Philippine Café

Here in New Zealand there is still very little awareness of Filipino cuisine.

Tastes that are everyday comfort food to the average Pinoy are exotic, adventurous, even challenging, to the average Kiwi.

At Turo-Turo café in Glen Innes, locals ponder the menu posted on the window. Some cautiously venture inside to peer at the puto and biko, but then, quietly, turn and leave.

What’s at risk?

The fact that they may spend the price of a meal on something they don’t like.

And with a cuisine that’s as new to them as Filipino, they consider that a big risk – especially when the ingredients and textures aren’t what they’re accustomed to.

Dinuguan is the most obvious example.

The intestines of a pig, chopped up and cooked in a stew of pig’s blood.

The horror! Never mind that those ingredients regularly show up in Kiwi favourites like mince pies and sausages; to the average non-Filipino it’s the stuff of Fear Factor.

But there are other, more subtle challenges.

Filipinos enjoy the fat and skin. Lechon paksiw or pork belly barbecue wouldn’t be the same with just lean meat. But Kiwis have learned to see those things as the “bad bits.”

Similarly, chicken bones and gristle, and even skin, typically dumped at the side of a Kiwi’s plate, are tasty treasures in a Filipino’s tinola.

Despite their reservations, Kiwis do want to discover something new – and at Turo-Turo there’s always a new face coming in to try the food.

A first-timer will usually order something that resembles food they’ve eaten before from other cultures, a familiarity they can handle: lumpiang prito (“spring rolls”) with chilli sauce for dipping.

Siomai. Pancit.

Caldereta is popular. Bistek Tagalog, too.

Then there’s lechon paksiw. Once Kiwis can come to terms with the idea that there may be pieces of pork fat or skin (although they can always ask for lean meat only) this dish is an instant favourite.

Tender and tasty in its savoury vinegar-based sauce, lechon paksiw has few, if any, equivalents in other cultures’ cuisines.

“This one is amazing!” was a comment from one Kiwi woman to her dining companion overheard last week. Another customer of Turo-Turo bought lechon paksiw for her lunch almost every day for several weeks on end!

Then, of course, there are the ‘silogs.

Longsilog is often a starting-point dish for first-time eaters of Filipino food. With the sweet flavours of the longanisa sausage mixed in with the garlic rice and fried egg, it is both unique, and familiar.

Bangsilog delivers a whole new subtlety to the flavour of fish, with its earthy freshwater taste, and, deboned, doesn’t present a challenge to Kiwis at all. They love it!

Of all the dishes, the most polarising is sisig.

Sisig encapsulates the fear some Kiwis have of foreign cuisine – unbearably, searingly spicy, made from some of the most gruesome parts of the pig.

But sisig also represents the best of Filipino cuisine, a dish that is experienced, not just eaten; creative, unusual, rewarding and satisfying.

Filipino food is the new frontier for Kiwis

 – and indeed for people around the world – and it brings challenges that mean it won’t be an overnight sensation.

But Kiwis are trying it, Kiwis are loving it, Kiwis are bringing their friends to Turo-Turo to try it – and the good reputation is spreading.

They just have to learn to love that dinuguan …



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