"Trendy" Filipino Food: Not Your Mom's Adobo
Filipino food has been dubbed the next big thing by pretty much everyone: Vogue, the National Geographic, even Anthony Bourdain. Two words America: you’re welcome. The sudden popularity of Filipino food seems to be in deep contrast to how people feel about Filipino food when it isn’t presented in a fancy Brooklyn or DC fusion restaurant.
In 2nd grade, children started teasing me about the food I brought to school, whether it was rolls, noodles, spam sandwiches, soups with egg, or really anything that wasn’t the lunchables or sandwhiches that everyone else ate. After weeks of teasing, I decided to stop eating lunch and hid my lunches in my backpack so my teachers wouldn’t see me throw food away. Whenever my mom checked my bag, she found weeks' worth of my food. The guilt of wasting food - coupled with not wanting to hurt my mom’s feelings - kept me from telling her that I didn’t eat my food because I was teased about it.
This phenomenon has become experienced by so many Asian American children that it is commonly known as the lunchbox moment. You won’t find the phrase on urban dictionary or defined on Wikipedia. But if you ask an Asian American whether or not they had a lunchbox moment, you will quickly see recognition in their eyes. The lunchbox moment is when Asian American children eat lunch that usually reflects their cultural background and are teased or bullied by their classmates. Asian American children learn to adapt to that shame; some, like me, stop eating altogether, and others learn to lie about their food.
This type of shaming isn’t unique to children. When I was younger, my family received complaints from the apartment super about the smells from the food we cooked. I recall my grandmother telling us about several complaints she received from her apartment regarding the smell when she cooked tilapia or adobo or sisig. Imagine being in a different country, cooking a dish from home, and then a random person comes to your home to tell you that it smells disgusting and to stop cooking it. Sometimes living with white roommates can incur similar reactions.
Pancit Bihon, Stuffed Bangus, Ukoy, Puto, Eggplant and Bitermelon cooked my mom for a holiday.
It is utterly frustrating to witness the contradiction between my experiences with being shamed for cooking or eating traditional Filipino food, and with its newfound popularity. When I eat Filipino food at restaurants or “trendy” markets, the flavors are almost always watered down and catered to white taste: lumpias without meat, adobo with potatoes and carrots, barbeque made with chicken breast instead of dark chicken meat or pork, and sinigang that just doesn’t have the right seasoning. To add insult to injury, so many of the people who flock to these fusion restaurants are the very same people who complained about the smells in the apartment, made fun of the food I brought to work or school, and shamed my mom and grandma from cooking food from their homeland. People like Filipino food but only if it’s cooked with meat they recognize and flavors that aren’t too strong. People want to taste “ethnic” food but only if it’s in the boundaries with which they are comfortable.
Lechon, Kare-Kare, Sisig and Rice at Bistro 7107 in Crystal City
When I read that people were calling Filipino food “the next big thing,” I felt a lot of pride that Filipino food was becoming more well-known and mainstream. I am so excited for Filipino restaurants owned by first/second generation Filipinos like LASA in California, Jeepney in New York, Purple Patch and Bad Saint in DC. But I hope smaller and less fusion places also find popularity and acceptance. Places like the Fairfax Inn Restaurant in Falls Church or “turo-turo” (point point) places like Manila Oriental Market in Springfield, VA are ones I visit when I am feeling exceptionally homesick. These types of restaurants are ran by Filipino immigrants who have made their homes here in the U.S.; these types of restaurants are where I can find unfiltered Filipino food, food almost as good as my mom’s cooking. So I hope people are open to that too.
I love Filipino food, bad smells and all. I don’t want Filipino food to follow the path of other Asian cuisines that have been assimilated and turned into something unrecognizable. Filipino food represents home, it represents my family, and it represents so much of what is familiar and comforting to me. I hope Filipino food in America doesn’t turn into something completely foreign to me.
