filipino food - overlooked by the rest of the world

Ashley told me about this recent article in the Honolulu Advertiser entitled "Lost in Translation." No, it's not about the movie, but rather about why Filipino cuisine has remained almost exclusively within the Filipino community. (Example: Go to the Max's in Glendale and see how many non-Filipinos eat there daily).

An excerpt from the article (the rest can be seen here):

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...As a Filipino who loves the food of his culture, Flores has argued for years that it's time for Filipino food to break out. But as a businessman, he's concluded that the only place you can be successful with a Filipino restaurant is in a neighborhood where many Filipinos live. A chain called Jolly Bee (um, that's not how you spell it) has done well in Filipino communities in California, for example. (not necessarily -- look at the abstract of this 2002 LA Times article here.)

"But you don't see a Filipino restaurant in Kailua. You don't see one in Hawai'i Kai," he said. "You see Filipinos eating in Chinese restaurants, but you don't see Chinese eating in Filipino restaurants. It's just how it is."

NO UPSCALE ATTENTION

Nor has Filipino food made it into the high-end mainstream, where deconstructed, dandied-up versions of local dishes enter the $20-a-plate circle.

If there's anyone on O'ahu who could give Filipino cuisine a haute makeover, it's Elmer Guzman, the Maui-born Filipino chef trained by Emeril Lagasse and Sam Choy. But when Guzman went out on his own last year, he opened The Poke Stop, a take-out place focused on seafood.

"I thought about it and thought about it," he said of the high-end Filipino restaurant idea. "I knew it wasn't going to work. Maybe in San Francisco; not in Hawai'i." Given the already narrow audience for big-ticket dining, and the general lack of understanding of Filipino food, "you'd be taking a big chance." This despite the fact that many, many of the line cooks in top restaurants are of Filipino descent, he said.

Guzman also was concerned about communicating the subtleties of his culture's "soul food." On the surface, many Filipino entrees have a sameness: they begin with onion and garlic, they're simmered or boiled, they feature a lot of vegetables, they're flavored with different meats or seafoods, plus dried shrimp or fish sauce. To those who know the difference between pinakbet and sari-sari, both vegetable stews, the nuances are obvious, but they're likely lost on the rest of the audience, he said.

Guzman featured a few Filipino-style dishes when he was chef at Sam Choy's Diamond Head Grill — adobo leg of duck with crispy skin, for example. But, he said, "the thing about it was, visually, you don't have the wow. You might have the flavor, but not the wow appearance. People eat with their eyes." There's also the fact that the minute patis — the fish sauce that's the Filipino cooking equivalent of shoyu in Japanese cuisine — hits the heat, it sends out a powerful scent, one that some diners might not appreciate.

Guzman's comments hint at another point that may explain why Filipino food has not spread: Many entrepreneurial immigrants have been willing to doctor the foods of their home, toning down potent flavors and eliminating unfamiliar ingredients, to make the food acceptable to a Western audience. But, said Stephanie Castillo, a filmmaker and lover of her mom's Filipino cooking, "I don't think Filipinos thought of their food as something to be marketed...."