THE BIG MIX : Restaurants : The Emerging Filipino Cuisine : With its Spanish and American heritage, the food of the Philippines is a tasty mix indeed

A first-rate Filipino meal in the United States? Until recently it was almost impossible to get. Family-oriented Filipinos are so accustomed to entertaining at home that, even in Manila, dining out is a relatively recent phenomenon. And unlike many other immigrants, most Filipinos arriving in the U.S. speak English and can easily find work. This means few of them end up working in restaurants or opening eating places of their own.

But immigration has been so brisk that Filipinos are now the second-largest Asian ethnic group in the United States (Chinese rank first), and the largest in California. Many are hungry for a taste of home, and as the surge of immigrants continues, enterprising Filipino restaurateurs are starting to reach a ready market.

Right now the clientele is primarily Filipino. Americans have taken to Thai, Vietnamese and spicy Chinese dishes with enthusiasm, but most know very little about Filipino food. Political unrest in the islands has inhibited tourism, and few Americans have encountered the food first hand.

Paradoxically, this is the one Asian cuisine that should be the most acceptable to Westerners. More than 300 years of Spanish occupation and almost 50 years under the American flag have strongly marked Filipino culture and cuisine. Paella is as popular as pancit (the Tagalog word for noodles). And steak, barbecued chicken and macaroni salad share the table with such indigenous dishes as lechon (roast suckling pig served with liver sauce), daing na bangus (fried milkfish) and pinakbet, a vegetable combination that includes eggplant, bitter melon and a heady shrimp paste called bagoong.

There is, of course, a more adventuresome side to Filipino food. Filipino cooks, for instance, are famous for wasting nothing, hence dishes such as tripe, pig ears and others from assorted internal organs.

Some dishes remain totally Western. Flan, the most common dessert, is like flan anywhere. Others incorporate a Filipino touch. Steak might be seasoned with garlic and soy sauce. Fruit salad might include translucent palm seeds or shreds of buko (young coconut). And a chiffon cake might be tinted a startling lavender because of the use of a purple yam called ube. Exotic contributions also come from the Chinese, Malays and Indonesians. But chiles are used so sparingly that Filipinos have the mildest food in Southeast Asia.

How good is Filipino food here? Manila-born Cecilia De Castro, who conducts training classes for chefs, misses the fresh taste of just-caught fish and shrimp. “It’s very hard to translate the flavor without the freshness,” she said. All restaurateurs miss the luscious, buttery-smooth mangoes of the Philippines. Without them it is impossible to make such entrancing desserts as mango jubilee, a flaming fruit concoction that is spooned over ice cream.

We also can’t get tangy-sweet green mango juice, a common aperitif in the Philippines. Manuel and Corazon Ongpauco Tamayo of Barrio Fiesta in Los Angeles apologize for using tomato instead of green mango in a relish that accompanies a platter of barbecued meats and seafood. On the other hand, Manuel Tamayo thinks some dishes taste better in the United States because Philippine-made ingredients here are of export quality (superior to what is sold in the islands).

That doesn’t stop the Tamayos from bringing in bagoong made by a Manila restaurant chain, because it tastes better than the brands sold here. Their cooks insist on peanut butter from the Philippines. And Manila is the only place they can get the Chinese brand of banana flavoring that they use in sago and gulaman, a sweet drink made with gelatin cubes and sago pearls.

One of the first Filipinos to enter the market was veteran Manila restaurateur Rey Bautista, who opened Tito Rey of the Islands in 1984 in Daly City, near San Francisco. His clientele there is 90% Filipino, and he serves them the more exotic sorts of Filipino foods, including the aforementioned tripe and pig’s ear, as well as pork fat, liver, shrimp heads and dinuguan , which is composed of pork meat and internal organs simmered in blood. But when Bautista opened a West Los Angeles branch of his restaurant (11829 Wilshire Blvd.; (213) 479-7008) in 1987, he changed the menu to suit the non-Filipino area. Westernized creations that he introduced here include a “Filipinized” Caesar salad--crisp-fried pork skin and dried shrimp replace croutons, and a touch of bagoong flavors the dressing. A tiny bit of bagoong also goes into the dip that accompanies an appetizer of batter-coated, deep-fried kangkong (water convolvulus) leaves.

Lorna and Ben Halili, founders of the Mommy’s Best eating places in Manila, arrived in L.A. in 1984 and the next year started a chain called Manila Sunset (2815 W. Sunset Blvd.; (213) 484-5161). Now there are Manila Sunsets in West Covina and Sepulveda, as well as Chicago, New Jersey and Virginia.

