Chef exposing Winnipeggers to Filipino cuisine, 1 pop up dinner at a time

Allan Pineda dreams of a Winnipeg where people say "Honey, let's order out for Filipino food."

The Winnipeg-born 39-year-old is a trained chef — although he now works in an office — and spent all of his cooking career making the food of other cultures. According to Pineda, he's not alone.

"There are so many Filipino chefs in the city, but they're all working [elsewhere]. And they're all cooking food that none of them grew up on. None of us ever do our food."

Pineda says he "just wants to educate people" and show them what Filipino food is all about.

For the uninitiated, Pineda describes Filipino food as "a mishmash of everything."

"There's some Spanish food in there, there's Malaysian, there's some Chinese, there's even a little bit of Japanese," he said, adding there's even hints of an American influence in the food.

Diverse dishes

Pineda says Filipino cuisine is rooted in the massive cultural diversity and history of the Philippines, which has been occupied by several different countries over the centuries.

Pineda says there's a huge discrepancy between the large number of Filipino-Canadians living in Winnipeg and the relatively few Filipino restaurants open to the public — a pattern he says is a shame. If you compare the number of Filipino- and Japanese-Canadians in the city, against the glut of Japanese restaurants that are around, you start to see his point.

According to 2006 census data, people who identify as Filipino-Canadian outnumber Japanese-Canadians in Manitoba by almost 20 to one. And yet "what is there, 100 sushi restaurants?" Pineda asked.

Sick of waiting for his food to find an audience, Pineda has started a series of monthly "pop up dinners" featuring Filipino chefs, and gives them free rein to cook their culture's food with a dash of each chef's personal flair.

Called "Baon Manila Nights," the dinners take place at licensed restaurants, which allow Pineda to take over their location for an evening.

Pineda said each dinner allows "people in the city to try out Filipino food in a different way, but each chef has their own take on it, so each dinner is totally different."

Pineda hopes the combination of talented chefs, showcasing their culture, will attract foodies in our city and start to change the way Winnipeggers think of his culture's food. But it's not just non-Filipinos who are having their minds expanded.

"Last dinner we did it was with a couple of young guys," he said. "They brought their parents, and the look on their [faces] was just like, 'Holy, this guy is doing this food in a different way,'" said Pineda.

But he's not satisfied just helping to expose more people to Filipino food. Pineda wants to help diners experience a Filipino-style of eating.

Chef-in-residence

On Monday, Pineda is starting a chef-in-residence program at a Charlee's Restaurant & Lounge in Elmwood where, one evening a month, cutlery will not be on the menu.

"We're trying to do a more traditional dinner, eating with our hands like our parents ate back then."

The style of eating is called "kamayan," where diners use sticky rice to pick up meats and vegetables laid out on banana leaves.

"You can put whatever item you want with that and just put it into your mouth," Pineda explained.

He says people are sometimes nervous about eating with their hands in public, until they realize that chicken wings and pizza are essentially Western finger-food.

Some of the money brought in by the dinners helps to feed people at Winnipeg shelters, Pineda said.

Reuben lumpia

The main goal of the dinners is to help bring Filipino food to the mainstream. One way he's doing that is by combining traditional Filipino foods with Western staples.

One of his favourite dishes are lumpia — small, fried spring-rolls, normally filled with meat and vegetables.

One of his creations stuffs the ingredients normally found in a reuben sandwich — corned beef, sauerkraut and spicy mustard — inside a tiny, finger-shaped spring roll (or lumpia). Pineda says he also does "a Philly-cheese steak lumpia."

"I do fusion, because I'm Canadian — I grew up with this stuff," he said. "We change it up every couple of weeks."

But Pineda also admits part of it is to spark curiosity in young people within his own community.

According to Pineda, too few young Filipino-Canadians know about their own culinary culture.

"You ask them to cook a Filipino dish and they can't, because their mom cooks it," he said, adding he's worried about the future of his food if young people aren't learning to prepare it.

"The problem is when their parents pass away no one is going to cook this food."

Pineda has only been at it for a year, but he's already starting to see promising signs. He was recently invited to host pop up dinners in both Calgary and London, England.