Three miles but seemingly half a world away is Fiesta Grill, the fanciest of the city’s many Filipino spots. When I was growing up, one of my closest friends was Filipino. Every few weeks I would eat at Maria’s house: pork with some crunchy stuff, chicken with yummy brown sauce and, for dessert, weird Jell-O rectangles.

It wasn’t until I was an adult and visited my first Filipino restaurant that I realized Maria’s family was serving authentic food from the islands: chicken adobo, lechon and buko pandan. All the memories and flavors — the coconut milk, vinegar and calamansi — came rushing back.

The closest I get to Maria’s table these days is Fiesta Grill West Side. The restaurant seats 150 and is best described as cafeteria-meets-imperial-ballroom: the chairs are heavy carved wood, upholstered in shiny red fabric and just past the steam table. The lighting is fluorescent, and four flat screens loudly broadcast Filipino cable. A feast for three costs $40.

Tables of happy regulars order the sizzling bangus, chopped milk fish with red onions and chiles, and the sisig, a traditional comfort food made with pork belly and lemon juice. Those and a handful of other items are served Monday to Thursday. On weekends, when the place is hopping with ballroom and line dancing, there are 100 different offerings, including all those dishes I loved at Maria’s. Now that I’m grown up, and it’s B.Y.O.B., I carry a six-pack to extinguish the 10-alarm chiles.

Just north of Jersey City is Hoboken, a mile-square town packed with more than 300 restaurants. When I was a child, hardly anyone ever went to Hoboken (the only place tougher than Jersey City) with its longshoremen saloons and streets I wouldn’t walk down alone.

One of my first boyfriends grew up there, and showed me the beauty that was old-school Hoboken. After a tour of every “On the Waterfront” filming location, he took me to Biggie’s Clam Bar and persuaded me to eat my first raw littleneck. He introduced me to Brother Biggie, then in his 50s (now 82), a short, joyful man with a smile for every customer who walks in, whether it’s the first time or the 1,000th. Brother Biggie, Michael Yaccarino, inherited the business from his father, the original Biggie, who started in the 1940s with a pushcart, going door to door to all the bars at the back end of town.

The menu of clams, burgers and hot dogs has grown to include seafood bisque and a meaty crab cake, not just in Hoboken but also in a new location in Carlstadt, feeding all those Hobokenites who have moved to Bergen County. Last April they opened their newest place uptown, on the site that used to be the Clam Broth House, a 113-year-old Hoboken institution.