#sariling atin

Di tayo susuko, di magpapatalo,Kayang kaya natin to.

On a recent evening, an off-duty doorman hovered by the counter, his jacket with epaulets unbuttoned and swinging. Every table was full, with knots of women wielding substantial handbags, fathers and pigtailed daughters and boys in United States Navy caps and Ecko hoodies who were supplementing dinner with a bag of pork cracklings and Mountain Dew. It is not quite translatable, what it means in Tagalog to call something “our own.” When the Concepcions opened their first shop eight years ago, they identified it, obliquely, as an “oriental grocery.” Here the word on the awning is “Filipino.”