Filipino food and its place (or exclusion) from mainstream American culture

The rich history of Filipinos in the United States prompts folks in the diaspora like Ed Herrera to think about what makes Filipino culture what it is.

 

“I’m trying to find an equivalent of making tamales or making dumplings,” Herrera elaborated. “I guess our equivalent of that is making lumpia–it builds community. If we were in the Philippines, the whole preparation for our parties is bayanihan, it's community-based.”

 

Herrera was born in the Philippines and was raised in San Diego, California from age 9. He then lived in Boston from 2007 to 2016, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

 

It has only been in recent years that Filipino cuisine has started to make its way through the American mainstream and gaining recognition outside of immigrant communities, with restaurants such as Purple Patch in Washington, D.C. and BILAO in New York’s Upper East Side. Experiencing the phenomenon of Filipino cuisine for Herrera has been different depending on how the Filipino population of his abode (or lack thereof) affected that perspective.

 

“Portland has been sort of a hotbed for very avant garde, very exploratory chefs to start their thing,” Herrera explained the Pinoy cuisine phenomenon in his current residence. “That includes this wave of Filipino American chefs, whether it's running their food cart, or having a brick and mortar. There has been a very, very strong dynamic here for Filipino American chefs to really find their niche in terms of how they want to explore the diaspora through food. If you want to explore Filipino food in Portland, you will not be disappointed because there's so many different outlets here compared to Boston right now at least.”

 

The mass appeal of Pinoy cuisine has also brought attention to non-Filipinos and those unfamiliar with Pinoy cuisine, a concrete media example being Los Angeles-based Filipino eatery Dollar Hits that was featured in Netflix’s Street Food.

 

With its attention spanning beyond the Filipino diaspora, Filipino food gets its share of questioning its authenticity. From the way a dish is prepared to what ingredients are included, it is almost inevitable that Pinoy dishes will receive critique as to whether it is proper “representation” of the Southeast Asian archipelago, according to Martin F. Manalansan IV’s chapter in Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader, titled “Beyond Authenticity: Rerouting the Filipino Culinary Diaspora.”

 

Juval Racelis, professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology, often makes Manalansan’s excerpt a required reading for his students taking his class titled Food and American Culture. Racelis pinpoints how Manalansan challenges the exoticization perspective of authenticity in food–notably, the nuances of the “white person food adventurer.”

 

“[Manalansan] says the white appropriation conversation is important in understanding how they're using ethnicity and authenticity as a way to create this cultural capital,” Racelis explained. “But what does authenticity mean for those who are actually immigrants, who are actually people who are negotiating that space of trying to, as he says, ‘find home?’”

 

Born in Chicago, Racelis grew up in Houston, where he was surrounded by a sizable Filipino community. Now living and working in Boston, Racelis thinks that he has fewer Asian friends in proximity to him than before.

 

“I think it's different because despite being a ‘progressive’ city,” Racelis elaborated, “It's not diverse in the Filipino spectrum that I would hope. It makes it different to talk about Filipino food because you're explaining more when you're meeting people who don't know it, whereas for other places it's like there's a higher level of base understanding of what you're talking about with Filipino food.”

 

While the Filipino food business is alive and booming in places such as Los Angeles or New York, it is a different story for places like Boston where the Filipino population is not as big as other ethnic communities.

 

That being said, the lack of Pinoy restaurants in places like Boston could be replicated with the presence of cultural organizations that include the serving and sharing of food. With places where Filipinos can still gather for a chat with loving company, such as the Boston Filipino American Book Club (BFAB), which Herrera and Racelis are both members of, there comes the possibility of building friendships over preparing a shared meal, and ultimately, a return home.

 

“We're not just processing as in ‘Oh, that food looks good,’ or ‘Oh, that food looks interesting–I've never had it,’” Racelis elaborated. “It's ‘Oh, that food is a connection to something else: to a memory in the past.’”

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