cream caps it all off.
“”Sisig’ means to snack on something sour,” explains Patrice Cleary, owner and chef of Washington’s Purple Patch restaurant. “They should rename it ‘to snack on something flavorful.’ ” Indeed, this Filipino dish (pronounced “see-sig”) of crisped, chopped pork, onions and peppers — served in a sizzling hot skillet and often topped with an egg — is the opposite of bland.
Follow that savory aroma of fried garlic, and it’ll lead you to other D.C.-area restaurants making their mark with Filipino fare. Think Purple Patch, in Mount Pleasant
The food? It’s a given that my tongue is going on a culinary paradise. My go-tos are Mama Alice’s crunchy lumpia with banana ketchup dipping sauce, what I like to call the head-turning sizzling sisig (people’s heads will literally turn), and ube ice cream with brownie.
Of Asian cuisines, Filipino food may not be as revered as Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, or Korean. But for the past two years, Filipino food is gaining popularity in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States.
I had only been three days in this wonderful and amazing city and already I was missing the most important part of my regular Filipino adult life: rice and adobo! (No offense to my kababayan who prefer kanin at sinigang!)
Filipina-American restauranteur Patrice Cleary is bringing her unique and delicious spin on Filipino food to Washington D.C. with her popular restaurant, Purple Patch.
Filipino cuisine is red hot right now, especially here in the District. Which is why Myx TV sought out Purple Patch co-founder Patrice Cleary for its nascent series, “My Motto.”
Purple Patch and its memorable Filipino dishes have built a reputation for themselves beyond Washington D.C. With merely a year of life, Purple Patch has already been recognized as one of the top Filipino restaurants in the U.S. by different publications and was recently featured in Tom Sietsma’s Fall Dining Guide as one of the top 37 restaurants to visit in D.C. The mastermind behind what feels like a cozy piece of art is Patrice Clearly, a Filipino-American woman with a passion for Filipino food. “Failure is not an option.” she told Myx TV in her featured episode of “My Motto.”
Patrice Cleary serves as owner, general manager and chef at Purple Patch, with an arduous schedule she says is necessary to make her business succeed.
Patrice Cleary is the owner of Purple Patch DC, a Filipino American restaurant in the Mount Pleasant area of the nation’s capital. In its first year, Purple Patch was listed among the “Top 25 Restaurants of 2015 in D.C.” by Tom Sietsema, food critic for The Washington Post. Though the 150-seater restaurant offers both Filipino classics and American entrees, the eatery was singled out for its Asian cuisine.
The restaurant, named for ube, a purple yam that turns up on their dessert menu, is in the space formerly occupied by Tonic. Co-owner Patrice Cleary has teamed up with her husband Drew to be the first to bring Filipino food to D.C. Cleary has passed her family recipes on to chef Jason Smith, and he’s done a fine job with them, though he defers to Cleary’s mom for a popular appetizer.
Positively Filipino
“Filipino dishes at Purple Patch are both for the adventurous and the cautious eater. The flavors range from the spicy to the salty and sweet in manageable portions that leave room for the unique Filipino ube (purple yam) desserts Cleary developed.”
Tabelog
“They combine old Philippine recipes with classic American favorites…to offer a wonderful dining experience sure to please everyone.”
TODFOO Travel
“It was a narrative filled with family, culture, and passion. A love story as beautiful as the food itself.” ★★★★★
Travel + Leisure
The nation’s capital has become a hot destination for much more than politics and history. There’s now a significant dining scene that’s well worth a visit, including the prix fixe-only Rose’s Luxury and Filipino-American fare at Purple Patch…
DCist
After hiring a new chef, the menu is better than ever, with minor tweaks to old staples like pancit bihon and the sizzling comfort of breakfast dishes like sisig (and there’s a brand new pork dish I’m told is amazing)…
VacationIdea
Purple Patch serves a delicious and unique combination of classic Philippine dishes and American cuisine. Owners Patrice Cleary and her husband Drew aspire to feature a menu with comforting, relaxing, and homey dishes.
Washington Post
The owners of Purple Patch, a Filipino-American restaurant in Mount Pleasant, are readying to open a coffee shop next door on Saturday…
Thrillist
What if there were two floors of awesome in Mt Pleasant beckoning you with sliders, lumpia, steak frites, and cocktails that make you feel like you’re on vacation? Enter Purple Patch, a Filipino-American restaurant in the former Tonic space that looks like a success story from Flip This House….
Washington Post
Patrice Cleary, co-owner of Purple Patch, uses her mother’s recipe — and labor — for the restaurant’s prized lumpia, selling hundreds of pieces a week…
Washington Post
…In addition to Filipino classics like chicken adobo (prepared with vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, soy sauce and peppercorn), Purple Patch serves American fare like beef sliders and steak. “Why not?” Cleary says. It’s what her family enjoys.
DC Eater
Purple Patch is opening tonight, according to their Facebook page. This is one of the city’s upcoming Filipino restaurants.
Washington Post
The split-level restaurant in Mount Pleasant that formerly housed Tonic is undergoing a transformation into Purple Patch. The new restaurant comes from a Tonic alum and will serve classic Philippine dishes alongside American comfort food…
