Nastasha: Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I'm your host, Nastasha Alli.
Today on the episode, we get to chat with Earl Briones who runs the kitchen at Coterie Restaurant and Wine Bar in Edmonton, Alberta. Earlier this year, Earl and a handful of other chefs, they led the Flavours of the Philippines sessions at the Terroir Symposium, which is the longest running culinary gathering of its kind in Canada, that was in late May to early June in Calgary.
I met Earl a couple years ago following the same accounts for other chefs and restaurants online and when I learned that in addition to participating at the Terroir Symposium, he had also presented a paper at the Kain Conference, which is the first of its kind in the Philippines, I knew we'd have a lot of talk about. So let's get to it.
About Earl
Earl: Hi I'm Earl Briones. I'm a Filipino Canadian chef. I was born in Winnipeg, but I only really spent maybe less than a year. And then I was brought back to the Philippines where I grew up, in the Pampanga region. Angeles City is where I'm from. Then I moved back to Winnipeg when I was 12 and I've been in Edmonton ever since, since I was like 13, 14. So I've been here for a while.
I now live in and cook in Edmonton, Alberta. I focus on the storytelling aspect of our cuisine, food as a vehicle to tell the story of not only Filipino cuisine and history, but also specifically about how it's shaped by colonization, by migration, memory, and also by our ethnolinguistic differences.
Nastasha: So many of the, of the regions and the ethnolinguistic differences that really manifest themselves in the food, right?
Earl: It's interesting, because on face value, you would think that there's just adobo, sinigang. But the more you kind of research Filipino cuisine and just dive into what are the meaning of these words?
You learn that it's actually a past methodology. It's almost like an heirloom to us, and that those dishes don't really describe the dish. They describe to you a blueprint about how to do the dish.
Nastasha: The technique, right? Like the whole idea behind inadobo or pinaksiw.
Earl: Or like, tinola. It comes from tola, and then there's the linguistic variations. Even bulanglang and binakol, are technically cousins of that. So.
Nastasha: What stood out for you, growing up there that you ate that to this day, still.
Earl: You don't really, at least I didn't appreciate it that well, you kind of get spoiled by how much food there is, and there's always a lot of food when it comes to like, little carinderias in the palengke. That's usually where I ate. That's usually where my mom would take me. I was like a 10, 11, 12-year-old in the nineties. It was the age of McDonald's, Jollibee.
Nastasha: That's true.
Earl: It's kind of a mix. As a child, I didn't really appreciate how bountiful and like history laden all the foods that I was eating in like the rural areas were. I was always wanting the next Jollibee meal. But now as an adult you kind of look back at it, and I was spoiled for a lot of food. You know, there's the bringhe, the bobotus, the lechons, the buro, you know, I am fascinated by buro now, but as a child, you know, I avoided that. Even the simplest things like fresh fish or dried fish, I used to eat it every day, but now not so much. Then you kind of realize that eating fish has a long history in the Philippines too.
Nastasha: Yeah. When people ask, what do I miss the most about the Philippines? I have to say it's always the seafood and it is because, and I'm sure you can relate to this part being quite landlocked where you are. And just that, obviously when you're in the Philippines, price is a determining factor of course, to what kinds of foods you can get.
But for the most part, it is still very common in every day to have some kind of fresh fish that's accessible and available.
Earl: Cause we have the wet markets, the palengke. So you know, there's ways, and Filipinos are known to be very resourceful and I think you're seeing that, especially nowadays back home.
Rice and mysticism
Nastasha: So today for listeners who maybe are not based in Canada, there is a very significant Filipino population in Alberta, across the province. Right?
Earl: Last time I did a dinner, we talked about it. We are the second most populous ethnic group in Alberta. I'm pretty sure we're just right behind East Indians.
Nastasha: I'm curious a little bit about the restaurant and I was wondering if you could also talk a little bit about your rice and mysticism dinner series some time ago. Was that something that you hosted at the restaurant?
