Find the transcript of my interviews for The New Filipino Kitchen book launch in Toronto below.
INTRO
Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I’m your host, Nastasha Alli.
You guys, June’s been kinda crazy. Besides being the first ever Filipino Heritage Month across Canada - huge in itself - I came back from a one week media workshop with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, in London.
I got back to Toronto, had one day off - kind of, cause I moved apartments - had one other day off, and then I did The New Filipino Kitchen book launch here in Toronto. Then I filmed a segment with the CBC on how to make halo-halo - the CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also huge, pinch me. And I also hosted pulutan night with two amazing chefs in the city. Then on top of that, I also spent a pretty awesome weekend celebrating PRIDE in Toronto.
01:25 What place do my stories have?
I wondered whether any of this had room in my podcast about Filipino food. To be honest, and this isn’t the first time it’s happened, this whole issue of being comfortable with talking about reality - my reality - about whether any of my stories have a place in the wider world, is something that came up quite a bit. Actually, a lot, this month.
So I guess this episode’s kind of about that. And I kinda just want to be real with you all. The reason all of this means a lot is because when I first started Exploring Filipino Kitchens, the idea of hosting events and being published in a book and getting on the CBC…like, these are things that kinda just felt like a dream. And it took a while to find a community of people - an inclusive community - who cared about our culture and heritage and understanding that complexity - and how that sort of shaped our identities.
I’m still really amazed by how deep this connection to culture runs, for a lot of people. I guess that’s really why this month meant a lot. If these kinds of celebrations bring out the kinds of people that I saw a lot - including some of the people who are going to be featured in this episode - if we get that opportunity to really, I don’t know, spread our wings and just fly out into the world…that’s such a great way for Filipino culture to flourish. And naturally, because food is such a big part of that, then our cuisine also gets the proper spotlight it deserves, really just out of that curiosity that’s gonna stem from those people who do have a really deep investment in learning the flavours and the ingredients that comprise Filipino cooking.
So anyway, all of this is like, I guess just a way of saying thanks. For being in a place, in Toronto, where I can be loud and proud, about myself, and about the things I care about, and having that ability to live someplace and make a difference someplace where you can express who you truly are. And I guess, take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. That’s not to be taken lightly. And that, in a nutshell, to me, is what Filipino Heritage Month really meant.
Coming up, we’ve got some clips from The New Filipino Kitchen Book Launch held at Islas Filipino BBQ and bar in Toronto. Eventually, when I can afford to have someone help me with the audio editing stuff, I promise it’s gonna get better, but for now, I promise the stories are good, and I hope you’ll stick around. Let’s get to it!
INTERVIEW
05:30 "Every Sunset"
Let’s start with “Every Sunset” - something that’s near and dear to me in a lot of ways. Here’s the part I share at readings. To hear the rest, you’ll just have to buy the book, if you haven’t yet:
In our apartment in Toronto, I gaze out on the city skyline framed by slate grey skies, thinking of how much I’ve grown. When I came to Canada with my family, I started a new life with zero dollars to my name. After years of work in hotels, overnight shifts for celebrities who partied until dawn, gallons of midnight oil burned to finish my college degree - and a challenging internship at a national magazine - I finally could afford a place of my own, in this corner of the world. A place where I could relax and unwind. A place I’d love to call my home.
Today, like many other days, I long for food from my homeland, the Philippines. But this time, I pine for something a bit out of the ordinary. A rice noodle dish with shrimp sauce called pancit palabok. Now, I hardly cooked until I moved out of my parents’ house in Canada. In the Philippines, I and most kinds I knew had a nanny, or relative, who did most of the cooking. But I knew that my ideal self - a financially independent, socially conscious, bike-riding millennial - would not be complete without learning how to cook pancit palabok, and many of the other Filipino foods I love.
Pancit palabok brings to mind my birthday, when I turned 18. I went to hotel school in Manila at the time, and while most of my college friends trained to be chefs in cruise ships and high end restaurants, I prepared to work for luxury hotels. After class, to celebrate my entrance into legal adulthood, my friends and I headed to a place along Manila Bay. The kind that served pulutan, food that went with drinks, with buckets of ice cold beer on sometimes rickety plastic tables that spilled onto the sidewalk. The incoming breeze always felt sticky, and smelled of exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, and salty sea air.
