From Guava Cake to Freak Coconut : Cultures Blend Deliciously at Two Tropical Bakeries

Cross-cultural cooking never really was--as some have suggested--merely a restaurant public relations gimmick. It’s been around since one tribe first invaded a new pasture, since empires spread over continents--and since my Italian grandmother substituted Hormel bacon for pancetta.

You have only to drive around Southern California to witness the fusion of the world’s diverse culinary traditions in the most unpretentious forms. Many of these culinary blendings are traditional by now: the African-inspired feijoada of Brazil; the French-Vietnamese sandwiches called banh mi, with their fillings of pa^te and Asian vegetables stuffed in a Parisian-style baguette; or saltada, Peru’s adaptation of the Chinese stir fry. At Gardena’s Ishigo Bakery, Hawaii’s cultural mix is on display; at Dates & Nuts Pastry Shop in Panorama City, it’s the Philippines that shows its ethnic diversity.

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Hawaii is one of the world’s richest cultural stews. It blends Japanese, Filipino and Korean influences on a Polynesian base, mingled with a little Portuguese here and a few WWII American army rations there (Hawaii consumes more Spam per capita than any other state).

The Gardena-Torrance area, nucleus of L.A. County’s Hawaiian community (and home of the widely distributed King’s Hawaiian Bread--itself an Island adaptation of the Portuguese pao do^ce), is also where you’ll find the (much smaller) Ishigo Hawaiian Bakery.

The modest appearance of the shop gives no suggestion of the richness of the cakes created here. One of its third-generation owners, Clarence Ishigo, has taken the old-fashioned layer cake and strikingly infused it with tropical fruits.

These cakes may look like the usual bakery birthday cakes, with their frosting roses and gleaming gel inscriptions, but the first forkful will certainly erase that impression. Guava puree is baked into layers of guava cake and more puree goes into the whipped-cream frosting and filling. Similarly, the passion-fruit cake is flavored with lilikoi juice all the way through.

There is a feather-light orange chiffon cake made with fresh orange juice, slathered with whipped cream and densely coated with a fine mist of chopped macadamia nuts. Haupia (young coconut) cake has coconut milk in the batter and more coconut in the frosting. The banana cake holds oodles of mashed bananas.

These cakes come in standard sheet sizes (whole, half and quarter) as well as 8-inch round layers, and all are filled and frosted with whipped cream unless you request butter cream or chocolate. The butter cream is made with real butter, but I prefer the fruit and whipped cream fillings. Ishigo makes more conventional cakes too, such as chocolate, marble and red velvet, but they aren’t reason enough to drive out of your way if you’re not in the neighborhood.

The Gardena branch of Ishigo Bakery dates from 1973, but the Ishigo family has been in the pastry business since 1910, when it opened its first bakery in Hawaii. In 1910, the Ishigos primarily made Japanese baked goods such as sweet bean-filled yeast buns (anpan) and tiny pastries filled with mashed sweetened beans (mandu), but soon they were baking apple and coconut turnovers for customers who favored a taste of the islands, and also anko-pie, a mandu-type bean filling in an American pie crust. Cross-cultural food is not at all new to them.

* Ishigo Bakery, 15934 S. Western Ave., Gardena, (310) 327-6388. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

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You have only to look at the assortment of baked goods in the cases at Dates & Nuts Pastry Shop to see the cultures that have left their mark on Filipino cuisine. You’ll find pan de sal, sans-rival cake, leche flan and brazo de mercedes, inherited from centuries of Spanish rule. On the other hand, the adobo rolls and chicken rolls resemble Chinese bao, though with Spanish-style stuffings. The chicken roll is particularly tasty, like a moist, rich chicken salad baked into a bun.

Much in evidence is the way Filipino cooks have insinuated tropical ingredients--in particular cassava root, ube (a purple yam) and mangos--into European and Chinese dishes. There are ube tarts, and the pale lavender ube cake roll dusted with a purple mist of dry ube has a filling of macapuno, which Filipinos call “freak coconut” because it never matures but stays gelatinous.

Ensaymada, a rich yeasted coffeecake sprinkled with grated cheese, comes either plain or stuffed with a small ribbon of ube paste. And the cassava cake is really like a baked custard of coconut milk and mashed cassava. Its flavor is rich and compelling, but some people can’t get used to its slightly chewy texture. (And the fact that it must not be refrigerated or it will turn into a brick.)

Dates & Nuts does an excellent job at a variety of strictly Western items. Its tiny walnut tart is made with caramelized walnuts mounded in a walnut-sized pastry shell. A tall, wonderfully gooey chocolate layer cake sits imposingly on the counter. “Our moist chocolate cake is one of the house specialties,” says Ruby Cuenca, owner and partner in the two Dates & Nuts shops in Manila. “People in Manila are wild about it.” They also buy massive quantities of chocolate brownies and the Dates & Nuts bar, a cookie stuffed with (what else?) dates and nuts.

Not everything in the shop is sweet. Party foods and even whole meals can be pulled from the cases. Chicken relleno is a boned chicken stuffed with a Spanish sausage mixture and served in slices, like a French galantine. Embotido, a sort of Filipino/Spanish pa^te or meat loaf, can be sliced and eaten from a buffet or over rice.

And the savory empanadas, with exceedingly rich crusts, melt like cotton candy in your mouth. The fillings might be creamy chicken or beef adobo, that typical Filipino dish of meat simmered with vinegar, soy sauce and gentle seasonings.

There’s a small cafe area in the bakery, and most items on its menu are home-style Filipino favorites: lengua estofado, which is braised beef tongue in mushroom-wine sauce, and kare-kare, the Southeast Asian equivalent of oxtail stew. The latter includes coconut milk and peanut butter, and it’s served with rice and a sweet-spicy fermented-fish condiment called bagoong, certainly one of the least European items in the place.

Noodles are popular here too. The rice noodles in pancit palabok, with its pronounced shrimp-sauce flavor, are a long way from their Chinese origins. Closer to those origins, though, is pancit Canton, more or less a Philippine version of chow mein.

Dates & Nuts Pastry Shop and Fast Food, 13556 Roscoe Blvd., Panorama City, (818) 786-5100. Open Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.