The story below is a preview from our March/April 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
At Pinoy Store and Kitchen, Franchesca Maglalang showcases her native Filipino cuisine in a Vinton diner.
Layla Khoury-Hanold
Owner Franchesca Maglalang cooks Filipino staples like lumpia, sisig and chicken adobo.
When curious folks stop off Route 24 to check out Pinoy Store and Kitchen — perhaps they saw a social media post about the Filipino restaurant or are refueling at the Exxon station next door — owner Franchesca Maglalang often sends out a piece of lumpia if she sees them deliberating whether to stay for a meal. She describes lumpia to diners as being like a Chinese egg roll, but with a meatier filling. Indeed, ground pork is the star, seasoned with finely chopped celery, onions garlic and eggs, all tightly rolled with wrappers into cigarillo-esque parcels. One bite of the crispy, piping hot roll is all it takes to convince diners to sit down, place a full order and continue snacking, dunking the lumpia into the accompanying sweet Thai chili sauce while they peruse the rest of the menu. Lumpia have become Maglalang’s calling card, but it was a long road to opening a restaurant where she could cook and serve a full menu of her native Filipino cuisine. And she never dreamed she’d be serving sisig and pancit in a converted American diner in Vinton.
Layla Khoury-Hanold
Filipino pantry staples like vinegars, sauces and seasonings line the shelves.
Maglalang, who grew up in the Filipino province of Batangas, was often at her mom’s side in the kitchen. “My mom, you know, she’s a big, big cook,” Maglalang says. “She cooked for the church, cooked for the school, me growing up—she taught me everything she knows.” This early exposure to the kitchen and the satisfaction derived from sharing food and feeding others inspired Maglalang to pursue a degree in hospitality management at De La Salle Lipa University, which culminated with a six-month internship at The Greenbrier in West Virginia.
Maglalang ended up staying at The Greenbrier for ten years, working as a server at all seven of the resort’s restaurants. Toward the end of her tenure, she started a Filipino grocery store in White Sulphur Springs where she cooked lumpia alongside mom-inspired daily specials such as pancit, rice noodles stir-fried with shredded chicken and chicken adobo, a soy sauce-, vinegar- and garlic-based stew simmered with crushed bay leaves. Maglalang’s cooking elicited multiple appeals of “You should open a diner or restaurant!” These are the magic words any aspiring restaurateur dreams of hearing, but opening a restaurant is rarely as simple as acting on it.
Maglalang and her family relocated to Roanoke in June 2023, and along with her fiancé, Joseph Dooley, decided to start their restaurant journey with a food truck. They invested their hard-earned savings into a customized food truck, ordering it from a manufacturer in China in July 2023. By the time the truck was built and arrived in Norfolk for inspection eight months later, they learned that it didn’t pass The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s labeling requirements. U.S. customs denied the truck’s entry and gave the couple a choice: destroy the food truck or return it to the manufacturer. For most, this would be a sign that it wasn’t meant to be. But Maglalang is no stranger to hardship and sacrifice.
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Layla Khoury-Hanold
Pinoy Store and Kitchen is housed in the former Route 24 Diner space in Vinton.
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Layla Khoury-Hanold
The signature lumpia are served piping hot with a sweet Thai chili dipping sauce.
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Layla Khoury-Hanold
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Layla Khoury-Hanold
Pork sinigang brims with okra, eggplant and tomatoes in a tamarind-based broth.
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Layla Khoury-Hanold
Filipino food and decor sit alongside Americana memorabilia and diner classics.
When Maglalang was an infant, her father moved to Japan to find cash-in-hand work—construction, painting, nannying—ultimately overstaying his tourist visa to provide for his family and send Maglalang to private school. “He worked in Japan for 12 years straight without seeing us. I met him the first time when I was turning 13,” Maglalang recalls. “Every Sunday at 1 o’clock he calls us, asks how we’re doing. Every time I had to hand my phone back to my mom, this is his phrase, ‘Do you still love Dad?’” On the fateful day she first met him—she was sitting at her mom’s dining room table eating tinola, a Filipino chicken soup fragrant with ginger—those were the words she heard her father utter. It’s a moment that still makes Maglalang tear up, even more so as she recently secured visas for her father, Clemente Maglalang, and mother, Priscila Maglalang, to join her in the U.S.
Want to learn more about the delicious food served at Pinoy Store? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our March/April 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!