Of course, we ordered pancit palabok - a large platter of it. It came on a mound on this round, woven, banana leaf lined tray called a ‘bilao’. The rice noodles, white as a blank canvas, were smothered with this rich sauce, blazing orange as the setting sun on Manila Bay. A generous scattering of sliced boiled eggs, crunchy chicharron, tinapa, or smoked fish, shrimp, squid and scallions, all adorned the sauce. My friends and I clinked beer bottles and took photos of our tipsy ass selves before selfies were even a thing. It was my job to portion it out. Noodles that tended to clump together. Palabok sauce, notorious for its chunky consistency. And toppings that were almost impossible to evenly distribute to everyone.
That dinner felt like home to me, as a teenager. I was surrounded by friends and the comfort of familiarity, and knowing things. But, looking back, the memory also carried this sense of excitement for the mysterious future. None of us knew then, to which corner of the world life would take us.
10:00 What The New Filipino Kitchen has to offer
I knew this had to be real. That “The New Filipino Kitchen” had so much to offer, to everyone who let a part of it into their lives. I wanted to share my story for a couple minutes, then, for the event, hear from everybody else for the rest of the nigh. To have conversations that flowed on, kinda like the podcast, to experience these stories and lessons learned from people who knew how to hustle, in the most earnest sense of the word. To know that you’re not alone in feeling misunderstood, underestimated, and just flat out beat, especially if you work in any kind of creative or service-related industry. These people know.
We had two seatings for dinner that night. And Filipino TV even came to cover our first panel chat. Check out the episode link, we had an amazing round of speakers from Filipino Fusion Desserts, some writers from the Pluma Collective here in Toronto, and a co-author from The New Filipino Kitchen, who actually came in from Virginia.
11:05 Meet the panel
For the second panel, we brought back, firstly, Marc and Mariel Buenaventura, who are the amazing owners of Islas Filipino BBQ and Bar. Marc leads the kitchen, he’s executive chef, and Mariel takes care of the front of house.
I invited some of my good friends - Jennilee Austria, who you heard on the pulutan episode, a local author here in Toronto, and Gelaine Santiago, who runs an ethical fashion company called Cambio and Co. Plus, we had two incredible leaders from our local community - two Filipino food restaurant owners, Diona Joyce, who runs a Kanto by Tita Flips along with her catering company, and Dolly Flores, who runs a restaurant called Carinderia by D’Flores, that’s in the city of Mississauga, just next door to Toronto. Mississauga is one of the fastest growing regions for migrant settlement in the greater Toronto area. I think that’s really interesting, and we’ll talk about that more later on.
Every single day, Dolly and Diona and Marc and Mariel, together with their teams and crews of very talented cooks, these bring Filipino food out of their kitchens - Diona even does it from a tiny one in a converted shipping container - to people who want to try, just eat, really good Filipino food.
12:30 What does your Filipino kitchen look like?
For the panel chat, I wanted to ask questions like, what Filipino dish or food have you most “connected” to and why? Two, what are you most curious about in the world of Filipino food? In your dream Filipino kitchen, what would be there and why? And finally, what 3 words or phrases describe your relationship with Filipino food today?
So we’re gonna get to all this in a minute, but first, and this actually happens in most of the events I go to - people end up starting a talk about food by something that isn’t directly related to the food itself. Here’s Gelaine Santiago.
