Ep. 31: The New Filipino Kitchen Authors Pt. 2 - Katrina and Kristina Villavicencio and Alexa Alfaro on Expectations from Family to Food

Hidden Apron Radio

This is the second installment in a special series of conversations with fellow authors of the recently published cookbook and anthology, "The New Filipino Kitchen" (available on Amazon) that features Filipino cooks, writers, and thinkers all across the globe. We take a peek into how they view the world and their cuisine.

For this East Coast edition, we feature:

• Katrina and Kristina Villavicencio, co-creators of the Washington DC Supper Club Timpla along with their friends Aniceto and Paolo. Their simple vision of introducing modern Filipino cuisine to the city has grown to incorporate storytelling, design, and art to educate others about Filipino culture. Their combined experiences in food service (Kristina) and art (Katrina) make them a versatile team that is able to explore multiple facets of the Filipino culture.

• Alexa Alfaro, an Alaska-born Milwaukeean who, after a 10-week trip to the Philippines, was inspired to open her city’s first Filipino Food Truck “Meat on the Street” with her younger brother in 2014. This involved dropping out of her Engineering degree but weeks from graduation. Since then, the pair have opened a brick-and-mortar slinging their famous BBQ sticks and pork adobo to the masses.

If I had to pick a single word for today’s show, it would be: Expectations. Be it:

• Expectations around Filipino food (looks, tastes, methods, and costs).

• Expectations around our age and the need to balance respectful obedience and forging our own path.

• Expectations around the immigrant experience and the constant theme of sacrifice.

• Expectations around gender; something we don’t get to cover much on this show. I’m glad we talked about this topic in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the fortuity that a majority of the co-authors I’ve been touring with and are getting the much-deserved spotlight (seeing as immigrant women are the keepers of cuisine) are female.

Of note to me was how we can think about our relationships with women in and out of the kitchen and where we draw the line between demanding excellence at work and abuse.

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For more information including notes to the show, please visit hiddenapron.com/podcast.