- Welcome to our Filipino Food Tour.
Today we are going to two amazing spots
in Historic Filipinotown to try some amazing dishes,
maybe some Filipino snacks,
all sponsored by Fanta
'cause we're looking for the best flavor match today.
- I'm trying to become the next Fantana,
but I want to be the pina colada one.
- I mean, you should be.
- And my dress will be.
- Sheer.
(both laughing)
(Try Guys theme music)
- We are here with our lovely wife, Becky.
- [Keith] Mm hm, mm hm, Becky's here with us, our quadruple.
- Becky, Matt, what do y'all know about Filipino food?
- It's like a melting pot food 'cause there's a lot
of different influences in Asia
and they were conquered by the Spanish for awhile.
- Yeah, colonialism.
- So there's a lot of different flavors
to kind of meld together.
- I don't think I've ever been to a Filipino restaurant.
- What, y'all have never been before?
- No, I don't think I have.
- I think my only real experiences
with Filipino food are from like Jollibee.
- I've only been I think a few times actually in my life,
so this is going to be a new experience for all of us.
- Now I have had some Filipino food here
or there in different videos.
I've always loved it
and I also know we have a really
rather large Filipino audience watching.
- Yeah, hello, Philippines.
- So I hope you're watching, hi!
- Hello Filipino Americans and everyone around the world
who are Filipino.
I certainly know more about the Philippines
than Filipino food.
Like have you seen their reaction videos
to when their girl wins a beauty pageant?
They flip out.
- [Announcer] It's the Philippines!
(group screaming)
- Well, our first stop today is HiFi Kitchen.
It's a fairly new spot.
It's been open for a few years in Historic Filipinotown.
I know they do some fusion
so let's head there and find out what it's all about.
- What's going on, guys.
My name is Justin.
I'm the chef and owner of HiFi Kitchen,
based in Historic Filipinotown.
- How would you describe Filipino cuisine?
- We make Filipino-Angeleno food,
is what we call it.
So basically Filipino food
that's influenced and inspired by the area I grew up in.
I feel like it's something
that you can't really like pinpoint
because there's so many influences
that come from so many different places.
You're touching on Malaysia,
Thailand, stuff like that.
So there's some like Muslim influence.
Chinese, Japanese influence and stuff like that, right?
And then colonized by the Spaniards for quite awhile.
So there's a lot of like,
there's like European influence.
That cross section of cultures
and that respect between the dishes is something
that we really prioritize,
and so finding the common thread
between the recipes is where we start.
And also hope, you know,
like after you bite into it,
you have like, yo, you need to try this.
One of those moments.
- A lot of stuff out here.
I think we're going to start with these.
What are these?
- [Justin] So that's the lumpia.
Pork egg rolls.
We make 'em in house.
We hand roll them.
They are my aunt's recipe.
The long name for these are called lumpiang Shanghai.
- [Eugene] Chinese influence.
- [Justin] Influence in their here, yeah.
- [Eugene] You just improved on it.
- We just Filipino-ized it.
- It looks delish.
(Becky crunching)
(Eugene crunching)
- Ooh, sounds so crunchy.
- Yeah, it's similar to an egg roll.
- Mm hm.
- It is very much to me in between an egg roll
and a taquito, and I love both of those things.
- I could eat 100 of these.
- I'm gonna try this pina colada Fanta.
Remember the soda Rank King video I did?
I didn't have the pina colada.
This is like a different flavor, right?
- Mm hm.
- I have never even seen it before.
Is that new?
A new flavor?
- It's good.
- [Justin] Chicken adobo is always something
that everyone does differently.
My dad taught me super traditional the first time.
Soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves,
peppercorns, garlic.
We also do some cranberry juice.
Kind of rounds out that tartness.
I was going to go with the rice.
The rice has an egg on it because if you liked it,
you should have put an egg on it.
- Wonderful philosophy.
- There's also some of the adobo jus on the rice.
That's pretty much like almost my favorite part,
is just like the jus and the rice is like amazing.
- It smells incredible.
- Wow.
- [Keith] Smells so rich.
- Ooh, look at that.
- This smell, there is something else going on in there.
- Look at that chicken.
- That's like sweet and sort of like warming spices.
It smells really good.
- So this is the first Filipino dish I ever had
and typically what I think a lot
of people order when they go to a Filipino restaurant.
They think I'm going to get the chicken adobo
'cause it's just so good.
You can't go wrong with amazing chicken,
and egg, and rice, right?
- Wow.
- It's just so tender and it kind
of just falls apart in your mouth.
And then it has a great acidity to it.
A lot of depth of flavor.
- I would eat this every day.
- It looks like it would taste very heavy or like thick,
but it's actually very light.
- [Keith] Is it improper to drink the jus?
- [Justin] Dude, do it.