13:25 Gelaine and heritage
GS: It’s this open mind of constantly being open to learning more, and not being afraid to question the things I had been told. And also, what are the preconceived notions of what it was to be Filipino, what the Philippines was like, based on my parents’ understanding, and things that my family members had told me. And there’s just so much where I’ve been told, it’s dangerous in Manila, don’t go there, don’t pay this much for this. That the Philippines isn’t worth it, that things made in the Philippines are cheap. And like, there are just so many things I had been taught. Going back to the Philippines for the first time, like I really realized that there’s so much that I had been raised to believe, that was just really not how I would interpret things [now]. And also, what I realized is that my parents haven’t been going back to the Philippines every year. When they left it was almost 25 or 26 years ago. So their idea of what the Philippines is like may have been accurate at that time, but it’s totally not the same now. And I’m actually in a position of privilege, where I can go back every year and I get to travel all over, to the north and in the south [of Luzon province], to Visayas. I get to see things that even my family members are not able to see, and I’m the one now who gets to tell them about sisig and inasal [from these places]. They also had never tried inasal before. And so I think it’s just the need to be curious, and the need to want to understand where both my parents are coming from. And also what people’s lives were like, and just not coming in with my own judgments or preconceived notions of what things should be like. And then, accepting the fact that it’s an ongoing process. I think people in the diaspora, or anyone who just has grown up slipping in and out of multiple cultures…I think it’s just [realizing that] this process is gonna be lifelong. Needing to accept, and kind of learn, the best and the worst parts of your culture and identity, then learning from that and how it will shape you. It’s gonna change so much. So that’s really my experience, it’s just been a constant need to be empathetic, curious, and just willing to change what I think of how things are, all the time.
NA: Wow. Well, that’s Gelaine’s take on understanding her relationship - and it’s a changing one - with her Filipino heritage. Next, Dolly talks about her favourite memories of merienda. Typically, it’s a snack, but something that can also be kind of a mini-meal, specially if what you’re snacking on are delicious leftovers from lunch.
15:45 Dolly and merienda
DF: I’m the owner and operator of Carinderia by D’Flores in Mississauga. When I came to Canada, I was in my early twenties. I worked with one company until I left and opened my own restaurant. When I opened the restaurant, it basically brought back the culture to me. It brings back memories from back home. So I when I opened, the food that connected to me [the most] was merienda.
16:30 Dolly's favourite dishes
NA: And some of Dolly’s favourite dishes - not just for merienda, but ones that she just knew had to be on the menu - these were classics like laing - a stew of taro leaves cooked with coconut milk. And diniguan, made with fresh pig’s blood and always served with rice or puto, aka rice cakes. Bibingka, another kind of rice cake. And arroz caldo, a rice porridge with many iterations across the world.
DF: Our laing is kinda ‘daring’ for non-Filipinos to try. But once we tell them what’s in it - saying it’s taro leaves simmered in coconut cream, with fresh ginger, fresh chilli, and a dash of shrimp paste - they kind of [say] oh my god, it’s so good! Our food is similar to other cultures. Like our diniguan, is like blood pudding.
NA: And in fact..
DF: It’s a ‘non-Filipino’ favourite as well. Also, bibingka. Bibingka is actually from India, they have a version of bibingka as well. There are Spanish customers who come into the restaurant, [and] they ask about arroz caldo, and say “yeah, I know about it!”. It’s also like Chinese food, from when Chinese merchants came to the Philippines.
NA: And at her restaurant, Dolly says, they really do get a diverse group of restaurant patrons - being in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto that’s just seen an explosion of residents in the last 15 years, as the region continues to grow and house large numbers of newcomer families from all over the world.
17:55 Diverse patrons
DF: We connect with a lot of diverse patrons in our restaurant by telling the stories of our dishes. For them, when they arrive in the restaurant, our Filipino restaurant, they say oh, I feel like I’m in another country. So telling the story about the food is everything. It connects us with Filipinos and non-Filipinos as well.
18:40 The power of referral
DF: I’m very happy if once they’ve tasted our food, they keep coming back. They ask some of their colleagues or friends [where to eat], and when they come, they say [things like] oh, my boss, who’s Italian, told me about Carinderia. It definitely makes me feel good…
NA: …about our food, our culture, and the opportunities we have, to invite all kinds of people over for dinner. Diona echoes the sentiment.
19:05 How Diona brought Filipino street food to downtown Toronto
DJ: My name is Diana Joyce, aka Tita Flips from Kanto. Kanto is, we claim, the first shipping container Filipino street food [stall] in Toronto. I say that because we’re going into our seventh season this summer. When we first got the container, there was no such thing as Filipino street food [downtown], back in 2013.
NA: What we had, at the time, here in Toronto, was the kind of takeout shop/grocery store that you’d find in places where large-ish numbers of Filipino people lived. Along with maybe a couple of sit down restaurants, that were quite a ways out from the downtown core.
DJ: [We had] just the regular, you know, Filipino restaurant, like the ones we called ‘the originals’. Like FV Foods, in the Bathurst and Wilson community. But downtown, there’s really not much, at the time.