Earl: I did. Yeah. Because we're closed Sunday, Monday, so I try to do my dinners Sundays so it's easier for me.
Nastasha: Mm-hmm.
Earl: I can just prep throughout the week kind of thing.
Nastasha: Makes it more manageable, I guess, like resource wise.
Earl: It's a solo chef venture, so, yeah.
I'm just cooking at in Coterie Restaurant and Wine Bar. The restaurant I'm in is very small. It's 20 seater. It's kind of like the small singular operations in bigger cities. Very small kitchen. I'm the only cook chef, whatever you wanna call me. And then one more person that deals with the front of house stuff.
I've been lucky, I think, the rice mysticism series has gotten good feedback, even from non Filipinos. Because we do talk about early exploration. There's a little circle if you put it in a Venn diagram of people who are interested in Filipino cuisine and people who just interested in like early explorer stuff.
Nastasha: In terms of like how it's in the food?
Earl: So like the first part of the dinner, which I've been doing is talking about as Magellan left the Philippines, the 1500s to the 16 00s . And we cover like, what do the words mean when we talk about it?
Because we've always presented Filipino food as like, this is adobo, this is pancit, this is palabok. Right. But we never talk about what adobo actually means. This is where it came from. A lot of people think adobo is influenced by Spanish cuisine, but it's actually a pre-colonial cuisine. It's just named Spanish because they were the ones to write that history, right?
So we covered things like that. The first three cooking systems that we see in the Philippines as per Pigafetta's writing, in Cebu. And then we talk about, the nitty gritty stuff. What did Magellan's influence really give the Philippine islands? With the introduction of Catholicism and just a new way of eating based on religion. There was an introduction to different ways of eating and cooking.
Nastasha: I love it. So it sounds like a very interactive, immersive kind of dinner. And what did you have on the menu?
Earl: It's kind of a weird thing 'cause Magellan never actually reached Luzon, but I'm of the breadth where you can only speak of a cuisine that you've experienced and that, especially for the Philippines, a lot of it is personal. Right. I'm from Pampanga. I didn't really wanna do techniques that I'm not familiar with.
The first course is a spinoff of a very old, very classic ulam. Itlog na maalat and kamatis and that's it. So I did a form of the salted egg yolk and then the tomato, like this is how I remember the flavors of the Philippines. And this is also how I cook.
We did a kilaw dish and buro as well. Then bobotu, which is like Filipino tamales. And bringhe. People call it the Filipino paella, but it predates paella because it was actually inspired by biryani, hence the name.
And then adobong puti. Recently I changed that to be kilaw babi, which is like a very old, pre-colonial cooking method. Kilaw is actually to add vinegar or to sour.
And then I did the kakanin trio, which is like biko.
Nastasha: Mm.
Earl: Haleya then tibok-tibok. Some very old recipes celebrating the fact that Philippine cuisine is a pre-colonial cuisine that got inspired by its settlers and instead of changing, it absorbed the culture within it. I think that's beautiful. And so that's why I talk about it.
Nastasha: I'm curious to hear what some of the feedback from the non Filipinos who have come to these dinners are like.
Earl: Surprisingly there was actually a lot of non Filipinos. The latest dinner actually only had, I think one couple that was Filipino. And I think it's great. The feedback is that it's a dinner they've never really gone to before. Some people have told me that they're leaving not just bellies full, but like spirit full or soul full because we were learning so much about cuisine.
I think we're just too nice and that's kind of a detriment 'cause it's
Nastasha: Yeah.
Earl: It's like we're too shy to actually be proud of it, our actual history. And so, being able to reach a non Filipino crowd about Filipino history is something that I was actually aiming for. So it's good.
Terroir connections
Nastasha: This is how I feel about this now in terms of the interest from non Filipino audiences in the cuisine and wanting to taste and the excitement around it because it's quite new, but also has this really deep story and cultural connection to where you and me and so many other Filipinos in the diaspora are based now. And that taste of place is really kind of the way to put it. So for listeners who may not be familiar with the organizations or the conferences that we're gonna be talking about. The Terroir Symposium is an event that you recently spoke at and a few other Filipino chefs in Alberta had done a presentation on. It's an opportunity for people in the food industry across Canada to connect with, as the name terroir suggests, connect with the land and be able to celebrate these Canadian ingredients that are served in restaurants across the country.
