There’s No One Like Mom

A Filipino restaurant in New York City?  Not entirely unheard of, but I’d be hard-pressed to come up with the name of a single Filipino restaurant that either (1) is still around in New York City (they frequently close soon after opening—Filipinos are notorious for being bad restaurant proprietors), or (2) has good food. There are really good takeout counters on First Avenue near East 14th Street, and there’s a Filipino-French place in SoHo, but I’m still waiting for a place to make food like Mom’s. 

Speaking of that Filipino-French place in SoHo, my husband Dave and I went there once, with another non-Filipino couple. I was skeptical going in, and my attitude did not improve after the meal was over. I was in such a bad mood that Dave suggested I make us some authentic Filipino food. My lips said yes before they had a chance to consult with my brain.

If my lips had consulted my brain, my brain would have reminded my lips that I didn’t know how to cook any of those elaborate dishes my mom, grandmother, and aunties made.  I knew “quick and easy,” not “holiday-worthy.” But Dave was so happy about eating a Filipino meal that I didn’t bother him with the truth. We had just gotten married a few months before and I cooked him a four-course meal almost every night. He loved my cooking. I couldn’t disappoint him. So I did what any young and newly-married woman would do when faced with such a dilemma: I called my mother.

What she should have done was come over to my apartment with some strong Filipina women, so they could help make those elaborate dishes. But what she did was give me some lame Filipino cookbook. A cookbook?! Did my own mother use a cookbook?!  When I asked her, she laughed, and said no. Well, why give me one? She said it was easier than translating all that information in her head from Tagalog to English. Oh, sure, take the easy way out, I thought.   

I read through the cookbook and saw that almost every recipe called for an ingredient named aji-no-moto, which turned out to be some brand of monosodium glutamate. That was the first bad sign.

The recipes were terrible. I tried to pick harmless and somewhat easy recipes, like pancit and lumpia. Rice noodles and egg rolls.  How hard could that be, right? And they were dishes that Dave wouldn’t be turned off by. So I spent hours chopping and rolling until the time came for me to throw it all together. 

What came out was a smelly, oily, mushy mess. The pancit noodles were over-boiled and stuck together, despite the egregious amount of vegetable oil I added to them. The lumpia tasted burnt, from the inside out, and the skin had stuck to the frying pan, giving it a chewed-up look.  At least we had wine to drink, although it was not Filipino (I don’t think that one even exists). 

Every now and then I try my hand at some Filipino dish. I can make an edible babingka, and my version of lumpia has been served at some family parties. Still, nothing beats my mom’s cooking. And there is still a dearth of Filipino restaurants in New York City, which means that many of us Filipinos feel the same way. So until my mom and a thousand other Filipina mothers out there get together and open the perfect Filipino restaurant, I’ll wait until the holidays, or a relative’s birthday, to eat my favorite Filipino dishes.