From Quezon City to Colorado: A Taste of the Philippines Brings Filipino Food to the People

It's hard sometimes being a (half) Filipino in Denver. Not in a struggle-for-basic-human-rights-way or anything like that, it's just there aren't many of us around. When a town isn't overflowing with Pinoys it goes to follow that there aren't many Filipino restaurants. At one time I counted three, all in the far reaches of SE Aurora, and now only one stands. Needless to say that it was with great enthusiasm that I finally made it downtown to A Taste of the Philippines a few weeks ago.

As you may know (whether you believe it or not is another thing), I work for a living. And I don't work downtown so I have missed out on the explosion of food carts and other food related things that are happening currently in great numbers that I believe are referred to as trends. This trend of food carts and trucks has gotten a little out of control for my tastes, but every once and awhile, something good comes along. Something like a Filipino food cart.

The first menu item on owner and Chef Kathy Gietl's A Taste of the Philippines menu is chicken adobo. Adobo is a Filipino standard just like a tortilla would be to many Spaniards, or ratatouille to the French. There are many versions and every Filipino's mother, grandmother or other matriarch makes the best one. Gietl's was very good, but true to a my Filipino roots, I must say that my Auntie Cora's is better. Partly I say that so there is no chance I will have my adobo withheld from me this Christmas, but also because adobo is so deeply personal that the one you had all your childhood and life is without a doubt the best one. Still, like I said, Gietl's adobo was very good-- a comforting blend of the strong usual suspects like vinegar, soy and garlic. The meat was tender and the portion large. It would be an excellent introduction to Filipino cuisine for anyone.

Adobo: brown, proud and up front. 

The same goes for the lumpia, or fried egg rolls. Auntie Cora's is the best. She makes a lighter but thicker version and uses no meat; while Gietl's is thin, tightly rolled and stuffed with yummy pork. She even makes her own dipping sauce (Gietl, that is). Lumpia is something that everyone likes--and this one is stuffed fried with pork, after all. Don't forget to order a pair if you go.

I missed out on the pancit that day, which was gone after the lunch rush. We did have, however, manok sa gata, a sort of coconut curry a la adobo. My wife, who loves diverse flavors was not a fan of the overall combinations in the dish but I really liked it. All Filipino food is not for everyone.

Gietl was born in Quezon City and her mission, she told me, was to educate as many people as she could about Filipino Food-- and then of course, win them over with her cooking. Seems simple, but I think the problem with Filipino food being more mainstream is that it can be quite obscure, and the diverse flavor profiles can be very different than what the average American palate is used to. That being said, Gietl's cart has a nice variety of introductory Filipino foods that should appeal to just about everyone.

One problem many of the failed Denver-area Filipino enterprises share in common is that they might have tried to market to a Filipino population that really wasn't there. I admire Gietl because she doesn't seemed concerned with that at all. Her mindset seems to be that she is going to open Denver's eyes to the good of Filipino food one person at a time. She's cooking not to fill a niche in a cultural demographic, but rather because she loves it and she is passionate about the cuisine. I for one enthusiastically endorse this mission and will continue to punch my frequent diner card there as often as I can.

Regardless of the loyalties we Filipinos inevitably have to our home cooked meals, A Taste is serving up good versions of tried-and-true Filipino standards. And I, for one, don't get to eat my aunt's food but once or twice a year if I'm lucky, so to have A Taste here in my backyard is a blessing and a big step forward for our cuisine. Check her out. I think you will like it. If you do, go back. Learn. Embrace. Filipino for all!

Check out A Taste of the Philippines on twitter for the latest updates or just get on down there to 16th and Champa.

A Filipino Feast at Mesa: Modern(e) Crispchon and Mor(e)

During my recent trip to the Philippines there wasn't that much time to be a tourist. That was fine, of course, as I was able to spend quality time with not only my father, but the dozens--if not hundreds--of people that we consider our relatives, which is to say most of the occupants of the town in which my father was born and raised. I was also, however, able to slip out one night for a meal with some first cousins, and they whisked me away from the rooted tradition of my ancestral home into the most modern part of Manila, Makati City.