Manila Sunset’s menu is limited to a handful of dishes that would not commonly be prepared at home. The chief attraction is bibingka, a rice-flour cake that is traditionally baked in an earthen container with charcoal at top and bottom. Lorna Halili searched until she found a commercial oven that duplicated this effect. She soaks rice overnight and grinds it--the old-style way of making a more traditional flour. Then she lines the baking dishes with banana leaves and tops the batter with a salted duck egg and cheese. The cake comes to the table brushed with butter and sprinkled with sugar and grated fresh coconut.

Another specialty is puto bumbong, small purple rice cakes steamed in bamboo tubes and topped lavishly with sugar, coconut and melted butter. A dark rice called pirurutong produces the color naturally. Still another special is pancit malabon, rice noodles in an annatto-colored sauce topped with hard-cooked egg, shrimp, pork and pork cracklings.

Many Filipino restaurants offer Continental, American and other types of Asian food in hopes of broadening their appeal. Mario’s, named for owner Mario Benitez, opened in Santa Ana under the name Calesa (2106 N. Tustin Ave.; (714) 541-6585) so that Californians wouldn’t expect an Italian menu. (Calesas are horse-drawn carriages that still operate in the Philippines, and one sits perched on the restaurant roof.) Calesa played it safe by adopting “Around the World Dining” as his theme and offering Continental food in addition to Filipino dishes. Thus one can have French onion soup, crisp duck legs with orange sauce or Maryland crab cakes along with adobo (chicken and pork cooked with vinegar, garlic and soy sauce), fried lumpia (egg rolls), shrimps in coconut sauce and lengua (tongue) in red wine sauce.

The Aristocrat, Manila’s oldest major restaurant, opened in 1936 and grew to eight branches. Its American offshoot, The Aristocrat of the Orient in Los Angeles (400 S. San Vicente Blvd.; (213) 657-0581), got off to a rather faltering start in August. The menu here is as heavy in Japanese and Chinese dishes as in Filipino food, which is downplayed. Kalbi chim, a Korean beef-rib soup, has been written into the menu, but the highly popular Filipino sinigang, which incorporates vegetables and meat or seafood in a sour broth, has been relegated to the specials announced by waiters. It is, however, available daily. In January, the restaurant opened a sushi bar, which is manned by a Japanese-trained Filipino chef.

Mami King (4321 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A.; (213) 669-1078. 21209 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance; (213) 540-3326) leans toward the Chinese side of the Filipino heritage. It features noodle soups and fluffy siopao, the Filipino version of Chinese barbecued pork buns. Max’s restaurant (3575 Wilshire Blvd.; (213) 384-3043) is the first American branch of a famous Filipino chain that based its success on fried chicken (its motto: “The House That Fried Chicken Built”).

Manila’s leading caterer, Glenda Barretto, is involved in Via Mare (3377 Wilshire Blvd.; (213) 480-1223), a restaurant and adjacent coffee shop in the mid-Wilshire district. The coffee shop, which features traditional Filipino dishes, opened recently. The dining room, which is not yet open, will offer Continental seafood. Barretto is president of Via Mare Catering Services, which operates the original Via Mare restaurant and several coffee shops in Manila.

In the past, restaurants here paid little attention to ambiance. Then, in 1987, the ambitious Barrio Fiesta (3821 W. 6th St.; (213) 383-9762), which has 16 branches in the Philippines, unveiled a tropical setting imported entirely from the Philippines, right down to the pale narra-wood flooring. The response was resounding applause from the Filipino community and prolonged waits for a table. The menu is exclusively Filipino. One top-rated dish is crispy pata, pig’s knuckles deep fried to produce crisp outer skin and succulent meat. A Barrio Fiesta opened in October in South San Francisco, and another is planned for San Diego.

Los Angeles also has a scattering of turo turo restaurants, where the food is set out in steam tables for quick service (turo turo means “point point”). A good example is Greenhills Restaurant (2745 W. Beverly Blvd.; (213) 487-4224), near downtown Los Angeles. Here the large selection of dishes, which changes daily, might include catfish cooked with coconut milk and spinach, pinakbet, barbecued chicken, adobo, longaniza (Filipino-style sausage), pancit canton (fried noodles), kare kare (oxtails in peanut sauce) and sinigang. In addition, there are desserts such as sapin sapin, a coconut-flavored rice flour cake composed of orange, purple and white layers. Like most Filipino restaurants, Greenhills serves halo halo, a soda glass filled with sweetened beans, jackfruit, coconut shreds, palm seeds, sweetened ube paste, ice, milk and a spoonful of flan.

Filipino food clearly appeals to this nation’s large Filipino population-- but the new breed of restaurateur hopes for a wider audience. “I think there’s a big future,” says Fil Benitez, manager of Calesa. “The Philippines is really a cross of East and West.”

This special issue was edited by David Fox, Sunday Calendar assistant editor.