Festival News
Weekend food festival celebrates Dallas' hottest new cuisine: Filipino
A festival is taking place on Sunday that will celebrate the sweet, savory, spicy joys of Filipino culture and cuisine.
The Dallas Filipino Food Festival will be a one-stop place to try dishes such as pancit, noodles with meat and vegetables; lumpia, the Filipino version of an eggroll; and tapsilog, a traditional Filipino breakfast of fried steak strips, fried eggs, garlic rice and tomatoes.
Filipino food is having its moment. A huge Filipino community spread across Dallas-Fort Worth is coalescing via food, thanks to a handful of new pop-up restaurants that have emerged in the past year.
New pop-up concepts include ULAM - Modern Filipino Kitchen, Bilao DFW, Hella Lumpia, Marie’s Kitchen, and Mekeni Filipino Kitchen.,who've been preaching the gospel of Filipino food with regular events at local breweries such as Lakewood Growler, Community Brewing, Trinity Cider, and Oak Cliff Brewing, where the pairing of spicy-sweet Filipino food with locally made beer is an automatic yes.
It's part of a national rise that's also taking place in cities like Los Angeles and Houston, in which young second-generation Filipino-Americans are embracing and giving exposure to their native cuisine.
Daniel Gerona, organizer of the festival in Dallas, is part of the crew behind Not Your Lola's, along with Randall Braud, Jed Pajela, and Carlo Wayan. They did their first pop-up in May 2019, which sold out and drew hour-long waits.
They've helped raise the visibility of Filipino food by participating in foodie events like Chefs For Farmers and MeatFight.
Gerona tells NBC that what they're doing is not traditional Filipino food but instead incorporates all the influences he had growing up including Texas cuisine.
The festival takes place on March 8 from 12-4 pm, at Four Corners Brewing Co. Admission is free. You just purchase your food from the vendors which include Not Your Lola's, Marie's Kitchen, Ulam Modern Filipino Kitchen, Hella Lumpia, Bilao, Stephen Smith from Outlawed Ice Cream, Moriones Coffee, and Hey Sugar.