Among all the towering skyscrapers and bustling evening street life we headed to a mall. Of course we did. Malls have replaced plazas, parks and the picturesque waterfront as the gathering place of choice for urban-dwelling Filipinos (but that is another topic altogether). But shopping wasn't on the agenda that night, rather they were taking me to the hip, crowded Mesa restaurant in the admittedly stunning Greenbelt 5 mall (yes it is the fifth mall in the same location-- and yes, the other four are still open).

Even the lights looked good enough to eat

Mesa describes itself as a modern Filipino restaurant (actually technically they use "moderne" but I'll stick with the "e"-less version) and the interior was indeed sleek and minimalist. But then I sat down and opened the extensive menu randomly to this page:

This gorgeous and gleaming young swine centerfold was all I needed to see to know that I would like this nouveau cuisine. (I realize that in the Philippines it is not all that exciting or unusual to see lechón but for us Filipinos and half-Filipinos living in decidedly non-Filipino places like Denver, each pig-on-a-stick sighting triggers more photos than sunset on Manila Bay or posing with Rizal at Luneta Park--combined.)

"You want that?" My cousin astutely inquired, seeing my jittery hands and shit-faced grin as I stared at the picture of "Crispchon"--that is,  lechón that instead of being roasted is deep fried to a crisp. He proceeded to order that and so much more, in what would be a disgustingly decadent spread of Filipino flavor.

I just about peed on myself (for joy) when our 17-year-old (at most) server quickly re-appeared with the freshly deep fried hind quarter of a suckling pig. He placed it on a small butcher's block and began to chop it into bite-sized chunks. Its still-steaming meat and hot glistening skin was making me more than a little rabid. Then, suddenly, another server came out and grabbed the whole leg bone and disappeared back into the kitchen.

"Nooooo!" I whispered to myself. From my seat at the wrong end of a six-person booth I was helpless to stop him. I was also physically unable to speed up our young butcher who after chopping for what seemed like hours, was now rolling up pieces of the meat with crackly pig skin, cucumbers, cilantro and leeks into small pandan crepes--basically a fresh lumpia wrapper.

I appreciated the effort and the style of our table side demo but  lechón is best when eaten piping hot. So it was with some sadness that I watched the steam dissipate from the sliced meat. And where the hell was that pig leg?

Then I became distracted by the simultaneous arrival all of our food. First to hit the table was a huge plate of grilled meats: skewered and marinated pork, fatty ribs, mussels and plump prawns. And while it was all quite good, my mind was still on that quartered pig.

The next dish I sampled was a creative plate of deep fried tilapia. The fillet was cubed and fried separately from the body so as to be light and crunchy like popcorn--but still wonderfully moist. But the best pieces were on the body itself  (the head and cheeks to be specific) which was also fried and presented in a way that looked as if the two fish were still swimming circles in the ocean around each other (as they probably were the day before).

More plates: baby octopus, stir-fried vegetables, a delicate seafood soup and an incredible green mango dish served with diced tomato and onion, garnished with Bagoong Alamang, or Filipino shrimp paste.

Finally our boy-server plopped down our platter of rolled-up lechón  in the center of our table.

Although only luke-warm my first bite was entirely satisfying. The skin was still crisp (it was deep fried after all) and the meat was tender like a young pig's flesh should be. The vegetables added another layer of crispy texture but also cut the fatty, fried meat nicely. Three sauces adorned the platter, but I needed none other than the traditional pork liver lechon sauce. Again, it could have been hotter (temperature-wise) and it would have been better, but it was still the best thing I have eaten in a long, long time.

