Origin Story of Filipino Street Food

Every country has its own exotic delicacies from longstanding traditions and with sometimes controversial origins. Take for example, Iceland and their stomach for hákarl or the Sardinians in southern Italy and their baffling fondness for casu martzu infested with live maggots. Even then, only a couple of countries have their street food getting more attention than and shaping general perception of local cuisine. Filipino street food is not exactly the darling among exotic food finds around the world. Its poster boy balut or fertilized duck embryo is deemed a revelation of Filipinos’ cultural taste. The frequent appearance of balut in Western TV shows certainly helped stir open-minded curiosity and genuine interest. Beyond the talk on balut, there are other grubs that could better tell the rich history of street food culture in the Philippines.

Filipino street food is mainly known by its two generic categories: “inihaw” (charcoal-grilled) and “tusok-tusok” (literally, pierce-pierce). You can tell the two apart by the way they are cooked and presented to hungry souls foraging the streets. Inihaw is, simply put, any meat skewers grilled over burning red charcoal. On the other hand, tusok-tusok refers to bite-sized pre-cooked rolls and balls, among many other options, that are deep fried in a steel wok of piping hot golden brown oil. Outside these categories, Filipinos also consider noodle dishes (e.g., pancit canton, pansit bihon, etc.), any kakanin (rice cakes), and other merienda staples (e.g., banana cue, turon, siopao) as street food.  

Filipino street food culture

Inihaw and tusok-tusok are peddled in wooden or aluminum carts that are often stationed along the sidewalk, moving from one street to another, and pulling up where there is foot traffic. The street food cart is an enduring element of streets in the Philippines. It tells you more than what you need to know about the people. For one, flocking to a cart is a social affair: there you see a place of merry gathering after school or work. Bonds are strengthened through the grit and soot. It is a picture of Filipino grit and resilience. A scene that unmistakably gives you the sense that small feats and great sorrows have been shared. As a kid, rummaging for spare coins and sneaking out of the house to buy yourself a tusok-tusok is one of your most memorable acts of defiance. They told us to stay away from street food because it’s dirty, but we knew our parents had their fill at some point. The adults know exactly what is so appealing about street food. The grease and the dirt make it all better.

Nowadays, that’s not necessarily the case. Even with the Westernization of Filipino palette, Filipinos of all socio-economic status enjoy making their trip to a nearby street food cart for cheap snacks. It doesn’t have to be in the street around the corner. Street foods have made its ways to kiosks in malls and watering holes as a bar chow. Even some upscale restaurants in business districts of the country’s capital included street foods in their regular menu to introduce this part of local cuisine to foreign tourists.

Out of necessity

Let’s talk about the exotic selections among tusok-tusok and inihaw. If you are unfamiliar with the landscape, the understandable disgust penetrates the eyes. No animal parts are wasted in inihaw. Even the gnarly scraps from pig and chicken that should have been discarded find its second life in a street food establishment. Oh, and don’t let this surprise you: in the case of chicken and duck, any stage of their development is normally ready.

Filipino street food is, for the most part, not necessarily influenced by similar preferences of the country’s neighboring cultures. To be sure, our early encounters with the Chinese traders introduced Filipinos to soy sauce, fish sauce, and stir frying—the fundamentals that laid the groundwork for our own cuisine culture. Our interaction with the Chinese also gave us egg rolls (lumpia) and dumplings (shumai) that make a frequent appearance in Philippine streets today as merienda staple.

But the soul of Filipino street food is one that is carved out by the tribulations of centuries of colonization. Our fondness for the less glamorous parts was borne out of necessity—that is, for survival during the Spanish rule. The first documentation of street food in the country dates back to this era when the indigenous peoples of the country were called Indios. They were hence relegated to the bottom of the colonial caste system, along with the native tribes and Chinese. Despite the regular mingling between many races, the blancos (whites) of the caste system used the indios as slave labor to serve them. Of course, the masters received the finest cuts of meat on the table. The indios were left to fight for whatever remaining parts they can get from the slaughterhouse: cow lungs, pig intestines, chicken liver, you name it. Through it all, Filipino learned to adapt and make the scraps clean and more palatable. Grilled portions of these parts were eventually sold as cheap but filling snacks to slave laborers.

The discovery that innards can be convenient after-work snacks carried over through the Japanese and American occupation. Just as many restaurants usually serving Chinese food with Spanish names began to pop up, Filipinos opened carinderia and turo-turo that offer cheaper and convenient meals. Turo-turo is a reference to Filipinos’ habit of pointing their fingers at street foods they want the vendor to heat up for them. It is likely a local iteration of yatai or Japanese mobile food stalls that originated from the Edo Period (1603-1868) to serve on-the-go meals. Filipinos possibly learned how to set up their own food carts from the Japanese that looked for yatai mainstays such as gyoza and tempura. Though Filipinos absorbed little wartime influence from the Japanese due to bitter memories of tyrannical rule, they have learned a great deal of preservation techniques and culinary possibilities, defined by discovery of fastfood and umami. The ancient Japanese culinary tradition of yatai turned out to be the last piece that completes the origin of Filipino street food culture today.

Before the Spanish conquest, Filipinos had always had pig meat to sustain them and appease the gods. Several centuries later, the independent Filipinos had found themselves unable to shell out a huge chunk of their budget for the humblest cut of pork. In the 1970s, the Philippines experienced one of the worst global economic meltdowns in histoy. The gruesome inflation year on year until mid-1980s coincided with devaluation of peso, poorly managed macroeconomic policy, and battery of typhoons. Filipinos struggled to find ways to fill their stomach under the austere conditions. Once again, the lesser loved parts of meat sources skyrocketed in demand. To bank on this opportunity, wet market and street food vendors began labelling various innards with brand names to make it more appealing. Filipino consumers bought the gimmick and took a liking for these meticulously cleaned innards. Rather than grotesquely pointing to internal organs as what they really are, Filipinos referred chicken feet as “Adidas”; pig’s ears as “Walkman”; and, grilled coagulated blood cubes as “Betamax.” Notably, they also come up with a name for chicken head; without a popular brand name to call it, they simply gave it the amusing name “helmet.”

Anybody who comes across images of Filipino street food on the internet may find it offensive to their tastes. And that’s okay. Every culture has a unique approach to flavor and food preparation. Taste is a shared cultural and social experience. You learn and get used to it—just like how Filipinos have learned to appreciate the exotic grubs through centuries of struggle. Approach a Filipino street food cart when you see one. Join the gathering and pay attention to that feeling of fraternity.