20:10 Defying the norm
DJ: When I was telling my friend [that] I’d like to open a container, because there’s no ‘street food’ really in Toronto, serving the real thing…they were like oh, it’s not gonna work. How come? Because Filipino food is served at home, or something, right. Like you don’t buy Filipino food. [I said] like what are you talking about? There’s so much more to Filipino food. So I just went ahead and did it. And here I am, seven years later we’re still going, and we’re very thankful for that. Being there at the forefront is very…it’s a good feeling, you know.
NA: At Kanto, Diona serves the classics. Your tapsilog and longsilog sets, some crispy lechon kawali, lumpiang shanghai, pancit, and because we *are* in the north, a riff on Canadian poutine called sisig fries. But certain mainstays will always be near.
21:10 Diona and sinigang
DJ: The dish that fascinates me is sinigang. There’s so much beyond the Knorr sinigang mix. When I was growing up, we use like the sampaloc, the tamarind leaves, the guava. There’s so much more to it, and I think it’s very underrated. Like if you just have the sinigang mix, and that’s it. Although it is very convenient.
NA: But these are true things, that I really appreciate Diona admits. The sinigang packet is very, very handy! When you need it - like, crave it - that packet of sour powder is a lifesaver. And I swear sinigang has this magical power, because just like it turned the tides for me, it gave Diona an eye opening experience, too.
DJ: Like, Filipino food is so diverse, that you have a lot - every region has their own [take]. Like adobo, for example. You have different versions of adobo. It goes also for sinigang.
22:20 Diona's childhood...and lechon
DJ: I grew up in Mindanao, I was born and raised there. Bisaya, represent! My mom is Bisaya, and my dad is Tagalog, he’s from Luzon. So you know, their cooking styles are totally different.
NA: And one of example of this difference, in terms of a known food or dish that’s done differently, in different regions, is lechon.
DJ: So basically, our lechon is the same pig, but it tastes different.
NA: All, essentially, cooked over an open fire pit, with a whole hog rotating on a spit, slowly over many hours, until its meat and skin become godly. Same process, different results, depending on where you enjoy it. As Diona explains…
DJ: What I found is that they have the sauce - the lechon sauce [that’s different]. The ‘sarsa’.
NA: The sauce, made from pork liver, usually, drippings and stale breadcrumbs and a host of delicious things - this stuff becomes the prevailing, essential condiment to lechon, if you live in Luzon. Here, the Tagalog lechon isn’t complete without sarsa.
DJ: [But] in the south, they have different aromatics in there, like lemongrass, and all the spices inside the pig. Which is I think the most awesome thing that could happen in a pig.
NA: This imbued flavour, that intensely aromatic whiff of lemongrass that just cuts through every slice of lechon, that makes it distinctively Bisaya, or Visayan. In the Philippines, people order entire roast pigs from Cebu, like entire lechons, and have them priority shipped to Manila on a regular basis. We’re talking like, boxes shipped over on local airlines and brought straight to your classic Filipino party. How exactly they keep the skin crisp, while these delicious pigs make their way to Manila on express flights, I really wanna know. All this talk about lechon got Gelaine thinking.
24:35 Gelaine's revelation
GS: In terms of the dish that I’ve connected to the most, it’s lechon. Because I grew up, like, at Filipino parties here there’s always lechon. There’s always like, the big lechon baboy. It’s there on the table. And like I grew up just knowing that that’s a thing, and I liked it, but I didn’t particularly love it, the way that people talk about it. People just seemed to love lechon, and I’d never felt that way. I went back to the Philippines for the first time in 2012, since we moved to Canada when I was three. My cousins and my family had roasted this big lechon, all night long. Like cranking it up by hand. As soon as we arrived, and got off the plane, they served us this big piece of lechon. It was like, the best meat I’d had in my life. And I was like, oh my god, is this what lechon is? This is what it’s supposed to be like? It was such a powerful way that that lesson was delivered, through the taste of lechon.
26:00 What's in your dream kitchen?
