Kain tayo!
“Filipinos are known to be hard workers. We celebrate the joy and dignity in hard work,” says Mia Orino, chef of Kamayan ATL, a Filipino based pop-up gaining traction in Atlanta’s food scene. A surprising culinary venture, Kamayan ATL and Orino celebrated humble beginnings and a simple dream: [We] started out with a hankering for Filipino food the way our nanay (mother) made them and a yearning to see our cuisine be embraced in Atlanta, the place we now call home.
Pinoys in the United States are a mere 9,000 miles away from home, a quick 30 or so hour series of flights to go from the land of steel plated potholes to dirt roads and banana trees. It is a stark contrast, going from the humid topicality of the Philippines to the Powerball number-esque temperatures of America. As of the 2010 Census, there were 3.4 million Filipino Americans residing in the U.S.
Like many other Asian cultures that value community, family and togetherness, Pinoys find our “pamilya” and make a home regardless of where in the world we are; the Filipino community in Atlanta is no different and we find ways to reconnect with a culture that can be hard to maintain from such a distance, through university associations, church groups, and even Facebook groups.
Despite constituting the second-largest population of Asian Americans in the United States, one aspect of Filipino culture that hasn’t quite been part of the cultural amalgamation that is the American conscious is the food. Filipino flavours like patis, tsuka and bagoong have been relegated to the backburner, never really breaking into the American culinary scene, in favour of more popular tastes like sushi, pad thai, rogan josh and well, orange chicken. Across the continental United States, one would be hard-pressed to find a Filipino restaurant; while in larger cities like New York and Los Angeles Filipino restaurants have managed to cement their place, change is slow in coming.
“We Filipinos love food and are extremely proud of our cuisine. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter how far we have moved or how long we’ve been away from the motherland, the connection to the flavors we were raised by is never gone,” said Amelia Guzman, whose family moved to Atlanta when she was two. “Many Filipinos lose the language when we move or when we were born in the U.S., but the food that our grandparents and parents fed us is always with us. It is an integral part of Filipino culture, it is an integral part of who we are as a people. No matter how many generations it’s been, you will always find lumpia at our parties,” she laughs.
Patty Gan is more than aware of the need for a culinary revolution. “It may have taken us a long while to let our presence be known in the culinary landscape but we are here and proactively taking part in the food movement that’s currently happening and rising in Atlanta,” she affirms. Kamayan ATL is the spearhead for this growing appreciation for Filipino food — each pop-up sells out faster and faster and a brick-and-mortar location is in the works, according to the team. Slowly but surely, Mia, Patty and their team — comprised largely of their family members and close friends — are igniting a desire for the uniqueness of Spanish-based, tropically infused flavors.
And they aren’t the only ones. Eggrollin’ is a food truck that is known around Kennesaw for their authentic lumpia, Kuya Express in Duluth and Manila Mart in Buford Highway are small but well-known spots perfect for satisfying cravings for tocino, bangus and tapa, and talks of a new eatery in Grant Park called Estrellita have been floating around for months.
While it may be years or even decades until people think of tocilog in the same train of thought as shrimp fried rice, there is no doubt you’ll be lured into the mesmerizing world of the Filipino palate one pop-up at a time.