I mean, I always dip my rice in it.
That's like the move.
- Whoa, that's really good.
It's so flavorful.
- [Eugene] Some adobo I've had
has been like really soy forward.
- [Justin] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, this is a little more on the sweet garlicky,
it's got like a solid jus, which I really like.
- [Justin] It airs on the side of like teriyaki, almost?
- Yeah, the eggs, so it was like a perfectly cooked egg
so that when you chopped it,
it just ran over everything.
- Honestly though,
it does pair well with Fanta because this is so savory
and salty and this is like very sweet,
and the pineapple works really well.
I'm excited actually to have the pineapple with the tacos
'cause I think those are going to be just perfect.
- [Justin] We're going to go with tocino al pastor.
So tocino is like this breakfast meat in the Philippines,
typically cured with pineapple juice
and then we simmer it in the al pastor spices.
Then we also have the potato taco there.
So we were like really mad
that a very popular taco place took the potatoes away.
- Same.
- And like, right?
Yeah, totally.
And so like when they removed it,
we're just like, (beep).
I mean, we're just going to do it ourselves then.
- I love pastor when I get tacos in L.A.,
so this sounds incredible to me.
- Mm, mm.
- My turn?
- Mm hm.
- That's incredible.
- It's like a, it's like a sweeter al pastor.
- I don't know what it is about like Asian cuisines
meeting Mexican cuisine?
(Eugene clapping)
Divided by an ocean but the flavor combined,
like Captain Planet.
- [Justin] Typically tocino is served
with a side of vinegar.
So we make like a spiced vinegar here.
You would dip that for breakfast.
So I would do the, instead of like a lime wedge, right?
I would do vinegar.
- It's good vinegar.
I wanna try the potato one.
- I'm very excited for the potato
because I too was a big fan of the major chain
that decided to discontinue their potato taco.
- The texture is great.
It's like crunchy, pillowy inside,
and the sauce on it is so good.
Little spice at the end.
- Every single thing so far has had such a density
of flavor and has tasted so different from the thing before.
Like your world of flavors here is remarkable.
How's everybody's pairing with their chosen Fanta
for today's meal?
The pineapple for me is great because everything
so far has had this like great acidity
and the pineapple just melded really well with it.
- I mean, I just love the orange flavor so much.
It just goes with everything.
- Would you say it's a Fanta five, Matt?
- It's a Fanta Five.
- Fanta Five!
(inspirational music)
- I noticed there's a lot of nods
to music in your restaurant,
so can you talk about the impact of that?
- Before I became a restaurant owner,
I was a professional B-boy.
- Wow.
- Oh, sick.
- Breaker, yeah.
That's kind of where I discovered my creative autonomy
and the decor and the nod in the restaurant
are like kind of just a shout out to like my journey here.
This is the la'ing.
- [Eugene] Is that crispy pork belly?
- Yeah, so that's a crispy pork belly.
We call it, it's traditionally known as lechon kawali.
We call it talib kawali here.
So la'ing is taro leaves braised in coconut milk,
super aromatic, similar in texture to like saag
if you guys are familiar with Indian food.
Then we top it off with crispy pork
and that's prepared pretty traditionally
with like the pork crackling and stuff like that.
- Beautiful.
- I'm going to try to do a perfect bite.
- I am also going for a perfect bite here.
Cheers.
- Yeah, cheers.
- The taro leaf is like so creamy.
- [Eugene] The treatment is almost like a saag paneer.
- [Keith] Yeah, it really is.
- [Justin] You'll see like a chili oil on it.
- Bigger than I thought.
- What I love about the cuisine
so far is the influences feel very Pan-Asian
and even American because of some of these Mexican fusion.
So all of these dishes just feel like I'm kind
of hopping to a different country altogether
in terms of flavor profile.
But it kind of comes together in a really harmonious way.
- Being Filipino is one thing.
Being American is one thing.
Being Filipino American is another thing, you know?
And now there's a lot of us that have that upbringing.
So I was like, oh yeah, cool.
I'm like that too.
So that's kind of what like HiFi Kitchen is.
- [Keith] Cool.
- All right Fantanas,
you ready to hit the next spot?
- Yes.
- Let's do it.
- [Becky] Let's do it.
- You ready, purple?
- I sure wanna.
- That adobo was orgasmic.
- Now we're headed to The Park's Finest.
But before, we thought we'd stop off at one
of these places that does outdoor sort
of skewered meat grilling.
You basically go inside,
you buy anything you want,
you come outside and they have grills setup.
- [Eugene] Oh, really?
- [Keith] You get to choose what you want
and grill it yourself.
It sounds really fun and also, you know,
that's a very street food-esque thing.
I've never done outside grilling
of my own food at like a street place, you know?
- [Eugene] Keith loves grilling.
I don't know if y'all know.
