November 7, 2002

     Coming to the land of milk (fat-free, 2%, skim, or whole) and honey, who doesn't get excited to eat one-inch thick steaks, beef jerkies and imitation crab meat?

     Or who doesn't look forward to eating burgers at White Castle or hot chicken wings at Hooters?

     Forget about it. You will have enough of them in about a week (well, you may come back to Hooters again and again but the wings are really good and they serve beer too, among "other things"). If you haven't had any exchange transfusions lately, and Filipino blood is still running in your veins, you will crave for Ilonggo home-cooking in no time. Heck, you will even crave for food you rarely eat back home. No offense to American cuisine and other nationalities, but Filipino food is still tops.

     A few months ago, two good friends - Drs. Bebong and Pinky Villaruz (1991), visited us here in suburban Chicago after spending a week with relatives and friends in Los Angeles, New Jersey and Madison, Wisconsin. As hosts, our first impulse was to ask what American or Chicago food they want to try. It did not surprise us when they said they missed Filipino food already and would rather eat what we have at home rather than eat elsewhere. I could not blame them. Winconsin's sausage doesn't compare to Pampanga's longganisa. And so we had pochero, bihon guisado, tinolang manok, pork barbecue (sugbahan style), and pork adobo, complete with big chunks of pork belly fat, among others. From all indications, that was their best memory of Chicago.

     I learned to cook at an early age. I have always thought I'd never get married. When girls look at you and they freak out, what would you think? And so I learned from my mother and read some cooking books. Cooking is not learned in a day. You have to cook on a regular basis to perfect your craft. When you become good at it, it is all instinct, you don't even measure ingredients anymore, you can cook blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back.

"We, as Filipinos, should be proud of our culture, much more of our food. We go to Filipino restaurants not only to eat the food we grew up with but to experience the generosity, the warmth, and the heart of the Philippines. We should be proud of the simplicity of Filipino cooking."

     My wife used to live mostly off burgers and fries for two years in Chicago. She grew up with helpers and cooks so she never learned. Besides, she was constantly on a diet and never craved for anything. When I came over, I was presented with a nightmare that I would have to do the same for the next decades of our lives. That's bad enough. What's worse is, except for a slight hint that's there's mayonnaise, the burgers here are tasteless, good luck on not running out of catsup. It's a no-brainer that burger chains in the Philippines like McDonalds, Wendy's and Burger King alter their hamburger's tastes to suit the Filipino palate. No surprise here, but don't they serve spaghetti and fried chicken too? And tocino in the morning? They have to do that or else Jollibee or, heck, even Glor's Hamburger along Ledesma St. will knock them out of business cold.

     I had to scour the corners of the Chicago suburbs during my first few days here looking for Filipino or oriental stores. I just had to eat our kind of rice, not Uncle Ben's or Rice-A-Roni, as they say here, the San Francisco treat. If Tony Bennett has tried it, he would never have left his heart in San Francisco.

     It's amazing what you could find if you just look. Other than most are canned or frozen, you could find most ingredients here. I am talking here strictly out of Chicago and perhaps the rest of the midwestern states of the U.S. Things may be different in California where vegetables and fish, for example, are much fresher. If an ingredient is hard to find, just be clever and substitute. If you couldn't find kalamansi, use lime or lemon. How hard is that?

     Let me put this on record that the first recipe I cooked here was tinolang manok. I was able to complete the necessary ingredients - chicken (of course), green papaya (fresh), pepper (sili) leaves (frozen), ginger and lemon grass (tanglad), to give it an authentic aroma. When my wife caught a wisp of the smell, she was speechless. When she tasted it, a most unexpected reaction - she cried. At long last, she is home. I have never imagined such an emotional scene could happen over food.

     And of course, my wife is now constantly mad at me. She since gained some serious pounds. Guess who she's blaming it on.

     You can find Filipino restaurants and stores everywhere in Chicago and the suburbs. A few restaurants are good, most are just pretenders. An e-mailer from Wisconsin (who prompted this week's topic) wanted to know some restaurants in Chicago because he has no idea if one exists in Wisconsin. That's a pity. I'll enumerate a few restaurants later in this article.

     Filipino cuisine in general is not a hit among Americans. Filipinos frequent Filipino restaurants. If you see a non-Filipino on rare occasions, you wonder if he or she is married to a Filipino or a friend just brought him or her there. So what's wrong with that? There should be an explanation to it.

     I meant no offense to cuisines of other nationalities and cultures. In fact, I have tried most of them, and even if I rank one as better or tastier than the other, they are all good. But don't tell me Filipino food doesn't taste as good or even better than Thai, or Vietnamese, or Indian. When you walk into a Thai restaurant, for example, you'll have an American crowd you'll never see in an authentic Filipino place.

     It's both intriguing and interesting. And so I took an officemate who's as American as the Statue of Liberty to Hong-Ning restaurant. Yes, that same Hong Ning you see at SM Food Courts. He ordered beef stew (it was in fact just a translation for kaldereta) which I presumed the only item in the menu he was familiar with. He finished the whole plate with rice and declared it was the best food he has ever tasted. Not just the best "beef stew", the best food. When I took another officemate a few days later, he finished the whole plate (good for two persons) of bihon guisado all by himself.

     When we were doing our grocery shopping sometime last year at a Filipino grocery store, I noticed a young American man filling his cart with bags of rice and raw pancit bihon and canton. I managed to strike a conversation with him and was surprised he spoke fluent Tagalog but with an obvious American slang. He said he is an exchange student in Baguio City and currently home on vacation. He was barely a week in the U.S. but missed Filipino food already so he took it upon himself to find a Filipino grocery store.

