Sometime during my childhood, some Filipinos I knew started identifying as “Pacific Islander” along with “Asian”. I didn’t think anything of it. In the present day – probably some time in 2018 – I go on a persistent Scruff date with a native Hawaiian. A bingo card for gay first date topics might include burned family connections or sexual shenanigans, but for me, a square always includes identity – which easily glided from an identity-driven blind wine tasting game at this wine bar. He comments: yes, why do Filipinos like to check the Pacific Islander box? I don’t get it. I don’t disagree. The rest of the date is fine, but I feel bad about partially wondering how to escape this date unscathed because I’m in the mood for accelerated drunkenness with my friends and this wine just isn’t doing it. We don’t see each other again after this night, but we send each other electronic hellos whenever we’re within distance of each other. Ah – to be a gay in San Francisco.
Cut to 2019, during a hazy month of travel between San Francisco, Detroit, New York City, and Hong Kong. I’m reading a book on Filipino identity and it’s interesting to note that Filipinos identifying as Pacific Islander along with (and even rather than) Asian is not uncommon. I put a pin in this thought.
During my memoir phase in high school, as a closet literature and writing gay heavily disguised as a science gay, I tried to describe the anatomy of a Filipino party. It was a shitty first draft, but hey: I was also a garbage person who brought his laptop to family parties so that I could interact with no one but myself in the corner. But the formula is more or less the same each time: Filipino families will throw large gatherings for their extended families and friends, overflowing the house with food, laughter, and exuberance – not unlike family gatherings I’ve seen from parts of Latinx culture. I mentally place myself into a cross-section of one of our celebrations: lumpia, one of the most recognizable Filipino finger foods, sits on a tray between pancit and dinuguan. Historically, these spring rolls were borne from Hokkien immigrants in the 17th century, and eventually, the Philippines made it their own. I take a couple of pieces on a styrofoam plate with my fingers, drown them in some sweet chili sauce, and dry my fingers on my “good shirt”. I think about how I’ve read that it’s difficult to pair wine with Chinese cuisine not because of the flavours themselves, but because the dinners are often served family style, which changes the traditional objective of pairing specific wines with specific dishes. Same, I think, but we often don’t even have one central table from which we eat off of. I finish the lumpia before I even get back to my spot, so the plate was a waste of time. Oh well. The parents break out the karaoke.
During a humid summer 2019 moment in May, my boyfriend accompanies me during a work trip to New York City – the start of a string of launch events including Hong Kong and Detroit, one snowballing after the other. As a child of frugal Asian parents, I automatically create maps, schedules, and self-guided tours for every given day we’re there, including an appended gaybourhood-dedicated coda every night – so one evening we hit up a karaoke night at a gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen. My partner stuns with his one-person-both-part rendition of A Whole New World (you really have to experience it one day!), and following boisterous applause, a couple of gays approach us. We’re open, so I love these flirtation moments for either of us, but something strikes a dissonant chord when the two gays – who introduce themselves as Filipino as they get to know my partner – dismiss me for “not looking Filipino”, and continue the conversation as if I were polvoron crumbs they needed to dust off their chins. Their words at face-value genuinely don’t bother me as I am a snack, but the dripping micro-aggressive gatekeeping is what makes me shrink back, and later in the night I go on a drunken diatribe about how the world thinks I’m not Filipino enough.
It’s the end of a July in the year of 2020. A new wine bar founded by four white guys in DC is, in my opinion, rightfully receiving backlash for its name “Barkada”: a Filipino word roughly meaning “a group of friends” or “a clique”, despite the bar having nothing Filipino on the menu – and perhaps being even more tone deaf by mentioning inspirations based in Portugal and offering Portuguese tinned fish on the menu despite the Philippines’ shaky history with the country. Ire, including my own, is shared among many industry folks and diaspora Filipinos – but a few days later, many mainland Filipinos show a rejection… to the rejection. They’re glad to see any kind of overseas representation: after all, the word “barkada” was one that evolved from the Spanish word “barcada”. So what’s the problem?
