Shop Halo Halo: start with dessert

We do not go to Shop Halo Halo for a loaf. We go for dessert, and we plan the day around that fact — because once you have had Geleen Abenoja’s ube, you will want to plan the day around it too! Halo-halo means “mix-mix,” and the name is the whole menu idea: distinct sweets that belong together! Abenoja is a first-generation Filipina-American who built the bakery from pop-ups into a brick-and-mortar chapter inside Botanical Bakeshop on SE Woodstock, a shared room with Daphne’s Botanicals where plants and pastry lived in the same breath. That Woodstock room is the one people still picture: two Filipina-owned shops, a plant-heavy space, pastry on one side, 50th and Woodstock across from the library. HERE IS THE THING YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO KNOW: that Woodstock door is permanently closed. Shop Halo Halo has been popping up out of Union Way PDX — an indoor strip of small shops and boutiques across from Powell’s City of Books — while the next kitchen gets built, with a soft-opening pattern of Thursday through Sunday and a curated case. CHECK BEFORE YOU GO. Look at the account they actually update. A dessert shop this size changes faster than a country-loaf institution, and we would rather you find the ube than a dark window.

When the case is lit, the room — wherever it is that week — is about color. Ube shows up as a deep, cooked purple, not a pastel stunt. Halo-halo arrives in layers you can see from the top: beans, jellies, fruit, leche flan, shaved ice, evaporated milk. Shortbread and cupcakes sit in the case like a little jewelry box. We can also see the house-made ube halaya working its way through almost everything, and that is the flavor that resets people who only know ube from a jar.

What we always order

Halo-halo, when they are serving it. That is the namesake and the must-try: GET THE HALO-HALO if it is on offer, and eat down through the cup instead of hunting for a single “best bite!” The ice melts into the milk, the flan gives you custard, the fruit and jellies keep changing the spoon, and the ube keeps showing up like the whole dessert has a purple heartbeat. We do not treat it as optional if it is out. We treat it as the reason we came.

Then the bakery case, which is the everyday visit. Bibingka. Cassava cake. Ube cupcakes with that violet crumb. Lavender calamansi shortbread that smells like citrus and flowers at the same time. Those are the pastries we name because they are the shop’s own language, not a generic “Asian bakery” list. The house-made ube halaya — purple yam jam, cooked in-house until it is dense and glossy — is the filling that keeps showing up, and we ask for it even when we are only buying cookies. Other items rotate: ube cheese pandesal, black sesame butter mochi, ube crinkle cookies, seasonal shortbreads. We do not pretend those are a standing board. We look at what is out, and we buy more than one thing because this is a “mix-mix” case. Dessert first means we do not save room for a sandwich that is not the point.

Before you go

Hours are the visit. Typically Thursday through Sunday, and even that is a pattern, not a contract. Abenoja has popped up, fundraised, and relocated as the business outgrew or left a room. If Union Way is the current counter, go there — downtown, across from Powell’s, a little indoor strip — instead of leaving a sad review on a Woodstock window. If a new storefront has opened, go there instead. This is not a loaf run and not a croissant run. If someone in your group wants naturally leavened bread, do that somewhere else and meet for dessert. We have used Shop Halo Halo as the last stop of a walk, which is the right order. Ube cupcakes do not want to ride under a warm miche.

Bring a flexible appetite. The case is small. The famous thing might be the halo-halo one week and the cassava cake the next. Ask what they are proud of that day. The good answer will be specific — a flavor, a texture, a filling they cooked. We go when we want Filipino pastry that tastes like someone cooked the ube. We check the hours. We order dessert FIRST!

More on the place page: Shop Halo Halo