And then I noticed someone had snuck the leg bone back onto our table-- now chopped into hand-sized chunks and stacked rather haphazardly (in contrast to our carefully prepared lechon rolls) on a single small plate. When they were passed my way I gnawed at several crunchy, meaty, fatty pieces and even sucked on the foot itself in homage to my dear wife (she loves her some pig feet) who, unable to come, was at that moment probably just starting to stir in bed to the crescendo-ing cries of two one-year-old babies.

Crying babies? Or fried pig leg? Tough choice.

It was, as I said, an enormous meal-- just the type of indulgence required for a reunion of three cousins (and their families) living on three different continents. I don't get enough Filipino food anymore to distinguish the good from the great, as just the dishes themselves, the flavors even-- rich liver sauce, crisp pork skin, fishy shrimp paste, acidic green mango, fresh seafood-- are enough to get my taste buds giddy and keep me food-happy for weeks, if not months, afterwards. So I'm sure some purists have criticized Mesa, and no, everything was not executed perfectly well, but in the end this is the type of experience-- sharing good food with dear family-- that reinvigorate my passion for all food. And with that inspiration I am back in Denver and looking for my next great meal.

Press "1" For Awesome: Food of the Philippines

Besides all my usual reasons, I have been very tardy in posting recently because of a whirlwind trip to the Philippines. The premise was a sad one, as a dear, dear loved one has passed, but the result was gathering together with family at our ancestral home just outside of Manila in Cavite. And as I learned during my first Filipino wake, times of Filipino mourning are just as filled with food as times of celebration.

The food in this house has been prepared by a woman named Rita who has worked for the family for as long as many of us can remember--at least the last twenty years. She is a masterful cook and she was in top form for the entire week, whipping up meal after elaborate meal for dozens of hungry neighbors, distant cousins and travel-weary visitors at a time.

Press "1"! Press it!

My favorite time was breakfast, when it was usually just a handful of us immediate family-- and maybe a few faithful churchgoers, stopping by after mass to continue the devotions. A typical morning meal that week looked a lot like this:

I always started by getting my hands on some quesillo (which I saw spelled Kaysilo at a local market). Quesillo is Cavite's version of Kesong Puti. It is a fresh, unpasturized and glorious cheese made from the milk of a carabao.

Philippine Pictures

The carabao, if you don't know is the Asian Water Buffalo and native to Southeast Asia. It is an enormous and cumbersome beast while the cheese, in contrast, is delicate and light. It is just firm enough to stay together when sliding out of the banana leaf in which it is wrapped, but soft enough to fall apart with the gentle tug of a spoon.

Its creamy texture and fresh taste make it the perfect spread for a freshly baked pandesal (the Filipino salty bread roll) though it is even better with a bite of a sweet, sticky longganisa sausage dripping with fat.

Also on that plate above with both a sweet and a garlic-laden longganisa is a subtly sweet tube of sticky rice, Sumang Malagkit. It too came wrapped in a banana leaf.

And another version of it was flavored (and colored) with ube, the ubiquitous purple tuber of the Philippines. Everything is better with ube.

Despite how I talked up Rita at the beginning of the post, in retrospect much of this particular meal was bought at the local market. But just so it's clear that she is an awesome cook (press "1"), here is a picture of lunch later in the week. Her version of Arroz a la Cubana.

This Latin-inspired Filipino dish consists of ground pork, peas, carrots, potatoes and raisins all mixed up in a red sweet-but-savory tomato sauce. That sounds good enough as is, but also thrown in there are big chunks of fried banana--Saba to be specific. Saba is a small cooking banana with a taste not unlike a plantain, though it is sweeter. The dish is typically served with a fried egg, but Rita--who was cooking buffet-style and had no time to be frying eggs to order--instead hard-boiled quail eggs and tossed them in with everything else. Brilliant.

That is a taste (or at least a look) of what I've been up to lately. It's too bad Denver doesn't have Filipino food this good but then again the Philippilines doesn't have good Greek or Salvadorean cuisine either--just two of the themes of upcoming posts I'm working on now-- if I can just find the time to get it all done.