- [Keith] I do love grilling.
I've been grilling a lot in the past year.
- You're maybe the most dad of the Try Guys right now.
Is Ned grilling every day?
- No.
- Does he have a mustache?
- Well, he has a beard that has a mustache included.
- That's not that.
- It's not the same.
- Let's dive in.
- Y'all, I'm going to try this chicken feet.
It's kind of tough and has like gelatinous flesh.
So you kind of suck the flesh off of the foot.
- [Keith] Hot.
It's quite difficult to eat these feet.
- The flavor's good, though.
- Flavors is good.
I'll say the flavor in all of this is really good.
- I don't know how they make this.
- It's not blood sausage, it's just blood.
- Yeah, it's very like livery.
- [Keith] It's so tender.
- [Becky] Intestine.
- [Matt] That's intestines.
- It's good.
- [Becky] It's egg.
- It's all egg, it's all egg.
- These quail eggs are really good.
Look, these are quail eggs.
- [Keith] Hot dog on a stick and strawberry soda.
This is a Fanta five right here.
This is like, this is very,
this is a very American experience right now.
- [Matt] It's the same color.
- Yeah and also like as a kid,
I definitely would have had this combo.
- Well, I don't think we should get too full
because we have one last restaurant we have to do.
- [Matt] Yeah, this is just our snack.
- This is just snack time.
- Hold back.
- We'll just save the rest of this for later.
- Save some for later.
(car beeping)
- Is it going to eat me?
Oh, no, no, no!
So now we are headed to our last stop of the day,
Park's Finest.
- Well, I hear if you're not full of meat yet,
this is a barbecue spot.
- Oh boy.
- Whoa.
- [Eugene] That's what I hear, I might be wrong.
- Getting a hard dose of protein today.
- So before we get to our final place,
it's going to be a gauntlet between Matt and Becky
to claim who is the official orange Fanta girl.
Okay, are you ready?
- Me. - I think it's me.
- The question is where does the word orange come from?
- Orange.
- Which came first?
The color orange or the fruit orange?
- The color.
- You're both wrong.
(both gasping)
Orange as a word or term didn't exist prior to the fruit.
It was always called like in literature and common language,
they would just call it like a certain red or yellow.
But after orange the fruit was starting
to be like mass cultivated,
they decided to use that name orange and make it color.
- So on Snapchat,
Fanta also has some cool new filters out right now
for their flavors.
I tell you what, they look insane.
Whoo!
I'm feeling good, look at this.
Oh my gosh.
All right, so here we are at Park's Finest.
Let's go try it out.
(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Johneric Concordia.
I'm a member of The Park's Finest.
- I'm Christine Araquel-Concordia.
I'm one of the co-founders of The Park's Finest.
- I'm Ann Pajimula.
I am one of the co-founders of The Park's Finest.
Also part chef and I invented the cornbread bibingka.
- Ooh!
- I've already heard about this cornbread.
- You're going to taste it today.
- I can't wait.
- [Christine] At The Park's Finest,
we do American cuts of barbecue with Filipino flavor.
- [Ann] You know, the savory, the sweet.
So we try to put everything together.
It's what makes your mouth water.
- Filipino food is the vehicle for you
to remember a good time.
- Wow.
- Wow, put that on a poster.
- Yeah, what a sell, I'm in.
- Let's start off with Mama Leah's coconut adobo.
It's beef and it has coconut and vinegar.
- [Johneric] That we stew for at least 24 hours.
It's a cooking process that reminds you of the Philippines
but it's something very distinct to this block
because it fed so many people that came through our home.
We're also going to do some pork loin baby back ribs.
Dry rub sauce on the side
so each bite can be a little bit different.
The whole point about Filipino food
is that we do not get offended when we give you a plate
and you already start customizing it.
- So we have two different sauces.
We got our special The Park's Finest barbecue sauce.
So this is our tomato base
and it has pineapple and coconut in there as well.
And then this is our vinegar based barbecue sauce,
and vinegar, soy, garlic, pepper.
Lots of spices in there.
And then last but not least,
the cornbread bibingka.
It's a pastry,
a bread that's actually baked on banana leaves
and it's made out of rice flour, coconut milk.
Wow.
- It's beautiful.
This looks like an appetizer and a dessert.
- It can be anything you want.
- What should we start with in your opinion?
- I guess cornbread.
- The cornbread!
Oh, awesome.
- Start with the cornbread.
- Thank you so much.
We're going to dig in.
Kain na, eat now.
- Kain na.
- Eat now, eat now.
- Eat now.
- Thank you.
- It's the most moist cornbread.
It's almost like cake.
- [Becky] It's almost like a cake.
Cheers.
- Wow, that's really good cornbread.
- It's very delicious.
You can really, the corn flavor really comes through
and the texture is really great.