There's an organization called Culinary Tourism Alliance, linked to Terroir Symposium. They've put it on in the past, when it was held here in Ontario. And w hen I was working with them as a research coordinator, it was really eyeopening for me to talk to farmers and winemakers, brewers and just different people across the value chain, to think that, I could use these different fruits like peaches for example, which aren't a tropical fruit and not native to Philippine cuisine. But there's all these different ways that these ingredients have become a part of the culinary canon of Filipino food.
Could you tell us a little bit about how you kind of got involved with the event and about the event this year.
Earl: Yeah. Honestly, was quite was a surprise to me. I followed it for a long time in Calgary. It's a great conference. An amazing conference actually. I got approached to talk about Filipino food and present a couple dishes. So this year's Terroir was for cultural appreciation.
The theme was Filipino food and just kinda be immersed in it. They had chefs from Calgary that kind of headlined the place, and I was lucky enough to talk and cook with them from Edmonton.
I was one of the busier chefs 'cause I just said yes to everything. So I did a morning, afternoon kind of food booth. I did the first course, we did dinner there. The next day I had a really good time because I got to meet Abi Balingit from New York. Yeah.
Fellow Kapampangan.
But like, being part of Terror Symposium here in Canada was kind of surreal. They gave me a platform to speak about the role of storytelling in Filipino food. Why our cuisine's actually special because of our ethnolinguistic differences. And then also able to talk about the history that is carried in every dish that we have.
The point of talking about it too was where the room for creativity is. There is still some older population that really don't like what we're doing with Filipino food because they see a subversion of the form.
But, you know, I don't disagree with that. It is a subversion of the form. But to me, and this is what I talked about at terroir as well, the reason it's so important to understand the words and the methodologies of our cuisine is because it actually gives you that room to create, right?
Because adobo, people think it's soy sauce, vinegar, black peppercorns, bay leaves. And while that's true for like the basic framework, adobo itself, the word references to marinate. So it makes no references to what you're marinating in it. It just happens to be that we were marinating in vinegar for a long time, and it's carried on. But we see the changes when Chinese settlers started bringing soy sauce and the higher tier of society started adding soy sauce to their adobo.
We see it in the diaspora too. I use sometimes different vinegars, apple cider or rice wine, or I make my own vinegar like a haskap berry one. To me, that freedom to create is actually what's special about Filipino food. Because our words lay the groundwork and the blueprint for what you're cooking, the interpretation is up to the cook.
And we see that back home, even here, everybody's got their own version of adobo, everybody's got their own version of sinigang, tinola, bulalo. Everything that has to do with cuisine, everyone's got their own opinion on it. That was one of the best things I was able to talk about at Terroir is that, you know, that is what makes our cuisine special. It's not so rigid. It's always open for the interpretation of the cook. And that's, I think what gives it soul, because you put your own soul into it to make the dish into your own by following history.
Making it your own
Nastasha: For sure. The soul part is, I've said it before a bunch of times too, but because you know that there's a lot that goes into a dish, right? It's not just the physical ingredients, but it's also like the history and the traditions and the culture. And when you can communicate all that like as part of something that somebody's eating. It helps make what you're cooking more impactful or memorable, I guess, in ways.
Earl: Yeah, you know. Everyone's got their own little touch on what they're doing. And I think that makes it special. I mean, that's true for a lot of cooking, but to me, Filipino cooks themselves, don't even have to be a chef. Like a home mom is very proud of what they do and what they do is they feed their family.
It's as simple as feeding your family to tell your own story and where you belong in your own culture.
