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SK10504 t1_j1fz9oj wrote

love filipino food, but some comments:

- many filipino restaurants i've been to (outside of NYC) close early...like 7pm...8pm. many times, you have to be seated by 530pm because that's when the kitchens start closing down.

- some places call them "restaurants", but they are more like turo turo serving food on styrofoam plates/bowls serving luke warm food.

- when you order kare kare in most sit down table service restaurants, they use frozen/band saw cut oxtail that comes out dry and crumbly. you rarely find fresh whole oxtails being used

when we try new filipino restaurants, we test them by ordering some of the following:

- lumpiang shanghai

- kare kare

- crispy pata

- pinakbet

- sisig

- pancit

- halo halo

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Johnnadawearsglasses t1_j1ggecm wrote

You could rinse and repeat this for many many cuisines.

How many Spanish food waves that putter and die have we seen? At least 3 in the past 25 years.

Find a great Greek restaurant in most neighborhoods.

Portuguese? One or two break thru spots for a while and then kaput.

The reality is that the nyc food scene is much less adventurous and interesting than one would imagine. Probably 1/3 of restaurants are some form of Italian. Some version of a center plate meat and side is still the standard. And national cuisines without very large local communities tend to die off very quickly.

Such as it is and has always been.

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parkerpyne t1_j1gv393 wrote

>The reality is that the nyc food scene is much less adventurous and interesting than one would imagine.

The reality is also that Philippine food isn't actually that interesting and crazy flavorwise as it's occasionally made out to be. I had a Filipina girlfriend for two years like 15 years ago. She lived in Jamaica, I lived and still live in Astoria and over those two years we visited countless times pretty much every Filipino restaurant in Woodside.

It's not a particularly challenging cuisine to even the most milkbread Westeners that you could think of. Their spices tend to be on the bland side and the best you can hope for is for rather satisfying dishes like crispy pata (I'm German so I am obviously well-versed in different preparations of pork hog so that was good) and pig blood stew which mostly presents the eater with a mental challenge to overcome their disgust while it actually tastes not controversial at all. The most curious dish I came across, interestingly, was tortang talong (a fire-roasted eggplant French toast of sorts). It tasted great (nothing out of anyone's comfort zone, mind you) but it struck me as remarkable because upon eating it for the first time I couldn't figure out its main ingredient. I then learned it's just eggplant that you roast on top of your gas stove in the fire until it's black, peel, pound flat, dip into eggs and put it in a pan with plenty of oil.

It's what I would describe as the essence of Filipino food: abundantly available cheap local ingredients prepared in a manner that is advantageous to a home cook who has to feed eight people on a budget. That's why it doesn't make for good restaurant food: It's too efficient and utilitarian and thus it won't appeal to foodies.

It is a however a goldmine for home cooks because their cuisine employs surprisingly simple hacks to make your life easy and convenient while cooking their and other food.

The food in the Philippines meanwhile is not much different. I visited my girlfriend's family with her in Cebu and spent three weeks there. Both the home-cooked as well as restaurant meals were all fine but clearly done with a sense of economy and efficiency. And that's what you would find in NYC because the people that make it out of the Philippines and move to the US started out firmly as daughters and sons of their middle class (there's literally a million Filipino nurses here in the US) and they love in a very aspirational way the American culture. They are the only people here in the US that I have met that are still into shopping malls for that reason. They subsequently americanized a lot of their food.

If you want an authentic representation of Filipino food, go to a Jollibee and gulp down their weird concoction of cut up hotdogs smothered in some sort of ketchup-based sauce over spaghetti. That is as authentically Filipino as it gets in the modern days.

This isn't to say that they don't have cool and genuinely weird food items. Someone here mentioned balut and those are the vestiges of a former distinctive national cuisine. There is very little left of it nowadays. I am not even sure you can get balut at a restaurant. For that you probably need to go to the Phil-Am grocery/bodega in Woodside.

For the record, I am not dissing their food. It is an absolutely unique food culture but it will never lend itself well to be served in a restaurant.

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spydormunkay t1_j1gzerq wrote

Filipino here. You hit the nail on the head with regards to Filipino food designed to be cooked at home for families. I agree. It is not restaurant food.

In the article it mentions other successful Asian cuisines that have had more success in America such as Chinese and Thai (I’m including Korean and Japanese as well). What those cuisines had in common is that they were built upon a well-developed street food/restaurant culture as most of the famous Asian dishes that have become very popular in America were already popular restaurant/street food back in their home countries. The dishes were practically designed solely for that kind of environment as most of them are rarely cooked at home.

Whereas all Filipino food is home food by design. It was never meant to be served in a restaurant. And the only really long standing Filipino places are ones that cater to Filipino families, basically.

Now that I think about it you can probably find parallels with all different kinds of ethnic foreign food. The only ones that ever make waves were ones that were already restaurant-designed from the ground-up. “Family-styled foreign food” rarely makes it out of their local neighborhoods.

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manila_traveler t1_j1hk4rk wrote

"All Filipino food is home food" is an overbroad statement -- if you talk about Filipino street food, even excluding pork bbq on a stick, there's turon (fried banana sliced lengthwise, seasoned with brown sugar), fish balls (small patties of fish meat and dough fried), isaw (fried pig/chicken intestines), taho (silken tofu dessert adopted from Hokkien immigrants) etc. Not to mention seasonal desserts like puto bumbong (rice cake) and bibingka (coconut & rice cake) and outlier dishes like pancit habhab (a noodle dish).

