In 2017, three of the most influential food critics in America made the same prediction: Filipino food will be the next big food boom.
Anthony Bourdain told CNN Philippines he believed Filipino cuisine would soon explode in the U.S. in the same way Korean cuisine recently had. The late and widely-revered Los Angeles Times food critic, Jonathan Gold, said Filipino cuisine was having its moment in L.A., a place he saw as the center of a "second-generation cuisine” that “plays on qualities of fermentation and umami, saltiness and sourness, freshness and age. It is unlike anything you may have tasted in other cuisines,” he wrote. And Andrew Zimmern of the Bizarre Foods series that earned him four James Beard awards said of Filipino food, “I’ve been calling it for five years… It’s just going to keep getting more and more popular.”
Three years later, the wave that began in Los Angeles has at last come to Dallas. Owing to a small league of young Filipino Americans experimenting with their parents’ and grandparents’ recipes — mostly in the form of pop-ups — we are discovering chef-driven retakes on dishes like chicken adobo and arroz caldo. And even though most Texans have no idea what kare-kare, longganisa or halo-halo is, the lines at the breweries and hotels that host these events indicate we are eager to find out.
The general obscurity of Filipino food up to this time is puzzling considering that, nationwide, Filipino Americans make up the second-largest population of Asian Americans, after Chinese Americans. The latest available census data from 2017 reports there are more Filipinos in Dallas County than Japanese and Koreans, and yet nearly all of us have at one time enjoyed sushi or Korean barbecue. So why has Filipino food remained mostly off the radar until now?
“It’s one of those questions we all keep asking ourselves,” says Stephen Smith, formerly of Betty Ringer Ice Cream who is now developing alcohol-infused ice creams for Hey Sugar Candy Store. He is like many Filipino Americans who moved to the U.S. after his father completed Navy service. “Is it that people aren’t coming to us, or are we not putting it out there?” he wonders.
Among the new pop-ups in Dallas putting Filipino food out there is Not Your Lola’s, a group that began last spring whose name translates to “not your grandma’s.” They are showcasing this food movement with Dallas’ first Filipino Food Festival at Four Corners Brewing Company on March 8, where together with Smith and four other vendors, they will offer their translations of Filipino classics.
When describing these characteristically young chefs’ renditions of their parents’ and grandparents’ ways of cooking, many insist on avoiding the use of words like “elevated” and “fusion food,” even though, as Denise Apigo of the pop-up Bilao points out, “Filipino food is the original fusion food.” Influences from Spain, China, Thailand, Indonesia and the U.S. — who colonized the islands for 48 years before its independence in 1946 — all result in a cuisine that is a conflation of global ingredients and cooking techniques.
Before the U.S.’s occupation of the roughly 7,500 islands, Spain colonized the Philippines and Mexico concurrently for around 300 years, and subsequently introduced produce from the New World like chocolate, corn, pineapples and peanuts, as well as their method of cooking foods in the base sauce called sofrito — tomatoes, onions, garlic and oil. Chinese impressions include noodles and fried spring rolls, called pancit and lumpia in the Philippines, respectively. And the U.S. brought hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken and ice cream, along with convenience products like Spam and evaporated milk.
The food doesn’t need to be elevated, though, and “it doesn’t need to evolve,” says Randall Braud, the head chef of Not Your Lola’s. He asserts the presentation needs to evolve, rather. Buffets and turo turo restaurants, literally translated from Tagalog to “point point” concepts where customers select food to be prepared from a display, have historically been geared toward other Filipinos.
To draw new audiences, these chefs, some of whom are professionally trained and others who are just practiced home cooks, are incorporating local, Texas ingredients and “Frenching it up,” as Braud calls it. He and other experienced chefs like Apigo consider it as putting their own stamp on food that is still distinctly Filipino.
To describe Filipino cuisine in terms of its most basic flavors, it would be soy sauce, vinegar and garlic, with pig constituting the staple protein and rice the staple grain. Funk comes from fermented products like fish paste and patis — Filipino fish sauce. Sour, tangy notes are a result of vinegars like palm and coconut, as well as calamansi, the country’s hybrid of sour orange and lime. And acidity is balanced out with sweetness in ingredients like ube, banana and coconut that show up in main course sauces as well as desserts.
“This is us,” announces Sarah Rañola, the chef behind Hella Lumpia who serves as the lumpia leader of the pop-ups. “These are our influences and flavor profiles, and people are finally starting to notice.” She feels strongly that now is the right time for Filipino food’s spotlight in Dallas, and the 16,000 people who’ve expressed interest in attending the Filipino Food Festival prove she isn’t wrong.
Following is who you can expect to see at the event and the dishes they’ll be preparing on March 8 from noon to 4 p.m.. If this gathering is like any of the other pop-up events that occur throughout town, getting there early will be key as food almost always sells out.
Ulam
Anna Swann of Ulam spearheaded the Filipino pop-up movement in Dallas three years ago at Peticolas Brewing Company, where she continues to alternate between pop-ups and ticketed, coursed meals in a private room. Her interest in cooking began after moving from San Francisco to Texas, when she started trying to recreate the flavors she craved from family gatherings in California. Of her recipes, she says, “I knew I had them right when it tasted like home.”
Swann took her chicken adobo recipe to MasterChef auditions in 2015, where she made it to the top 80. The passing of her lolo (grandfather) inspired her to apply. The two often watched MasterChef together, and she determined to do as he had told her: Follow your dreams. She and her husband Spencer Swann say they’re open to the idea of a restaurant if demand outweighs her current role in product development at Fossil.
