The Best Places to Eat Filipino Food in Every State

Cultural enclaves in America sustain ways of life that might otherwise have been sacrificed in chasing the American dream, as the preservation of language and customs often loses out to overtime hours and cultural assimilation. These neighborhoods evoke distant countries and harbor recipes and rituals — the last vestiges of a former life. In doing so, they take on greater significance in honoring culture and history.

As age and awareness does its thing, I reflect on how grateful I am for my hometown of San Diego, where little clusters of Filipino shops in National City and Rancho Peñaquitos served as a gateway to my parents' past. Palengkes (wet markets) were fully stocked with staples like sukang ilokano (spiced vinegar), and served whole fried fish and balut. As a child, I roamed the aisles of these markets like an explorer, picking up jars with tiny shrimp swimming in a pink paste, mouthing words on labels that had no meaning to me. The store clerks called me anak, I called them Tito or Tita, and for those fleeting moments felt connected to a country I had never visited. This led me to wonder: Where are the other Little Manilas in the United States? Where are the approximately 4 million Filipinos coming together in community over food and drink?

Everywhere, as it turns out. You can find us cooking in all 50 states, offering jewels like bright-orange pancit palabok, glimmering bronze stews like adobo, and royal purple ube ice cream. In every corner of the nation, Filipinos are cooking and feasting, sometimes operating a lone food cart hundreds of miles from the nearest Filipino community, other times opening multiple businesses side-by-side, with a community of owners and kusineros supporting one another and their offspring through commerce and cuisine.

I did my part in New York City, the place I consider the hospitality capital of the world. It's where I chose to plant two restaurants, Maharlika in 2010 and Jeepney in 2012, growing the roots for a new wave of Filipino style and substance. With Maharlika, I wanted a laid-back confidence in a bistro setting with a focus on hospitality. Jeepney was meant to be a deep dive in history and culture, and my team and I debuted Kamayan feasts and educated our guests on the Filipino origins of Tiki. The award-winning "Chori Burger" made its mark at Jeepney with big energy and swag. This was the era when food critics, journalists, and influencers began noticing Filipino food's influence, naming it the "next big thing." Though my restaurants closed over the last two years, I still have hospitality blood in my veins and am happy that Filipino food has only expanded its reach.

As I looked at restaurants across the country, each state revealed some things I had not known about Filipino history in America. I didn't know, for example, that Filipinos were the first Asian settlers here (we've been coming to the United States since the 1500s), nor did I fully understand the racism and prejudice behind the legislation that prevented my forefathers from obtaining jobs or marrying outside of our culture. One of the most troubling moments of Filipino history in America took place at the 1904 World's Fair in Missouri, where no less than 1,000 Filipinos, many of them Igorots from rural mountainous regions were displayed in human zoos and forced to eat up to 20 dogs a day, bathe and "live" for the entertainment of the many Americans that flocked to this disgusting and inhumane exhibition. It's my belief that a narrative of shame was born here, as well as a lasting desire for safety and survival, which led to Filipino cuisine and culture receding into the shadows. For decades, we learned to seek assimilation and to hide in plain sight.

These traumatic stories give me even more reason to be inspired by the courage and perseverance of the chefs, home cooks, kusineros, and food entrepreneurs who are cooking Filipino food with pride and joy in America today. They are taking off the cloak of survival and putting on the armor of confidence. They are stepping out of the shadows. Filipinos have come a long way in America and we have so much farther to go, but this moment is something to savor.

Read on for the Best Places to Eat Filipino Food in America.