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spydormunkay t1_j1gzerq wrote

Reply to comment by parkerpyne in Filipino food gains visibility in NYC, but restaurateurs point to a complicated reality by L0v3_1s_War

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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