Dec. 23, 2011 - Issue #845: Headstones
Island time
Filipino cuisine is gaining converts in Edmonton
/ Chelsey Schmidtke
Edmonton's Filipino population has been growing for a number of years but the cuisine of the Philippines remained under-represented in the city. When Carrasco and Billones opened Pinoy Grill in July of last year, they became the proud owners of only the fourth exclusively Filipino restaurant in the city.
"Filipino cuisine is not actually known to everyone," he observes—though he's trying to change that.
Most customers at the Pinoy Grill are Filipino, Carrasco says, in addition to a few people who know people from the Philippines, or visited the islands and are curious about the cuisine. Plenty of Pinoy Grill's customers are looking to reconnect with a bit of home after immigrating to Canada.
"Most of the Filipinos here will miss the food they grew up with," Carrasco says.
One traditional dish that is quite popular is sisig, which includes pork ears, parts of the face, and other pork parts. Another is the crispy pata, which is pork hocks. Deep-fried pork belly is another dish that the restaurant serves. The menu also includes fish dishes, as well as noodle and rice dishes.
Filipino cuisine is big on sweet desserts, Carasco says, and the restaurant employs a pastry chef just to make the kind of sweets that customers miss from back home.
Some people who are new to Filipino cuisine back off initially when they learn what's in some of the dishes—pork hocks, ears and face are not staples in North American cuisine, after all. With a little courage, however, people might be surprised by the flavour of the food.
"We have a food that has pork blood," Carasco says, acknowledging it's outside the norm for many Canadians. "When you tell them that it's pork blood, they don't really want to try it. But as soon as they try it, they say, 'Whoa, that's good!'"
Pinoy Grill
18216 - 84 Ave, 780.486.0005 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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