Ching's Famous Hopia Bakeshop

TC and I were craving gelato and I thought we could visit this new'ish gelato place on the corner of Fern and Grape (which was the site of the former Fern St. Cafe), it had recently opened as Piacere Mio, a cafe and gelato bar.

We saw the giant ice cream cone on top of the building during our Fall break excursion here back with KDD and KDB and made a mental note to come back...


Well dagnabbit, our gelato craving was quashed and stomped upon by these handwritten signs unceremoniously taped up on the window. In fact, after peering in, we saw that the entire cafe had been gutted out and looked like a mess! "Closed for a few months"?  Perhaps this was the kiss of death? Remodeling, but never to reopen?

I really don't know how long this sign had been up either but it said, "Today is our last day" and that they would reopen as a restaurant. Hmmmm, we'll see.

So we were both disappointed but of course, there was always Plan C, which was to check out this hopia place in National City.

One of our friends recommended Ching's, which specializes in hopia. It's on East 8th Street in National City, right across from Valerio's City Bakery. Next to Ching's, is Carnival Supermarket, which I must check out for a future visit.  Oh Cathy....if you're reading this, time for some "research"! :)

Ching's Famous Hopia Bakeshop is located at the end of a small stripmall. It has been in this location for 22 years.

I've seen their hopia sold at a few mom and pop Filipino stores in the South Bay. Their hopia is also sold at Seafood City, a Filipino-centric supermarket.

Hopia is a type of round cake that is Chinese in origin. The pastry s tender and flaky on top. The tradtional filling is usually yellow mung bean but ube is also another popular flavor. Here at Ching's, there are six different flavors of hopia. In addition to hopia, they also sell empanadas here.

The six flavors were displayed in a lonely case that had nothing else but the samples. It looked a bit odd that way.

The other case was filled with prepackaged hopia in all of the flavor permutations. There were packages of salted cashews on top of that case as well.

Of course, there was a religious figurine here. I am not sure of his name or significance, but again, it could be the big JC as a young one. Wait, was that sacrilegious of me to say that?

I hope not! I was expecting to see the Santo Nino doll or the Lady of Penafrancia (seen at other Filipino foodstores and eateries).

I didn't really want to shell out for a package of 9 or 12 or whatever it was of only one flavor. We opted to first try three flavors for $1.60. These were buko pandan (coconut pandan), langka (jackfruit) and baboy ("pork", but it wasn't really pork meat but wintermelon in pork fat)...

After a few bites, I thought, WTH, let's get the other three flavors, even though I was already familiar with mongo (yellow mung bean), ube (purple yam), and pineapple. They try to differentiate the flavors with colored stamps on top. The one without a stamp was the standard yellow mung bean hopia, which my dad has been making lately. To tell you the truth, I like my dad's way better than these!

Here is the hopia carnage, bitten into by TC and myself. My favorite flavor was the pineapple. I hated the baboy and was not fond of the buko pandan either.

TC's favorite flavor was the langka; she just loves jackfruit. Bert tried them later at home and liked the pineapple, ube and langka.

The size of the hopias here are comparable to other brands. These are touted to be the best, but to me, they really aren't the "best" best. They do have a good selection of flavors, even though I don't like them all. Maybe they taste better when they are fresh, who knows. Not that these were stale, they weren't. The filling was quite generous and the tops were flaky the way I liked it. I prefer less filling and more of the flaky layers, the way my dad makes it. I need to learn how he does it so I can do this myself!

The guy working the counter couldn't really explain to me why the "baboy" didn't really have pork. As an employee of this store, I really feel he should know why there wasn't pork in there. I mean, I was curious why it was named "baboy" but had "winter melon" in parentheses. That didn't make sense to me.  Maybe he wasn't used to being questioned about the flavor or what, but hey, inquiring minds (mine) want to know.

I mentioned in my post detailing our recent visit to Filipino Food & Bakery, where I bought hopiang baboy, that the so called pork hopia didn't really have pork in it. Of course, I always assumed it did. Their version tasted like it had pork fat. I had to look it up later to find out that the pork flavor really only had the pork fat and wintermelon. Here at Ching's it had a faint savory taste but it's not a flavor that you'd expect in a pastry.

I'm glad we were able to mix and match the flavors. It was fun sampling them all especially the non traditional flavors.

Other reviews about Ching's:
"Ching's Famous Hopia Bakeshop: Filipino Treats in National City", FoodGPS, February 1, 2013

Ching's Famous Hopia Bakeshop
1722 East 8th St.
National City, Ca 919150
(619) 477-9626

There is no website or facebook page

Up next, a vist across the street to a National City landmark!