On Avenue A near 13th Street, the former coffee shop Gramstand turned into one of those Filipino shipping stores. Since I don't ever ship things to the Philippines, I've not paid much attention to it, but have wondered why Filipinos ship so many things that they need a whole store to do it from.But apparently, shipping isn't all there is here. They have recently outfitted the shop as a grocery store, with a bounty of packaged Fillipino food items at excellent prices. Almost everything is made from calamansi, which was described as a sort of lime, but smaller. They have bottles of calamansi concentrate for $6.99, which seemed high for something I've never tasted. Instead I got a bottle of Ginger Juice mix with calamansi. Besides ginger, it also has cayenne and sugar. You mix it with hot water, and sounds exactly like what I make when I have a sore throat, but granular and only $2.10. A giant bottle of soy sauce is $1.60 (that's not a typo). I didn't get the price of the purple cakes, but really, where else can you find a purple cake?
The name of the place? I have no idea. According to the very friendly men in the store, the signs haven't arrived yet from the Philippines and I neglected to ask.A better question than the name of the store is why does the Ph change to an F when referring to the people versus the country?
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