Asked to name your favorite dish from Japanese, Italian, Mexican, or Indian cuisine, and a flood of options may come to mind. Should you choose ramen or sushi? Pizza or pasta? Tacos or enchiladas? Butter chicken or saag paneer? Yet when asked to recall a treasured dish of the Philippines, you may find yourself stumped to identify a single entree.
It’s been five years since food writer Andrew Zimmern predicted Filipino cuisine was going to become “the next big thing.” Yet the flavors of the Philippines are still largely misunderstood by the rest of the world. Food stylists have been known to position chopsticks alongside Filipino dishes, assuming the country’s Southeast Asian geography means chopsticks are used as the primary delivery vehicle for food, when it is, in fact, forks and spoons. Balut, or developing bird embryo, has been erected as a lazy stand-in for a cuisine as varied and nuanced as its 18 regions.
Often called the original fusion cuisine, Filipino food is an intricate pattern of Spanish, Western, Chinese, Japanese, and Pacific Islander flavors that serve as living proof of the country’s rich cultural history. Chicken or pork adobo uses the Spanish term adobo meaning “marinade” to drench meats in a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar. Kare kare, or oxtail stew, derives its name from “curry” as a result of the country’s deeply rooted Indian heritage. The celebrated use of Spam—fried to golden crisps in spamsilog or served in sandwiches between fluffy French bread topped with a fried egg—remains a symbol of the American influence during World War II.
But make no mistake: The palate of Filipino food is entirely its own, relying on acids and sweetness perhaps more than any other cuisine. The crunchy, indulgent exterior of lechon, or whole spit-roasted pig, is lightened with a dip of lechon sauce made from vinegar, sugar, and a pinch of liver. Savory dishes like pork longganisa (a sausage made of ground pork) and Jollibee-style spaghetti (pasta slicked with tomato sauce and a kick of sugar) are sweeter than one might expect. It’s here that flavors don’t blend together so much as sit atop one another, lifting each up into an addictive symphony of tangy, salty, and sweet.
Although the cuisine is pork heavy, a natural abundance of seafood and tropical fruit has given rise to dishes that are light without being bland. Think mango and tomato salads finished with tart calamansi juice and bagoong, an umami-rich fermented fish sauce native to the Philippines. Or tilapia sinigang, a delicate soup for which whitefish is poached in sour tamarind broth alongside fresh greens like water spinach and bok choy.
Filipino food is notoriously unburdened by dairy or gluten, making it suitable for a variety of diets and health regimens. Meals are traditionally eaten family style, allowing the cuisine to slide seamlessly into the ascending trend of sharing plates and communal dining. The reliance on vinegar as a condiment renders standard Western sauces full of sodium and fat redundant. This in itself should be seen as a welcome addition to any table.
Despite these advantages, the food of the Philippines continues to be largely misunderstood and neglected by the rest of the world. This is slowly beginning to change. Earlier this year Bloomberg reported that Google searches for “Filipino food” have doubled since 2012, while entries for “lumpia near me” have skyrocketed 3,350 percent. Last year Bon Appétit placed Filipino restaurant Bad Saint in Washington, D.C., at number two on its annual America’s Best New Restaurants list after the restaurant had started drawing lines of diners anxious for a taste of adobong dilaw or vigan empanadas stuffed with beef, egg, and bean sprouts.
In New York, Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan have been propelling Pinoy food forward for decades, first at their restaurant Cendrillon and now at Purple Yam. Other eateries across the country like Isla Pilipina in Chicago and Full House BBQ in Las Vegas are also seeing increasing numbers of loyal customers. Yet nowhere bursts with as much Filipino flavor as Los Angeles, a city with the largest Filipino community outside the Philippines. It’s here that Filipino Americans are propelling the flavors of their country into the mainstream with a flurry of modern and traditional eateries.
Los Angeles chef Alvin Cailan, cofounder of beloved breakfast institution Eggslut, has become a champion of the local Filipino food movement after opening Pinoy popups Amboy and Lasa at his restaurant incubator space, Unit 120, in Chinatown. The latter eventually turned into a full-fledged brick-and-mortar Filipino American restaurant in the same space. Meanwhile, Ricebar, a 275-square-foot, seven-seat restaurant in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, has been serving traditional Filipino comfort food to ravenous lunch crowds since 2015. A new Filipino restaurant by République’s Walter and Margarita Manzke is set to open at Grand Central Market this summer. The city also recently hosted a screening of the new film Ulam, a meditation on Filipino cooking in America, as part of Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold’s Food Bowl food festival. Gold himself recently dubbed Los Angeles the premier city for Filipino flavor.
“The support has been great, but I’m very aware of the intricacies and the pitfalls of such a young cuisine,” says Ricebar chef and owner Charles Olalia, whose bare-bones six-item menu acts as a love letter to traditional Filipino comfort food. At Ricebar, Olalia prepares dilis, or sun-dried anchovies, fried and then doused in spicy white vinegar and layered over thick slices of buttery avocado and earthy black rice. And chicken tinola, a steaming bowl of free-range chicken simmered in aromatic ginger rice broth reminiscent of congee, is brightened with a smattering of chili leaves and green papaya. “My restaurant is so small because I wanted to control every single aspect of it to make sure we get it right. We’re showing people that Filipino food is not all fried or saucy, and we’re giving diners a point of reference for the cuisine.”
At modern Filipino American restaurant Lasa, servers go out of their way to explain every dish on the menu riddled with Tagalog words. “We understand that there’s a learning curve with our food and that giving people their first reference point for a cuisine is a huge responsibility,” says Lasa co-owner Chase Valencia. “Today everyone knows what ramen broth is, but when you say, 'What’s in kaldereta?' no one knows what that is and what that flavor is.”
Yet for all our neglect, there may be a silver lining. While we have been missing out on the flavor of kaldereta, a burgeoning food culture has expanded our palates to include flavors from other cuisines around the world. The result is that a taste of Filipino food evokes memories of Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Pacific Islander dishes that many of us are already familiar with. In this way, diners today have a better shot at understanding and appreciating the layered and nuanced flavors of Pinoy cooking.
Despite a longstanding speculation about the emergence of Filipino food, it seems today we are finally ready for it. As for the kaldereta, the origins are Spanish, but the flavor of decadent meat that sings with a tempting tomato garlic aroma is entirely Pinoy.