Latest / National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast / Ep. #102: Food For Thought | Chef Angel Dimayuga

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Ep. #102: Food For Thought | Chef Angel Dimayuga · National Immigration Law Center Freedom to Thrive Podcast

• 0:00
  I'm the youngest of nine children, so as you might imagine, my mother always had her hands full.
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  She worked full-time and would come home to cook for a house full of hungry people.
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  There were so many of us constantly demanding her attention.
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  If I ever wanted alone time with her, I would hang out in the kitchen while
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  she cooked. She was always making something delicious.
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  She'd make a scaldo with homemade flour tortillas. On Sundays, we had fresh menudo.
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  There'd be pork pozole on birthdays, and Christmases were filled with tamales, so many tamales.
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  Cooking amazing food was how my mom showed us love. Not surprisingly,
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  I now make these meals for my family, although in much smaller quantities.
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  Food was how my mom kept her heritage alive. We never talked about it,
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  but I can only imagine how comforting it must have been for her to be able to
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  hold on to a little piece of her hometown in Jalisco, Mexico,
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  and not only hold on to it, but also to lovingly pass it down to her children, one meal at a time.
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  For so many of us, wherever we're from, food is love. Food is comfort. Food is community.
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  It's a universal language. Food knows no borders. It transcends cultures and
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  brings us together in so many ways.
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  And that is why I'm excited to talk today with an internationally acclaimed
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  chef, political activist,
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  author of Philippine X, Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora, And dare I say,
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  a culinary celebrity and just all-around incredible human being, Chef Angel DiMaiuga.
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  This is the NILP Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
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  I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
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  Immigration Law Center.
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  Chef Angel, hi. It's nice to see you again. Welcome.
• 1:44
  It's a pleasure to be here, Victoria. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.
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  So I want to jump right in, if that's okay. You have accomplished so much in
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  your career, and I want to name just a few highlights because there are so many.
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  Zagat 30 Under 30, James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef,
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  Creative Director for Standard Hotels.
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  You've been invited to the White House, and your career has literally taken you around the world.
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  That is so impressive. How did you get here? Sure.
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  Well, I was a young kid that knew that I wanted to be a chef since five.
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  Wow. Yeah, I always think about the privilege that I had to be supported to
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  do this untraditional career at that time.
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  There wasn't a sense of cooking as a career, but my parents trusted me that
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  I knew what I was talking about. and they are immigrants to the U.S.
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  And I was part of the younger set and more Americanized of all the kids in my family.
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  So that was supported. And I
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  followed my path and kept thinking
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  about cooking and cooking in my own way
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  because there weren't folks as a young person that was doing it in any way that
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  I knew was possible and learned a lot of family recipes along the way and learned
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  through my career to really appreciate where I come from and the flavors of my heritage.
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  How wonderful. And what is your heritage? Where are your parents from?
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  And so you're five years old. Most of us are learning our ABCs when we're five
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  years old, but you're already deciding that you want to be a chef, which is amazing.
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  Was cooking just a big thing in your family?
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  Food, was that an important feature growing Yeah, my parents are from the Philippines,
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  and they immigrated to the U.S. in their 20s.
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  Being first generation meant that I had to learn about where I come from at
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  my own pacing and through my own pacing of curiosity.
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  I didn't know that my mom is from a place where people are viewed as excellent
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  cooks in Pampanga in the Philippines.
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  And I learned that through cracking open Savior magazine and see a 10-page spread
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  on Pampanga. And I'm like, wait.
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  This is where we come from. I come from a lineage of great cooks.
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  And yeah, food was a big part of my upbringing.
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  There weren't celebrity chefs at that time. There was no food network.
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  So at five, I was waking up on Saturday mornings watching what was available
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  to me on public television,
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  which was PBS and watching actually home cooks like Julia Child and Jacques
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  Pepin make their own family recipes or what Julia Child learned as an adult
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  in culinary school in France.
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  And then I had the opportunity to do chores in my family in ways that were exciting to me.
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  So I was doing laundry for eight people and that was tedious,
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  but I also found excitement in helping out in the kitchen.
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  So I wanted to make my chores fun for me and sort of replicating what I saw
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  on TV or just watching what my mom and grandmother were putting together.
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  So I was just observing and it was supported.
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  My silly ideas were supported and taken seriously.
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  I love it. And so I want to confess to you, I have a secret obsession with ube. I will eat anything ube.
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  Ube cake, ube anything, ube ice cream. Do you have a favorite meal or comfort
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  food that you go to when you're feeling nostalgic?
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  Or maybe, I don't know, if you're traveling the world, do you ever miss home?
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  And is there something, a meal that you go to for comfort? Yeah,
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  I got to eat so much Filipino home cooking.
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  And that also, I believe, is
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  a privilege to have matriarchs that can do that for me as a young person.
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  So working on my cookbook was a time-traveling experience to just think about
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  things that I loved and then remember flavors and seasoning and apply that as
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  an adult to when I was missing home.