NA: That leads really nicely into my next question, which is - in your dream Filipino kitchen, what would be there and why? Now, when I first thought about this question, I was like, you know what I want? Vinegar. And this is actually from an event I was in a couple of years ago, with Amy Besa and Chef Romy Dorotan who own Purple Yam restaurant. And what they did is they worked with the Philippine government to export some of these rare varieties of ingredients, to the US and to Canada. When they were here in Toronto, my mind was blown by this line of vinegars on a table. They were all different colours, they tasted like a range of different tartness [levels], and they were all made with fruit. There was this mulberry vinegar, I was like, I didn’t even know mulberries were a thing in the Philippines. So it’s just exciting to see that there’s that wide variety we can cook with. And then the question to diaspora communities then becomes, what do we do to get that? From my perspective, I’m really interested. I know there’s a lot of hoops to go through, issues with how those fruits are processed, for example. How to get that to market.
27:25 What Chef Marc wants
NA: Being at his restaurant, I asked chef Marc what his dream Filipino kitchen looks like.
MB: I don’t know, I think when I think about that…what I would like is what Suzie shared earlier, she said she wanted a calamansi tree in her kitchen. Which was like wow, that’s interesting. But for me, I think the only thing outside of what I have already, something I would like to focus on more…if I had a wood-burning oven, something where we could do, like, real good pandesal. Because I think pandesal is a staple for Filipinos, something that just reminds me of home.
28:30 On Dolly and Diona's wish list
NA: For Dolly, it was an easy choice. Rice.
DF: The food I’m most curious about is rice. I grew up with only white rice, but all different kinds, [in] different colours. From the north, south, east and west. There’s purple, there’s black, red, brown.
NA: Diona followed with one of my personal favourites. Dried fish.
DJ: The seafood, man. It is to die for! Have you heard about the bacon of the sea? You gotta try it. The danggit!
NA: The bacon of the sea. That’s such a great way, such a Diona way to explain it. Danggit is basically this small, dried, salted fish…
DJ: …and you fry them, and they’re so crispy.
NA: So she says that if you fry this fish, you won’t even think about bacon for a minute. Jennilee’s got a different ideal kitchen altogether.
29:40 Jennilee's dream kitchen
JA: In my dream Filipino kitchen…don’t you guys have a relative who has, like, diabetes, or gout, or cholesterol, or high blood. Right? Like it’s so common for Filipinos to have high blood pressure, you always hear ‘naku, high blood, I have high blood’. My dream kitchen would be a place where we can still make some really delicious Filipino food. If there was a way to somehow merge the flavour with the healthiness, in the dream kitchen - that would be incredible. That’s my one answer. The second answer is of course, bananas. Guys, those bananas…they’re like the size of my hand, they’re so small, you can eat like ten of them. Holy smokes. That would also be in my kitchen.
NA: Gelaine had a couple answers for me.
30:30 Gelaine on fruit, halo-halo and cacao
GS: I would just want, like, all the fruits in the Philippines, in my magical dream Filipino kitchen. Like, every time we go, there’s always these fruits where I go, I don’t know what this is. Like, what is it? The first time I ever had kaimito, like the star apple, I was like, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. And like, the first time we had halo-halo, as well, in the Philippines. The first time we had really good halo-halo was in Davao, when we were there to meet one of our partners. They took us to this little corner shop and you can choose, like, from a sheet, you could check off all the fillings and toppings that you want in your halo-halo. And it was the best I’ve ever had in my life. The next day, literally we were on the other side of town, and we took like a one hour Grab ride to get to this little stall. I don’t even even know if they’re open, it’s like Sunday night. So we get there, everything else is closed, except the halo-halo spot. We had the best halo-halo again. So I would have all these fresh fruits and ingredients. I would also have Philippine chocolate, like Philippine cacao. Because basically, the Philippines got cacao from Mexico during the galleon trade, under Spanish colonial powers. And at some point, the Philippines was actually considered the ‘gateway’ of chocolate, across the rest of Asia and Europe. So everything would be moved from Mexico, via the galleon trade, to the Philippines, which was the main entry point, and then brought to like Vietnam and Indonesia, then to the rest of Europe. The Philippines was becoming this like superpower of chocolate, until a series of things happened, and a bunch of the cacao trees got sick. So the economy kind of collapsed. But at some point, we were producing some of the best chocolate in the world. Cacao trees literally grow in peoples’ backyards. And I was like, that’s so cool! You literally have a chocolate tree.