Nastasha: Yeah. Home is where a lot of the habits start, right? For example, one of my biggest challenges with consistently enjoying Filipino food is that I have to pre-plan to make it. So, like, if I'm making a big batch of something like sinigang, you know, okay, I've got enough containers, I'm gonna freeze half of this, and then eat the rest, you know, through the week.
So when you're talking about Filipino food can be made by everyone, it's totally true. And I think at least to me, the exciting part about it or the unknown part in the future is how we can continue those traditions in Canada or wherever you are in the diaspora, but still make it like. I dunno. Obviously if you have kids and you've got a lot going on, right? You tend to go for what's easy. Maybe Filipino food will come out once a week, but then being able to go to restaurants that have Filipino food, that's also quite changing in Canada.
Earl: It becomes one of those things where you cook Filipino food in big batches because there's a special occasion going on. Someone's graduating or someone's birthday, or like somebody's visiting from somewhere. I think it changes its story from something that we eat to survive or because that's what's around us, to something we eat to celebrate, to remind us of where we came from and to remind us of a home.
And so that's the beauty. And one of the things I was able to talk about in Terroir was, people see Filipino food for this one facet. It's the Southeast Asian cuisine that has been influenced by colonialism. And so it's a mishmash of all these things, but in reality, the important part that I talked about in Kain Con's paper too, was the mere fact that we're still talking about terminologies, the fact that we have ethnolinguistic differences is a proof of our resilience.
It's a proof of the resilience of not only the cuisine, but the culture that refuses to let things die. And that's kind of why I understand the older generation as to why they're so adamant about keeping tradition alive, because there is a real danger of losing these names. But in my opinion, there's also room for them to evolve.
There's also room for them to change their form, which makes them live longer, in my opinion. And so to me, it's not not honouring the traditions and just avoiding the form because, you know, I'm from the diaspora and because it's a different way of life, but it's because I want people to still be talking about these terminologies long after I'm done cooking.
And so to me, my way of contributing to the culture is trying to keep those keywords alive and explaining why they're so important and why the ethnolinguistic differences is actually something to be proud about.
Because you see French cuisine, Thai, Italian, Vietnamese, and they talk in regionalities, right? I mean, sure, you can say Chinese, but there's Chinese American. There's Szechuan cuisine, there's Chengdu cuisine. Spanish, right. There's the Basque regions, there's the lowlands, the highlands. If people just consider Filipino cuisine to be one of those , it has that story too. It's a cuisine that utilized the things that were available to them based on their history, based on their resilience and survival.
"Beyond Ingredients"
Nastasha: I'm gonna pivot a little bit to the Kain Conference, which is the second thing I wanted to talk to you about.
Earl: Sure. The presentation was called Beyond Ingredients because, as we were talking about, Filipino cuisine is beyond the ingredients that we use. Some of the words have changed as they've progressed. But focusing on the language by which we convey what is which, is more important than nitpicking the ingredients that go in the dish.
Unless it's something like bulanglang, in Pampanga where specifically that requires you to put guava. There's some dishes that are like that, but there's the basic dishes that are more blueprints than they are recipes, so to speak. The regional variations exist because Filipino cuisine uses the methodologies and then applies it to the ingredients that are local.
Nastasha: That are available.
Earl: Hyperlocalized focus on, okay, so adobo is this, but what can we use? And we see that in diaspora nowadays too, where Canadian cooks use rhubarb for sinigang because that's the sour component we have. We don't grow guavas here. I mean, you can buy them obviously, but they're much more expensive than just growing rhubarb. Same thing with tamarind, right? So what do you do?
That's pretty much what my paper is about, how there's a spirit and a notion to cuisine that is past the ingredients. That our gastronomy is actually based on the language and also cultural identity of our region.
Nastasha: Yeah, the cultural identity part is obviously important, but it's like, as a person in the diaspora, to me that's the strongest thing, right?
When I get so excited about talking to other people about Filipino food, it's kind of the same for me as saying I'm really excited to talk to you about being Filipino.
Earl: Yeah.