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  I left home at 17, so I needed to figure out ways to remember home on a budget.
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  And one of my favorite dishes is really...
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  It's not fancy. It's a one-pot dish, and it's a mung bean stew using green mung beans.
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  It's just cooked with vegetables, lots of vegetables, maybe a little meat if
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  you have it, but you don't need it.
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  Then you eat it with a bunch of rice, and it's just really nourishing and comforting.
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  I would add things that I didn't use growing up, but added things as an adult
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  to get some iron and nutrition as a young chef with no money, really.
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  So I'd add things like collard greens and try and make this for crowds,
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  for my friends that also were on a budget.
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  I could make a giant pot of stew and a bag of mung beans for about $2 and still is.
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  So I love those flavors. And it's just really enjoyable to replicate that for
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  folks that haven't had ingredients like that.
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  And in America, we have them in Chinese groceries and things like that.
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  So we have access, surprisingly, to these traditional ingredients to my heritage.
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  That sounds amazing. So where did you go when you were 17? Did you go somewhere
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  that was part of your journey as a chef, becoming a chef?
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  Yeah, I originally was supported in going to culinary school,
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  which was just a two-year program.
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  But I was really interested in taking courses that were things that I didn't
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  know you could really study.
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  I went to a private Catholic all-girls school growing up. So what we learned there was what I knew.
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  And so I was always eager to leave home, leave San Jose.
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  I had a lot of curiosity of culture outside of San Jose.
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  And a lot of that was through listening to punk and emo music.
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  I was a pretty angsty kid.
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  So I loved mixing with different crowds at these concerts.
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  And they, to me, feel like they were sort of like like the pre-experience of
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  being around queer kids and folks from other cultures.
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  And so moving away from San Jose to experience my own life and study different
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  subjects was really important to me.
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  So I'm really happy that I started my life out with getting a humanities degree
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  and I could make it my own and study in a really interdisciplinary way.
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  And I do find that being able to have agency to choose courses of my own interests
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  really applies to the way I approach my work in the culinary world.
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  That foundation, which I was privileged to have as a first-generation kid and.
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  I think that I would be a completely different person if I just jumped into
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  culinary school and worked straight into kitchens. It allowed me to have critical thinking.
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  And I think that's why I've always sort of challenged the status quo of what
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  kitchens are and what our cuisine that we're sharing could offer.
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  That's more than a delicious plate of food, but something that you can think
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  about and think about who made it and why it's here.
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  Yeah. I want to go into that a little bit because when I think about famous
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  chefs or even just chefs that I've read about or seen on TV,
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  I can't think of any others who are Filipino.
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  So in many ways, it seems that you are blazing a trail for your community,
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  no pressure, but that is not an easy thing to do.
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  And so I'm curious, what were some of the challenges that you encountered as
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  you've gone up the ranks in your career and how did you stay motivated.
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  Yeah. I mean, these environments, I was really lucky and I was a really ambitious young cook.
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  And I found myself in kitchens that were intimidating because people above and
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  around me didn't look like me. Yeah.
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  But as I moved through the ranks of continuing to be a serious a chef,
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  working crazy, unhealthy schedules of like 90 hours a week.
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  I could only think about how to make these environments more viable to me,
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  which meant it was more viable to people around me, diners, etc.
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  And so I needed it to be fun for me, intellectually stimulating.
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  And over the course of my career became more known to not just make delicious
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  food consistently on a plate, but thinking about the environment,
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  what restaurants and the dining
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  experience could be, not for just food journalists and food reviewers.
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  We weren't making food just for them, but for me, it was important to bring
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  in different age groups, have different price points available.
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  Try to make the menu equitable.
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  And I was starting to think about restaurants as a place that could be a creative
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  hub, a place for ideas, a place for artists.
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  And that made it fun for me. And I think finding joy in a really...
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  Challenging work environment physically made me excited about going into work
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  every day and sort of transforming it into a place that felt like a fun playhouse
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  for me, which it could be for others.
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  Chef Angel, is cooking a type of storytelling?
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  Yes, I think about that all the time.
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  Getting to be an artist that creates flavor Flavor feels like such an accessible
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  opportunity to learn about a person and where they come from, what their history is,
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  or what their work experience is even.
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  I make what I call grandma food, but I also make really wacky conceptual dishes
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  in the fine arts setting or when I'm not only cooking Filipino food.
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  And flavor is that direct access point to a moment of wonder and curiosity of
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  what you even put together when you taste a medley of flavors.
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  You might get to know me a little bit better, but I get to know you if I get
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  to talk to you about it and hear what it brings up for you.
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  You sort of touched on this already, but one of the goals of this podcast is
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  to ensure that we We share our stories and truths and build power for our stories and truths.
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  And so in your experience, how does food play a role in storytelling and bridging
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  culture and even keeping culture alive?
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  I think it's an opportunity to dive deep into who you are.
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  If, you know, I grew up in restaurants, of course, as an American that felt
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  like I needed to learn cuisines from places like France and Italy,
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  because that's where there was this seriousness around a young cook.