32:30 Spaces like iSLAS
NA: With all of this said, I am so grateful to have spaces like Islas, where people who do want to learn about Filipino cuisine can just go. Islas is also in one of my favourite neighbourhoods in the city, the western edge of Parkdale, where Queen and King streets merge, just above Lake Ontario. It’s gentrifying, like many other places in the city, but there’s still a sizeable number of Filipino residents in the area. Here’s Marc.
33:00 Why Marc and Mariel built their restaurant
MB: For us, it reminded us a little bit of the Philippines. And we kinda saw it as the best place for us to represent Filipino food. Like I said, this is our second year, and we’re still very new, but so far we’re really proud about what we’ve done so far, and where this is going. You know, like there’s so many people that are here, and they don’t know much about Filipino food, outside of like pancit, or spring rolls. So we have like a platform where we can showcase the different flavours the Philippines has to offer.
NA: And so here’s a challenge for everyone listening. Find your local version of Islas, because they are definitely out there!
34:00 Marc's favourite dish
MB: So what resonates with me, one of my favourite dishes that I shared earlier, is chicken inasal. We have it on our menu, and for that dish, it was something that when I first tried it…I hadn’t really had it at the time, this was when I visited the Philippines in 2010. I tried it for the first time, and I thought I knew all about Filipino food, thought I knew the dishes. But I tried this particular dish, and I was like, wow! Like to me, it’s all your senses. I loved the flavour of it. But I just never knew about it. So I was like, wow. It opened my mind to know that there’s so many other dishes and flavours, foods and ingredients that I don’t really know much about. Which kinda started me on a journey of like, wanting to learn more about where it came from. Or how come only that region has, like, the best inasal. It’s something that, when I came back from that trip…you know, I started to research it. I had to have it here. So I started to make the dish. It even started me into doing some catering, as well.
35:25 Jennilee and champorado
NA: And speaking of finding places to belong, or at least to find the community you’re looking for, and its relationship with food - Jennilee’s story about champorado I think about sums it up.
JA: Because I grew up in Sarnia - it’s this town where there are very very few Filipinos. At the time, it was really really hard to get Filipino ingredients, Asian ingredients in general. So my mom, instead of making champorado, she used to make it not with rice, but with oatmeal. Not the actual tablea or the tablets, but with hot chocolate mix. That was how I thought champorado tasted. So then, in 2007, I come to Toronto, and all of a sudden there’s Filipino grocery stories. And I’m like, holy smokes, champorado is in a box! Wow, right, you just have to add milk! This is amazing. I started working in the community as a settlement worker, which is like a newcomer counselor, mostly with Filipinos. And the more I got involved in the community, guess what got better? The champorado. Because, then I started going to different events, people would bring these huge pots, and there’d be this lola stirring it. And that was when I realized that the closer I get to the Pinoy community, the better the champorado gets.
36:45 About "Filipino Talks”
JA: So now, I’ve started an initiative called Filipino Talks. Which means I go into different schools and I teach teachers how to teach Filipino students better. Honestly, what I do, and I’m totally serious, is [that] I make teachers cry. Teach them about Filipino students and all the issues that they come with. I love making teachers cry, but today, I’m gonna make you guys laugh a little, right. So that is my story. Thanks!
GS: Something that I’ve been really interested in, not just with food, but in general with learning more about Filipino culture…is just how things have come to be the way that they are.
NA: And with her work for Cambio & Co.…
37:30 What led Gelaine to Cambio & Co.
GS: Cambio & Co is an ethical fashion company based here in Toronto. We work with artisans in weaving communities, and socially conscious brands, in the Philippines, to bring fashion accessories that are all ethically made, designed and handcrafted in the Philippines. And our main goal is really to inspire younger Filipinos, specially Filipinos in the diaspora, to reconnect with our roots, by sharing stories of the craftsmanship behind the pieces that we have at Cambio. The traditions of precolonial, you know, indigenous craftsmanship that exists out there. Whether it’s jewelry, or different type of fabric that we have. It’s so rich in the Philippines, and I really didn’t know any of that growing up, here in Canada. And something I’ve learned so much in the last four years that we’ve been travelling to the Philippines every year - being able to meet a lot of rural artisan communities, a lot of them living in remote areas, a lot of them very linked to their indigenous roots still. So I’ve been finding it really fascinating to just learn about the history of our ingredients, and the history of our food. Like my mom is Filipina-Chinese, and I didn’t know anything about that side of my family history until the last few years. And I didn’t even know that pancit - which is like, our noodle dish, which my dad cooks all the time - that’s actually a Hokkien Chinese dish. And pancit actually comes from a Hokkien word.