Nastasha: At work for example, most of my coworkers are non Filipino. And it's always exciting for me to talk about whatever I made this weekend or what I meal prepped that's just like sitting in my fridge now. And so I think two weeks ago I made chicken ala king, so like chicken in a cream sauce. And you know, it's like modern Filipino food. I feel like chicken ala king was a very nineties dish in the Philippines where
Earl: During the Americanization of things.
Nastasha: Yeah right. Where you're seeing canned mushroom soup to
Earl: Well there,
Nastasha: Make chicken ala king.
Earl: There was a big campaign during the American occupation that canned food is more hygienic. Unfortunately, that's carried over still in my opinion.
Nastasha: Yeah.
Earl: It's still part of the resourcefulness and the resilience from scarcity, right? Like, what do you do when your fresh foods are no longer available because you're not allowed to eat them? Well you make your recipes still, or you make the same dishes, but different ingredients.
Nastasha: So what would be an example of this for you? What are some of your substitutions or go-to like, you're not able to find this to make this dish regularly at home.
Earl: What do I make at home often? Mostly adobo because it's easier.
Nastasha: What style of adobo are you talking? Like just the.
Earl: Classic. Yeah. Soy sauce vinegar. But then I apply some west, some classical techniques to it. So like searing the meat beforehand and
Nastasha: I do that too.
Earl: Deglazing the fond after, and then making a stew kind of thing instead of actual marination.
And so, my application is more technique wise. Like my adobo at work, when I make the adobo radishes, I use two types of soy sauce and I use apple cider vinegar. When I make my salted egg yolk and tomato dish, I make a salted egg yolk, a spoon, like a foam, and then I peel each little cherry tomato and I pickle them in atchara mix.
So that's like how I interpret Filipino cuisine is that because I've been trained for a lot of years in Western cuisine, I'm able to re translate what I wanna do with Filipino cuisine within the spectrum of what I know. So I apply techniques that I think would benefit the, dish here and there. Like even when I stew, I add things not traditionally. 'cause usually you just put everything in and you cook it. But I usually will cook things in like batches.
I get inspired more by the thought process behind the food and the history behind it and where I can create within the room of those traditions. Maybe not a new dish entirely, but a dish that tells my story within the scope of Filipino cuisine.
Filipino identity to me is tied to food. I think it's hard to argue that. So as a chef, I'm lucky enough to be able to express my story based on food.
Canadian locales
Earl: I've been lucky to cook in Winnipeg and in Lethbridge. And then, I talk with some chefs in Vancouver, as well, and Montreal and Toronto. I think everyone's got the same idea. Truly I can say that from the people that I've met and worked with, we want Filipino food to take it's centre stage. Maybe we're biased because we're all Filipino, but we see the breadth and the complexity of this cuisine for what it is. And a lot of us are approaching it in different ways. I got lucky to work with other chefs who have their own interpretation of Filipino food.
Abi likes to focus more on desserts and kind of reviving the flavor like that. She had this tinola dish that was a dessert that was amazing. And so it's kind of like what more can we do with the cuisine?
Nastasha: Mm-hmm.
Earl: JP, who I've worked with multiple times uses high-end ingredients that you usually won't see in Filipino cuisine, to deliver flavours that he remembers, but also flavors that you might not have had as a diner.
And these are just samples of what people are doing, but everyone's kind of got their own interpretation of what they want to focus on Filipino cuisine. I'm lucky enough to talk to Mark Singson from Vancouver and from our chats, his approach to Filipino cuisine is he loves that ugly, delicious approach. Loves very simple plating, but super impactful flavor. That's actually what we should be doing.
I don't think we should be copying each other and being like, oh, this guy's doing that, so we're gonna do that. I think much like the ethnolinguistic differences have to be celebrated as part of our cultural identifiers, I think the differences in approach in the diaspora is actually what we should be celebrating. I've said this in my dinners, every little voice that's shared to the culture adds to that collective voice. And we are a culture that is collectivist. At the end of the day. We love to eat because we love to eat with each other. We love to chismis because you can just talk to each other, right? We're putting our stories into it.