I think the issue is that by the time Filipino society had urbanized enough to develop new main dishes, the fast-food restaurant concept had already arrived. So the Philippines ended up "innovating" dishes like Filipino-style spaghetti.

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spydormunkay t1_j1ho0ce wrote

I’m talking about food that can conceivably drive a sit-down restaurant menu. I mention street food because a lot of Asian restaurant food items tend to derive from street food, doesn’t mean all street food is meant to be in a restaurant.

Perhaps you can make an make mainstay menu items of Pork BBQ, Pancit, or maybe isaw. Those can probably be made into fast food items. Besides that, there’s not much else you can do.

It’s either expensive Fusion that might die in a year, Jolibee, or family-style in Filipino neighborhoods.

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skydream416 t1_j1iu286 wrote

> For the record, I am not dissing their food. It is an absolutely unique food culture but it will never lend itself well to be served in a restaurant.

I think "never" is an ignorant thing to say here.

There's a new generation of filipino chefs who are working to change the food itself, as well as its perception in the states. Lasita in LA, bad saint in DC come to mind. The fact that we're talking about filipino food at all, when it wasn't on any gourmand's radar in the aughts, shows that it has changed and (probably) will continue to change.

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lickedTators t1_j1k1y9s wrote

> thus it won't appeal to foodies.

That's actually an argument in favor of Filipino restaurants sticking around.

Maybe they can find a better niche as with a hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout vibe than trying to be a sit-down restaurant.

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jonishay8 t1_j1gycao wrote

This is cherry picking one or two of your examples about a city with many great options across a ton of different neighborhoods. So many random spots have opened and still stand til this day and they aren’t just 1/3 Italian. This is such a BS post. Anyone reading this can do some research and find great spots.

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Johnnadawearsglasses t1_j1hroks wrote

Of course you can find many good "ethnic" spots. Mainly in ethnic enclaves. And when they try to get too "fancy" or move to areas without large related ethnic population, they overwhelmingly fail. Maharlika and Jeepney were places just like that - and that's what the story was talking about

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allezleslionz t1_j1gltfl wrote

Well, where are things more exciting? I’m seriously asking, don’t mean to sound snide.

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Own_Decision_4063 t1_j1gv405 wrote

You need to go to Queens to find the most authentic reasonably price food from so many different cultures before that changes. From Astiria out to Flushing and everywhere in between there are some of the best and most diverse food choices in the country.

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Johnnadawearsglasses t1_j1gn282 wrote

I find the selection of non Western European restaurants in London to be much better. People are actually willing to pay for a fine dining experience of cuisines like Indian, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian in a way that New Yorkers in general seem to have a problem with.

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allezleslionz t1_j1jynxm wrote

Have you spent any time in Paris, as compared to the scene in London?

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Nexis4Jersey t1_j1pye2h wrote

Portuguese and Brazil are more or less a Newark,NJ thing...so maybe thats the reason it never caught on in nyc.

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JohnQP121 t1_j1ggee1 wrote

Give me crispy pata from Tito Rad's or give me death!

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mongolmark23 t1_j1i7ycr wrote

In my opinion, Mama Fina in east village serves the best sisig (arguable even better than most restaurants back in the Philippines, including Manam) but I noticed service changed once they implemented the automatic gratuity - the wait staff don’t seem to care anymore now that they’re assured a certain percentage of tip. My theory is they get a lot of Filipinos from Philippines (where tipping isn’t always a must/kept to a bare minimum) who don’t tip. Good food but it’s difficult to justify spending money on that kind of experience.

Not to mention some of their dishes are reheated with a microwaved

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iniquities t1_j1iq2u0 wrote

Filipino food has definitely been gaining a lot more traction lately because there's actually people and organizations who want to showcase their food and culture through popups and events.

Woodside - Sometimes on weekends, there will be popups on the side walk along Roosevelt and 69th. Some vendors include ube bun burgers (Guinita), skewers (Boy Isaw), turon, etc.

There's actually a Phillipines Fest that's growing out. This year they had Adobo Fest, Lumpia Fest, Ube Fest, Calamansi Fest. Very easy way to get introduced to a lot of filipino foods and vendors.

And then there's Barkada Market who did a Christmas market and a summer market. The Christmas one included Kora Doughnuts in the mix so a ton of people got a nice food shock because I saw plenty of people come in only for Kora but ended up really enjoying lechon or batchoy.

I wish other cultures would do something similar to this because it's such a cool way to showcase your culture and build local relationships.

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Federal_Carpenter_67 t1_j1iphx6 wrote

I love Filipino food and it always tastes best when it’s home cooked- my friend’s dad makes the tastiest Filipino food and no restaurant has come close 😭 Don’t get me wrong the restaurants serve good food but maybe it’s not as good when it’s mass produced/coming out of a commercial kitchen? All I know is that I need me some of my friend’s dad’s sinigang now

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prollycantsleep t1_j1i1lro wrote

The sisig at Mama Fina’s changed my life!!! Love filipino food

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shep_pat t1_j1i7ilm wrote

I’ve tried this food several times. I’m not sure if the appeal is there. It’s so heavy and fatty

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