At the festival, Swann will be making her tipsy pancit — a mix of canton and bihon noodles in a savory sauce with toppings like dehydrated chicken adobo, patis, cured egg yolk, crispy shallots and chilies — as well as bistek Tagalog — soy and citrus marinated tri-tip served with her coconut-cilantro-garlic rice and grilled onions. facebook.com/ulamdallas.
Not Your Lola’s
The host of the festival, Not Your Lola’s, is comprised of three childhood friends who discovered their chef Randall Braud at a bao cooking competition in 2018. Braud, who formerly worked as sous chef to Mot Hai Ba’s Peja Krstic, brings credentials to the group, as well as Carlo Wayan, who currently works as a pastry cook at the Ritz-Carlton. The manager, Daniel Gerona, and grill master, Jed Pajela, are like other young Filipinos who became interested in learning their mothers’ and aunts’ recipes after moving to college. Their first event at the Belmont Hotel drew over 200 people who stayed in line despite rain and a late start time.
With more experience under them now, they are prepared to exhibit all of Dallas’ Filipino talent with this event. Gerona says sharing the spotlight as they are doing is “just part of being Filipino. Our generation supports each other.”
At the festival, you’ll find their version of Bicol Express — pork belly braised in coconut milk and fermented shrimp paste with garlic, ginger and Thai chilies. After resting, the belly is fried again and served with water spinach sautéed in the braising liquid, and then topped with more chilies and fried water spinach.
There’ll also be a vegan mushroom monggo — mung bean soup. Braud’s monggo starts with oyster mushrooms roasted in a banana koji miso — a fermented combination of black beans, rice and bananas. It will be added to a veggie stock with the mung beans, mirepoix and more miso, and then topped with fried oyster mushrooms. facebook.com/notyourlolas.
Marie’s Kitchen
After working for 20 years as an accountant for a corporation in San Francisco, Candy Marie Ramos, along with her husband Jay Gerson Jr., quit their jobs and moved to Dallas to try something completely different but their own — a small-scale diner in an office building that opened last July. Lucky for those office employees and for us, we can get silog, Filipino breakfast, along with a Filipino dish-of-the-day each day of the workweek from 7 am to 4:30 p.m.
Silog is a combination of the Tagalog words for fried rice — sinangang and egg — itlog, and it usually comes with meat like Spam or longganisa (sausage). Ramos and Gerson will be outside the festival at the grill, making tapsilog — silog with citrus-garlic marinated steak. Mix up the garlic rice and fried eggs, and top it off with extra atchara (pickled papaya) for a mélange of flavors.
In addition, they will be grilling chicken wing inasal — a dish that comes from their home island of Negros and is prepared in a marinade of garlic, vinegar, lemongrass and spice. 11910 Greenville Ave. #103. marieskitchentx.com.
Bilao
Denise Apigo of the pop-up Bilao considers herself the “new kid” on the pop-up scene. From the mountains of Baguio City, Philippines, her family moved to Texas when she was 14 for her father’s engineering position at Texas Instruments. She’s spent the last nine years working in hotels and restaurants around Dallas, most recently as the chef de partie at Bullion. Of all the groups present, she may be the most determined to open her own brick-and-mortar Filipino restaurant in Dallas one day.
Bilao is the word for a flat, woven basket used in the provinces for winnowing rice. It’s a traditional symbol that Apigo says reminds her of home and the deep roots that she comes from.
At the festival, she’ll be making two of the Philippines’ most emblematic dishes: lechón and kare-kare. Apigo’s lechon kawali is a twice-cooked pork belly with liver sauce and atchara, and her kare-kare — a peanut-based beef stew with eggplant, baby bok choy, green beans and shrimp paste — will also be available. facebook.com/BilaoDFW.
Hella Lumpia
A native Floridan, Sarah Rañola of Hella Lumpia broke from a family pattern of the nursing profession for a culinary arts diploma from Johnson & Wales University in Denver. She says she’s always known that cooking Filipino food is what she wanted to do. With the help of her partner Rachel Trammell, they launched Hella Lumpia last fall with a pop-up at Peticolas Brewing Company.
Hella Lumpia’s events that occur almost monthly in different neighborhood breweries like Lakewood Growler and Oak Cliff Brewing Company are a perfect example of the synergetic relationship many of these groups form with the businesses that host them. At a recent pop-up that filled every available seat at Bluffview Growler, regular Eric Gillispie, who was just there for a beer and the game, said Rañola’s food was the best he’d had in a long time.
At the festival, she’ll be making hand-rolled fried lumpia, filled with ground pork, onions and garlic, as well as her signature ube Rice Krispies treats that come drizzled with sweetened condensed milk and toasted coconut. hellalumpia.com.
Stephen Smith
In collaboration with his current employer at Hey Sugar Candy Store, Stephen Smith will bring back Betty Ringer ice creams for one night only at the festival. He’ll keep his usual flair with flavors like mango sorbet with boonie peppers and pandan sticky rice with coconut jam and latik — the crumbled solids from a can of boiled down coconut cream. He’ll also have hojicha — toasted green tea from the Cultured Cup with toasted almonds, Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, and black sesame ice cream sandwiches.
No one will be serving the national dish of the Philippines — chicken adobo — which means you’ll need to watch for pop-up announcements from these talented and enthusiastic young cooks who all eager to share their food with the people of Dallas.
If you go
Dallas Filipino Food Festival 2020: 12-4 p.m. Sunday, March 8, at Four Corners Brewing Company, 1311 S. Ervay Street. Free admission. Food for purchase.