How I approach food through my story, it's not gonna be the same as other people who are doing it. Much like the young people who we work with at Terroir, who are just starting the popups, they're gonna evolve and have a different take of what they wanna do. And so much like ethnolinguistic differences, these are a difference in the diaspora. It may not be ethnolinguistic, but it's still culturally different. We're all trying to find our cultural identity within Filipino cuisine, but we're all just telling a different story under the same umbrella. That's a beautiful thing because it shows you the versatility of the cuisine and it shows you that it's a cuisine that has evolved. Instead of adapting to that culture, it reinterprets the culture through its own lens. We made American fried chicken our own, we made spaghetti our own right? That's from the Americans. We made biryani our own. We made soy sauce part of our collective cuisine. And we may have lost some old traditions like eating deer, but preserving meat and stuff like that, that's still a big tradition of ours. All these interpretations of Filipino cuisines, it's gonna evolve because it's gonna localize all those ingredients, and you're always gonna get a different version of a Filipino dish because it's a different person telling you their story.
Nastasha: I love that. Being able to, all of this just makes so much sense. Like recognizing that these approaches that different chefs have towards the cuisine, that's what we have to be better at is celebrating that part.
And I think when I first started doing this podcast in 2017, which wasn't even that long ago, the collaboration and the collectivist aspect of our cultural traditions wasn't so much still a part of the conversation.
Like, I think when Filipino food first started quote unquote becoming big in like the US and in other parts of the world, and even in Canada, the conversation was still around, like, there's still a little bit of crab mentality, like we do tend to see things in a very competitive nature, because there may have been this feeling that like, there's only so many people who might be interested in having Filipino food and how are you gonna differentiate the offerings at each one? And I hope that this is part of a conversation that continues in terms of how we tap into these diasporic networks of chefs more and really kind of understand that that is our strength, right?
Connection to land
Nastasha: The diversity of our experiences, the diversity of where we're located, because each place has its own terroir, has its own unique set of ingredients, connection to the land. And if we think about chefs of Filipino descent in all of these different places, who can take these traditions from Canada, from the US, from Spain, wherever they are. Then we present it to the world as these are all the different ways that Filipino cuisine can be celebrated because we're so diverse. It's just, I don't know, super exciting.
Earl: I want people to actually see Filipino cuisine for how expansive it is, and for how great it is. Each person that does anything within the umbrella of Filipino adds to that voice. Each of us carry a piece of that puzzle of how to get Filipino cuisine and culture into a spotlight. When we share our stories, when we build a more whole nuanced picture of who we are, and we're actually proud of that, the whole picture is all of us. It's not just one person championing that culture because you can't champion 7,000 plus islands. So what we can do is make sure that we support and uplift those who do wanna tell their stories.
If that is cooking the cuisine from Cebu, if that is creating poetry about the rivers of Pampanga, whatever it is, each of those comes together to form a bigger picture of who we are as a people. Filipinos are very artistic people and we love to express ourselves. It's just, we're too shy to do it.
And I think that, you know, I have no more shame. So maybe that's why. But every one who wants to add their story is more than valid to add their story. Part of this was also making myself feel Filipino enough. I was raised in the Philippines, and so for other people who are purely Filipino Canadians, that might be harder for them.
But for me, it was hard too because a lot of the times I think, how are the older generations gonna take this? Or like, is this even still Filipino? But if you are honouring the traditions, if you are understanding where they came from and then creating within that spectrum of this is where it came from, let's see where I can take it. I think that's honouring your history and your culture.
Follow Earl
Nastasha: My warmest thanks to Chef Earl Briones for making the time to chat with us for this episode. You can follow him at @chefebriones on Instagram and head to the links in the show notes so you can find more information about his ongoing dinner series and also make plans to visit Coterie Restaurant and Wine Bar in Edmonton.
The show's theme music is by Crowwander with segment music by Eric and MaGill, Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear. Until next time, maraming salamat, thank you for listening.