Though swamped with sweet restaurants of all sorts, Santa Barbara rarely cuts any ambitious ethnic cuisine edges, which is why there’s no Filipino café on Carrillo Street yet. But lumpia lovers can stop holding their breath, at least for this weekend, as the Getty Center’s renowned Filipina Chef Mayet Cristobal will prepare examples of Manila’s hottest street food (paired with Doug Margerum’s wine) at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 18, at the Bacara’s 2nd Annual Food & Wine Weekend. See bacaraculinaryweekend.com for details and tickets. She answered a few of my questions last week.
With so many ethnic cuisines now popular, is Filipino food also seeing a surge in interest? Filipino cuisine is definitely getting a lot of buzz lately. It’s exciting. Lately I’ve seen L.A.-based Filipino chefs getting more and more recognition.
It’s a new flavor profile to most people. I think that many people aren’t really familiar with Filipino food and those who are probably associate the cuisine only with adobo, pork lechón, lumpia, and, of course, balut. But there are many other classic Filipino dishes that are delicious with more mainstream flavor combinations like vegetable laksa, kinilaw, and braised oxtail in peanut sauce.