It's very moist from banana leaf.
- Oh my God.
- I thought it might be too sweet
'cause of all the sugar on top,
but no, it's so balanced and so corny.
Tastes very like corn.
- It's moist.
- [Keith] So moist.
- That's a moist cornbread.
- Wow.
- I want this for my birthday cake every year.
- [Eugene] Yeah, that is good.
- [Becky] Like I want to take back any cake
I've ever eaten before.
- We started the catering company back in 2009
and then in 2012 is when we opened our doors to the public
when we found this space here on Temple Street,
which has historically been an ethnic enclave
for Filipinos in the United States.
Culturally, we embrace everything Filipino
that we can learn about.
We also struggle with trying
to be Filipino enough or American enough.
So there's that aspect of us constantly trying
to just be us and that's what The Park's Finest is.
It's us trying to just show what we love about
both being Americans and also Filipinos.
- Okay, let's go to the adobo.
- [Eugene] This one's a beef with a coconut cream.
- Just go hog wild.
- Do you want more?
- Go hog wild.
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
- You want more than mine?
- I mean, I wouldn't stop you.
Yeah, that's what we're looking at right there.
- Let's try.
- So I can lift it.
- Of course.
You know, I thought it was going to taste,
oh wow, it's got some spice in it, doesn't it?
I thought it was going to be really, really coconutty
but it's actually really quite balanced
and that spice is so nice.
It really warms up the whole mouth.
- [Johneric] So the heat is yellow chilies,
California yellow chilies.
So we grew up eating Tommy's,
we grew up eating In-N-Out.
So instead of using bird chilies
that we traditionally use in Southeast Asia,
we use California yellow chilies.
- There's a kick at the end
but the texture of the sauce
is so good on the beef with the rice.
- You know, when I was hearing about this,
I thought this would be a sweet dish,
but it's actually very savory, indulgent, like.
- That's very savory.
- Delicious.
Feels like a Sunday night dinner with your family.
- Yeah, very multi-layered.
- And can I just say,
we've got a Fanta five right here with this pairing.
It's excellent, it really is so so good.
- But it's really cool
to see how adobo can be different
from one restaurant to the next.
- So different.
- Just the sauce by itself would be a good, good gravy.
- Oh my God.
- I'd put that on some chicken fried steak.
- All right, let's move to the ribs
'cause I would just continue eating everything else.
- [Christine] Barbecuing has been a part
of our upbringing as sons and daughters
of immigrants here in Los Angeles.
It's been something that's been a part
of just what we do regularly in celebration.
So we wanted to be able to share this with the community.
- Mm.
That is a pepper rub.
- Hoo!
- The rib is like fall off the bone,
melt in your mouth.
I mean, you can see all the different spices
and flavors on it.
You add kind of that vinegary sauce on,
it just like hits the spot, it's so good.
- Both of these sauces are like nothing I've ever had.
So delicious and yet still feel very barbecue.
- We got something that's like real Filipino street.
- What could that be?
- Well, they prepared it special for us
and it happens to be Fanta.
- Orange?
- It's Fanta orange.
- What?
- My favorite!
- It's Becky's favorite.
- My favorite, Matt.
- There enough Fanta for both of us.
- We want you to like experience a little, you know,
street way of drinking Fanta orange in the Philippines.
- Wow, I've only ever had alcohol from a bag.
(Ann laughing)
- Like a liquor store, like, you know,
little hole-in-the-wall wall stores.
If you ask for a soda,
they'll actually give it to you in a bag and a straw,
and then they'll recycle the bottles.
- It's like all your senses.
You could feel it, you taste it.
You can hear it.
- It feels like being a kid.
- This is a Fanta five.
- Fanta five, this is a Fanta five.
- The whole spirit of taking care of each other,
it's really unique to this place.
And for us to be able to just advocate
for the interest of the people who live here
and also we're from here, we live here.
Building community is something
that's been extremely important to us
as well as meeting the needs of the people here.
- Today was so great.
We got to eat so much good food,
meet so many great people.
In fact, they should come over.
We should just have one,
you know, this whole thing was about
how everybody's together all the time.
It feels like you should be together with us.
You fed us so well.
Squeeze in sort of behind us.
Just come in and fill in back here.
You have shared so much of your food
and your stories with us.
To anyone out there
who's curious about trying Filipino food,
what sort of advice would you give them?
- Grab a beverage,
grab a plate,
and have fun with family.
- I feel like we did that today.
Get out there, try something new.
Thanks to Fanta for sponsoring today's video
and we'll see you next time.
Bye!
- Bye!
- [Group] Bye!
(Try Guys theme music)
- This is beautiful.
- We all are going to need to take a bite
of this together at the same time.
- Delicate.
- Oh wow, it smells so good.
- Matt ate it.
- [Keith] Matt!