manila_traveler t1_j1hk4rk wrote on December 24, 2022 at 12:01 PM

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

"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.

spydormunkay t1_j1ho0ce wrote on December 24, 2022 at 12:51 PM

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.