- The one sauce of all sauces in the world.
Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce.
Put it on anything.
Hamburgers, roast pork,
sprained ankles.
Everything.
I ain't gonna come to Houston and not do me.
That's right, we're gonna do Filipino.
This next that we're gonna go,
we're gonna probably see those flavors
of longanisa, banana ketchup,
mixin' it with a little bit American.
Whassup, guys?
(speaking Tagalog)
'Sup, man!
I brought a little present for you guys, right here.
Check that out.
- [Michael] Hey! Mang Tomas!
- [Michael] Our goal is to
share our Filipino culture and our food.
Marrying it with something familiar for everybody,
like the burger.
So we kinda like used the burger as a bridge
between our culture and the American culture.
- Who's crazy idea was it to open up a food truck?
- This guy right here.
Ruined my life.
- What'd you do before that?
- I did IT for 10 years.
Had to make my parents happy.
- And both of you, cousins.
Your parents came here from the Philippines.
- Yeah, back in the '70s.
- For what reason?
- Both my parents were engineers.
- And how's the Filipino community here?
- Here? Very small.
- Oh yeah.
- [Michael] In this area.
When me and Don were talking about it,
we're like, can we just serve straight up Filipino food?
Are people gonna come?
Or do we give 'em something familiar.
Oh, there's burgers.
Oh, I like these burgers.
Okay, I trust this team.
Lemme try their Filipino rice plates now.
You can kind of see them slowly trusting Filipino food.
- How was it to take that leap of faith
and open up a truck?
- The opening day, we just got slaughtered.
- We marketed a certain day.
Our builder couldn't get it to us until 11 PM
the night before.
We loaded the truck up, and then prepped all night.
It was crazy stupid.
And when we opened the windows,
there's like a hundred people in line.
And we're like, oh dang!
I mean, it was part-time for the first two months.
We'd just go out on weekends.
But as soon as we knew that people loved this,
we dropped our day jobs,
and we went full-time.
- And here we are five years later with the truck still.
- We do about a thousand to 1200 pounds of fries a day
in the truck.
We hand cut it and flash fry it, freeze it, bag it.
(darker, funky dance music)
This is our secret chicken sauce.
It's called the pupu sauce.
Like a sweet ginger soy sauce almost.
The original recipe from our lola, or our grandma,
is chicken wings.
So it's hard to eat wings off a truck, right.
So we made it into a boneless form.
So we just cut up some thighs, lightly bread it,
par cook it, then cook the par-cooked chicken.
- [Sheldon] That's gonna be the topping for the fries?
- Yes, sir.
Do a criss-cross drizzle.
First our spicy sauce, and then
banana ketchup aioli.
This is our chicken pupu Flip'n fries.
("Gwan Wid It" by Bromley)
We have our in-house ground certified angus beef.
Then our house-made longanisa.
We use our siopao, which is a steamed bun
in the Philippines, and kinda tweaked it to where
it fit the burger flavors.
("Gwan Wid It" by Bromley)
We top it with a fresh tomato.
Banana ketchup aioli.
Then our house-made longanisa.
Then we top it off with a sunnyside egg.
That's it right there.
The Jeepney Burger.
Oozin' all over.
- [Sheldon] Hey, a messy burger is a good burger.
- [Michael] This is like one of our
traditional Filipino rice plates.
Garlic toasted rice, which is sinangag in the Philippines.
Bite-sized chicken thigh pieces.
We call it the pupu sauce.
Like a sweet ginger soy sauce.
It's inspired by Don's grandma's recipe.
We actually roll these pork lumpia in-house.
- Pupu plate is in honor of my lola.
Lola's grandma.
- Lola was the cook of the family?
- She was.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Took care of us, took care of other kids.
Whole bunch of kids just running around in the house.
- So this is your lumpia you buy from Costco?
(Don laughing)
What's the filling for your lumpia?
- Pork shoulder.
We grind it,
put a little bit of carrots, onions, seasonings.
Little bit of magic.
The best pupu you'll have in your life.
- Good one, man.
- Thank you.
- Lola would be proud, bro.
- I hope so.
(darker, funky dance music)
So each of our burgers have a theme.
This is kind of like a Jeepney Burger.
Jeepneys are a mode of transportation
in the Philippines.
So this is kinda like our mode of transportation
from being drunk to sober.
- I'm gonna jump in to the Jeepney Burger.
- Geddit.
- You guys didn't go into culinary school or anything?
- No, we went to the culinary school of Lola and Mama.
Uncles, aunts, moms, dads.
Culinary school family.
- As you got older, you kinda,
you wanna know where your roots are,
and then...
My way of connecting to that is through food.
- Yeah, we're here in America,
living the American dream.
But, you know, remember where you came from.
- This is just the start though.
I mean, we wanna bridge way more gaps,
indulging in Filipino food.
- You guys puttin' out legit food, man.
- We also experience the karaoke part.
'Cuz like every Filipino party--
- Karaoke.
- Yeah, at the end of the night,
everyone's singing karaoke.
- Wind Beneath My Wings.
- Yes, sir.
(laughing)
(dance music)
- Raja Sweets is like King Sweets, you know?
- King Sweets.
Comin' to the right spot, man.