     And so I have come to the conclusion after my non-scientific and probably irrelevant research that there is nothing wrong with the taste. So why the lack of international recognition? Why not a single show from the Food Network on Filipino food while it has devoted half an hour on how to cook chicken with loads of curry powder on a Moroccan desert? In fairness to the all-food-and-cooking channel, it has a feature on Filipino food on its website, but it was written by Corinne Domingo who I think writes for the Philippine Star. It is buried deep into the website that I won't waste my time putting a link here to it.

     Presentation and appearance could be reasons why Filipino food is not on many Americans wish list. A friend told me recently that before eating, he looks at the appearance of the food, how it is presented on a plate. Then he asks what's on it, then decides if he will eat it or not. I wanted to show him dinuguan, tell him what's on it so he could puke himself to dehydration.

     I know a few Filipinos who are too embarrassed to bring American friends to Filipino restaurants. I suppose they have been to too many American restaurants. Sadly, they are missing the point. We, as Filipinos, should be proud of our culture, much more of our food. We go to Filipino restaurants not only to eat the food we grew up with but to experience the generosity, the warmth, and the heart of the Philippines. We should be proud of the simplicity of Filipino cooking. We go to Filipino restaurants so we can eat using a spoon, not a fork, fill our plate with white rice then top it off with three or more sides. How's that for presentation?

     Rambutan, a Filipino restaurant in the Chicago area tried to add glitz and glamour to their Filipino food to attract other nationalities but failed miserably. It is the only Filipino restaurant listed and reviewed in the magazine Chicago, a magazine patronized mostly by upper-class Chicagoans. True enough, when we went there for dinner, we were the only Filipinos in the crowd of mostly Americans. Citysearch.com has this to say about the restaurant - "Chef Jennifer Aranas gives a clever and attractive spin to this intriguing, Spanish- and Asian-influenced cuisine. Dynamite starters include kilaw (snapper seviche with ginger, garlic, pineapple and coconut cream), ukoy (sweet potato-cassava battered shrimp fritters) and sinkamas salad with jicama, green papaya, candied almonds and pears. Also try the coriander-crusted ribeye with garlic rice cake, braised pork humba and the squash-corn-jackfruit ragout. Smoky duck adobo reigned one visit, flopped the next. When available, whimsical "mahjong tiles" are mandatory (lemon-lime curd with vanilla cream and mango sauce). If they're 86'd, console yourself with chocolate truffle cake with coconut-rum reduction, but skip the gummy, flavorless dessert assortment."

     The place is great if you want to impress Americans with style, but this is definitely not traditional Filipino food, either in taste or in serving portions. We ordered the paella for $7.00 and the portion was so little, it barely touched my esophagus. The server advised us to order more than one of these little "portions" of food. I have no problem with that but the prices were so absurd, we ended up spending $60.00 eating nothing. My wife and I decided not to go back to that restaurant anymore. I bet most Filipinos who tried had the same thinking.

     Lesson No. 1: If you want to stay in business and make a profit out of a Filipino restaurant, stop masquerading as one. Be real. Be authentic. I got my copy of the Chicago Magazine (I'm definitely not an upper-class Chicagoan. I just read the magazine) last week and was surprised to find that Rambutan is no longer listed or reviewed. I called the restaurant today and found out that it went out of business, lasting two years.

     To my reader in Wisconsin, you just missed the only Filipino-American restaurant in Chicago. There's a few Filipino restaurants I've been to that you may want to try. I have some comments on the first three that I am listing here. Don't just take my word. Try them yourself. And don't be embarrassed to bring some friends.

     Hong Ning, 2204 Bloomingdale Rd., Glendale Heights, IL 60139, Tel. No. 630-539-0240. This is the same restaurant established in Cubao, Quezon City and is a fixture on Shoe Mart's Food Courts. Their ingredients are fresh and the food is mostly cook-to-order. The Crispy Pata as well as the Lomi is great.

     Bahay Kubo, 1310 Lake Street Roselle, IL 60172, Tel. No. 630-894-9022,. The same kind of food is on display everyday. I think this restaurant hasn't changed menu since the Reagan administration. The food is served turo-turo style and to me, that's a downside. The food is constantly under a heat for them to stay warm. If the pinakbet looks good in the morning, by afternoon it looks like it has gone through a food processor on puree.

     Barrio Fiesta, 3316 North Central Avenue, Chicago, IL 60634, Tel. No. 773-282-0885. They have the same look as the Barrio Fiesta chain of restaurants in Manila but definitely not the same food and that's a shame. I guess I just said I'm not going back.

     Ma Mon Luk, 9182 Golf Road, Niles, IL 60714, Tel. No. 847-803-3652.

     Cebu, 7329 Lemont Road Downers Grove, IL 60516, Tel. No. 630-663-8803 .

     Taste of the Orient, 459 North Bolingbrook Drive Bolingbrook, IL 60440 , Tel. No. 630-226-9500. They serve batchoy here. I have tried it. And yes, I wrote about it too.

     If you happen to eat at any of these restaurants, pick up a copy of a Filipino-American newspaper. You should see some more restaurants advertised in there.

     To the e-mailer who asked for the website of Ted's Lapaz Batchoy, they don't have one.

     Wouldn't it be amazing if we can just download an extra super special la paz batchoy with one click?

     Dream on.

     This week's FINAL WORD comes from several news agencies:

     "Four Portuguese women stood topless at their windows because they thought they were getting a mammogram by satellite. The women, who live in San Bartholomeu de Messines in the Algarve, were telephoned by a woman who claimed she was a doctor. The Correio da Manhã website reports she said the procedure was new and would not cost them anything. When they called her back for the results of the alleged test, the hoaxer described her sexual desires to them."

     You couldn't get dumber than that.

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     The author's e-mail address is at drgarcia@wvsumedaa.com

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