Filipino culture is arguably the most modern example of a far-reaching culture borne from fusion. There are so many complex cross-sections and Venn diagrams that it’s impossible to generalize, and the rocky histories and relatively recent effects of colonization almost makes it feel like the culture is in constant flux, evident from the myriad of opinions and narratives stretching from the mainland to the diaspora. It’s not a bad thing, but I feel that it’s sometimes difficult to claim something as “uniquely Filipino” without it being reminiscent of another culture – this brings about a slider scale of Filipinos who love to claim these intercultural connections without question, but the other end of the spectrum vehemently disavows any strong associations. It’s an insurmountable task to summarize these narratives in a few paragraphs, but it’s not difficult to imagine how hard it is to fit in one’s culture as someone already getting to know their identity, along with figuring out what spaces one is allowed to occupy – both in their own culture, and in other spaces they might identify with. It’s exhausting, it’s empowering, and it’s amazing – but it can take a lot of work.
This is something I had in mind while coming up with the experiment to pair wines with different Filipino flavours – what counts as being “uniquely Filipino”? I knew that lumpia (Filipino spring rolls) and pancit (Filipino noodles) were great case studies, being dishes that have evolved into the thread of Filipino culture despite having origins elsewhere.
Running on Filipino time (yet again), I rush back home from a workout as I get a notification that my Filipino food delivery is arriving soon, though I dash to the local wine store to satisfy a last-minute vinho verde hunch to join the sparkling wine already in the fridge. Do I order rice? I think about the time during my childhood when my mom brought a rice cooker to a Chinese restaurant. I don’t know what kind of faith we had to give a disclaimer to our server who briefly hesitated, but she relented as she must have understood our need for frugality. She motioned to the back of the restaurant: just make sure they don’t see you. I decide to make my own rice.
On paper, coming up with wine pairings for lumpia and pancit seem like a difficult task because of the endless permutations of fillings, toppings, or styles. This popular deep-fried style of lumpia, though, fits the “traditional rule” of pairing fried foods with sparkling wine, and both halves of the equation seem to get along and play off of each other, simultaneously matching and clashing textures. It’s like a mouthful of seamless one-liners: a Toph and Sokka moment on Avatar, or a when the doors of the library are wide open on an episode of Pose. Both classic sauces went well, but the garlic-vinegar dipping sauce fared slightly better than the sweet chili sauce.
Sometimes it’s as easy as crispy and chewy pairing well with effervescent and mouth-filling, but different styles of pancit don’t necessarily have that thread of similitude besides the noodles – like adobo, it really differs depending on who’s making it, but unlike adobo, there’s not necessarily an intense underlying flavour that we can link to. For this pairing I’m enjoying a very garlicky permutation of pancit – a decent counterpoint to the vinho verde, but even better with the Californian sparkling wine, which almost gives it a textural extension to the chewy texture of the noodles. I add a little bit of calamansi to see how it changes the pairings: the vinho verde seems a lot more in tune, and the sparkling wine is still brilliant.
I guess the point is this: some parts of culture and identity – like lumpia – are a little more straightfoward. Other times, it’s like pancit.
Scharffenberger “Brut Excellence” Sparkling Wine Méthode Traditionnelle (Mendocino County, North Coast, California). Aug 2020. $20 USD.
A trio of baked green apple, yeast, and bread crust; and then a secondary trio of yellow apple, dough, and marmalade. Reveals more minerality and hints of nectarine on the palate. Savoury and slightly nutty ending. Masterfully done – a depth of fruit that doesn’t forgo the fingerprint of traditional method sparkling wines. For me, Scharffenberger is often inadvertently eclipsed by other local sparkling wines – I have to remember not to let that happen. 60% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir.
Arca Nova 2019 Vinho Verde Branco (Vinho Verde, Portugal) Aug 2020. $13 USD.
Juicy nectarine and yellow apple on the nose, and with a significant matchstick-like minerality which blows off after a while. Riper fruits than I’m used to for many vinhos verdes, but delicious nonetheless. Soft and gentle prickles – delicate, but still sassy. 50% Loureiro, 40% Arinto, 10% Trajadura.