38:55 Cuisine in flux
GS: So I found that really interesting, just to like learn those roots and how things evolve. And then that had me also really interested in how things are continuing to evolve. Even Filipino cuisine here in Toronto is something that is so recent, in the last few years. Like Diona was pretty new to the scene in 2013, and things have changed so, so much. I think the way that Filipino cuisine is starting to express itself, in diaspora communities in Toronto, the San Francisco Bay area, LA, New York - like that is all influencing a two-way dialogue, too. It’s not just that we’re making food in Toronto. What we do here, today, goes to other parts of the US, the UK, like it’s constantly in flux.
39:45 "Our expressions make us nuanced and interesting"
GS: And I found that really really fascinating. It’s just something for me to keep in mind, that having different types of Filipino cuisine, as different expressions of Filipino identity, is not necessarily a bad thing. And it doesn’t necessarily make us divided, as a community. It just makes us more nuanced as a community, and so much more interesting. To be able to say, this region has that.
40:25 What's your relationship with Filipino food today?
NA: At the end of the night, I asked, what words or phrases best describe your relationship with Filipino food today?
40:45 Jennilee's wishes
JA: My three words for us would be: bigger cultural footprint. Okay, so…there are so many Filipinos in Canada. We’re the fastest growing population. And there are so few that actually have businesses and restaurants. Thank god for you guys, cause you’re like, unicorns, right? Entrepreneurs in the Filipino community. We have the lowest rate of entrepreneurship out of any immigrant group. So, bigger cultural footprint. I wanna see more Filipino food. I wanna see more kids that go to culinary school and don’t work in a French restaurant. I also wanna see people like us, who go to these restaurants. I wanna see more Google reviews, what about Tripadvisor? Get more people to come, right. We have a really big community, and we have to be a little bit louder in how we support each other. And so that would be my dream.
NA: Diona keeps things short and sweet, on what Filipino food means to her.
41:40 Some words from restaurateurs
DJ: I live with it, I breathe it, and I create with it.
MB: For three words, I would say…it’s actually there on our wall, but it’s “kain na tayo”. Let’s eat. It’s a phrase, but that phrase to me, kind of reminds me of like, it’s time to eat with my family. Growing up, my mom’s a great cook, and she always used to cook food for the family. And every time I’d hear those words, I would drop everything and go to the kitchen. And I think when I hear that, you know, when anyone says that, you know, it kinda just reminds me of the times we come together at the table, and you eat everything up.
42:35 What keeps Gelaine going
GS: My three words…were really about curiosity, understanding and ongoing.
42:50 A beacon for me, and maybe for you
NA: And I couldn’t agree more. All of this - the work and discussion and dialogue - it’s an ongoing process that in the end, I really believe helps. Because bridging the gaps and these divisions within Filipino communities - it’s an ongoing process, and a challenge. But getting to be here and to know the people with a hand in all this, it’s just, very meaningful. And to me, it’s kind of the light that I need. And maybe these stories can be someone else’s light too.
WRAP-UP
My warmest thanks to Marc and Mariel Buenaventura, Dolly Flores, Diona Joyce, Jennilee Austria and Gelaine Santiago for joining our panel chat. The New Filipino Kitchen Book launch in Toronto was everything I hoped it would be. Like, a life turning thing.
Thank you to the kitchen and service team at Islas Filipino BBQ and Bar at 1690 Queen St West in Toronto. You all carry Filipino hospitality to a T. It honestly feels like home every time I walk in.
Music for this episode is by David Szestay, segment music is by Eric and Magill, Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear. Visit exploringfilipinokitchens.com for past episodes, check out my instagram @nastashaalli, cause I think that’s the thing I actually update quite a bit. And as before, if you enjoyed the episode, I would really appreciate if you told a friend.
Until next time, marking salamat, and thank you for listening.