It Takes Boo-Koo Filipinos to Bring Dollar Hits to Town
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Dollar Hits NY Location - 39-04 64th St. Woodside, NY 11377
On the surface, transplanting the concept to another city looks feasible. Stack chunks of Filipino meats on skewers, let the guests play chef by setting up outdoor grills to warm their skewers, offer rice bowls for traditional Asian fare, and fill the remaining stomach space with amazing desserts like turon and buko pandan. For ambiance, bring out several folding tables for community meals and wear out the grooves of “We Like to Party” by the Vengaboys.
The playlist could use expansion with the usual staple, such as “Get Ready for This” by 2 Unlimited. The New York location has to add Blasterjaxx’s “Narco,” the walkout anthem of Mets closer Edwin Díaz. Even with a paid DJ, Dollar Hits would be the Dollar Store of restaurants without Elvira or an equally exuberant facsimile of her.
Midway through the dinner rush, an employee passes her a black microphone. Elvira welcomes her guests collectively with the right blend of gregarious and ferocious. Then she greets them individually at their tables and poses for group and family pictures. They made her into a Hollywood celebrity they can see almost any night.
Family Picture - Elaine, Charlie (dog), Noah, Elvira, Manuel, Nathan, Natasha, Henry
Elvira would be happy to license Dollar Hits to the Connecticuter for 20 percent of the profits, but she won’t leave her Los Angeles, West Covina, and Woodside, NY restaurants to enliven another location with her character.
It’s not so much the menu items but their presentation that brings guests back. “It's easy to sell the skewers for $1.25 each,” says the 64-year-old Pampangan. “Customers will buy 20 of them.” A $25 pan can feed a small army.
The Filipino clientele made pork isaw (intestines) the most popular of the skewers. A growing fandom of non-Asians are discovering the appeal of unadulterated Filipino cuisine.
This particular restaurant didn’t need to contribute a recipe to The Happy Home Cook section, because it doesn’t take a Cordon Bleu degree to recreate a Dollar Hits recipe. Pick any non-stew dish in our database. Now run a skewer through it.
Historic Filipinotown has not been a majority Filipino community since the WWII. The growing number of Filipino customers drawn to Dollar Hits represents early steps in reclaiming the Silverlake-adjacent neighborhood as a modern Little Manila.
The Unsavory Influence of the Health Department
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health could have snuffed out Dollar Hits shortly after its first week as a food table outside Temple Seafood Market, the first business Elvira and sisters Joyce and Nelita built in the same strip mall.
Elvira relates her restaurant’s humble beginning as a tiny purveyor of tastes of home for Filipina nurses from Kaiser Permanente, Good Samaritan, and Hollywood Presbyterian hospitals in 2009. “We had many customers on our first day. More people came on our second day. By our third day, we had too many customers. In 2013, the Health Department denied us a food license because we had too many customers for our small table.”
Elvira Chan
Dollar Hits was reinvented as a food truck casting the spell of Filipino cooking throughout the boulevards. Everything was copacetic until the Health Department struck again. The County wouldn’t renew their license. Dollar Hits has leased its current space in Los Angeles since 2017.
The festive atmosphere doesn’t totally eclipse the feat of domesticating street food into a stationary but by no means static restaurant. While the street food concept isn’t conventional, new affiliates won’t need to repeat the LA store’s journey from table to truck.
Each location has a physical address with tables and chairs to sit down and experience Filipino hospitality, then go home in clothes smelling of charcoal. Elvira has adult children who are ready to take the mic. Like Mom, they’ll ask every customer where they’re from. Some guests will hail from the PI, but most will likely be American-born. Dollar Hits makes them all feel like they belong whether home is Quezon City or Queens.
Elvira plans to open a fourth store in Houston. The reason why is obvious. “It has lots of Filipinos.” The U.S. Census tracked over 8,000 Filipino-Houstonians in 2010.
Filipino cuisine wasn’t trendy when nurses first flocked to the original table. Another country’s meat will eventually displace adobo as the new sensation. As long as Fil-Ams live in the area, Dollar Hits will continue to enthrall diners and health inspectors.
Anthony Maddela is no longer with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles but public housing residents still benefit from the grants and the partnerships with the Boys & Girls Clubs and Los Angeles Audubon Society he initiated. He is Positively Filipino’s staff correspondent in Southern California and for the entertainment industry. He lives with his wife, Susan. They have a son and daughter in college.
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