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  If you learn these classical, quote unquote, cuisines.
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  But right there at home, you could have super technique-driven food that isn't viewed that way.
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  And there's this opportunity to really think more critically about who we are.
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  We don't need to put ourselves in this hierarchy that we've been told exists.
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  And there's a lot of opportunity to dive in deep of who you are and where you come from.
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  You get to look at, at least for me, my experience is like learning about this
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  ancestral trauma that's happened in my family and take agency over what there
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  are for me as a new generation of.
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  Take agency about what our stories could look like. And I'm so proud to see
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  a lot of young folks that I've either mentored or watched grow their careers in New York,
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  celebrating their home cuisine and do it boldly with like really loud flavors or a lot of spice,
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  things that people have been afraid of.
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  And this opens up the culinary landscape or just other folks'
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  curiosity about maybe a story of, you know, I think about some chefs that I
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  know in New York, their parents were Cambodian refugees,
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  and the flavors that you can access from what they're are proudly sharing is just so profound.
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  And there's just a lot of opportunity of really getting to learn about yourself
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  when you give yourself a chance to take yourself out of these structures that
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  we are told we belong in, and that's down and out.
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  And we don't need to be in that place at all.
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  I want to read you a quote from Anthony Bourdain.
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  And I wonder if you can share your reaction and your experiences in relation
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  to something that he said.
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  He said, the entire restaurant industry in America would close down overnight,
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  would never recover if current immigration laws were enforced quickly and thoroughly.
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  He then went on to say that immigrant labor is the backbone of the service and hospitality industry.
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  What's your response? What's your experience been?
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  It brings up a lot for me. There is opportunities to learn so much about culture
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  through cuisine. It's direct storytelling.
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  It's a portal into flavors and reasons why certain people can't be in America.
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  It's me trying to think more deeply about what my parents' experience was in
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  the Philippines, think about access, think about borders.
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  But it also makes me think about this type of labor that happens with immigrants
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  is really, I think about this a lot.
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  In the Philippines, 10% of the GDP comes from overseas workers.
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  And so that creates a whole different culture for what a Filipino in the diaspora
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  has experienced with connectivity of people like you.
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  We're constantly seeking each
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  other and I'm seeing folks like Filipino aunties working in places like.
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  The airport or in the hospital, nursing homes.
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  I'm thinking about other folks from immigrant cultures that think about hard
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  work and the power of food in a different way.
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  It's not just about, you know, being a well-known celebrity chef,
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  but it's also about hard work being something that you are, is in your blood.
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  It might come from ancestral trauma. It might come from your mom or dad working
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  a certain way and you wanting to just make them proud.
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  And people have, you know, folks from all different parts of the world,
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  they have their reasons of why they want to be in America, for example,
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  and that might mean working really hard to think about the next generation.
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  So there's just so much, it's just a different way to think about hard work
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  and the power of how you can preserve, maybe it's preserve your culture, or it's about survival.
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  There's just so many layers to what that means. And I think there's a lot of
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  pride that we can have in these different versions of our experiences.
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  100% in agreement with you on that. Thank you.
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  Let's shift gears for a moment. I want to talk about your book.
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  Tell me a little bit of what What is it about?
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  What was the genesis of that? And where can people find it?
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  Thankfully, people can find it anywhere. I've seen it being placed in small
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  independent bookshops. It's in big box bookshops.
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  It's on the internet. It's even being sold as used book at this point. It's awesome.
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  And so you can easily access it. It's called Philippinex, Heritage Recipes from the Diaspora.
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  I am someone who will burn soup. So does someone need professional training
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  or just a major skill set to make the recipes in your book?
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  One of the most popular recipes in the book is called coconut milk chicken adobo.
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  And those are ingredients that you can get at your regular degular grocery store anywhere.
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  And it's been so exciting to see folks in the Midwest cook it.
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  These are accessible ingredients, coconut milk, vinegar, soy sauce,
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  garlic, black peppercorn.
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  And this is a one pot dish. fish you're
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  burning soup you're gonna be okay to do
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  this just make sure you put it on simmer victoria and
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  you're gonna be fine but it's been so great
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  to see people of all levels of cooking being able to have this sort of gateway
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  filipino food and the flavor combination of soy sauce and vinegar is one that
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  people may not have had so i think that's a great starter recipe so everyone out there listening,
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  you can make coconut milk chicken adobo.
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  I'm going to try it. I'm excited to try it. Are there any ube recipes in the
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  book or is that next level?
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  No, no. There are ube recipes. I feel like ube, I love that you love it.
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  There's something so enticing about this purple, grimace, barney color that we don't see in food.
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  And so it's been really fun to see it hit the mainstream. Yeah.
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  I think it's, I think it's a really fun, enticing flavor and you can get it,
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  you know, you can get ube flavored things at Trader Joe's.
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  It's, it's, it's been a surprise, but yeah, there's some ube dishes in there.
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  So yeah, give it a whirl, Victoria.
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  Oh, I love it. I can't wait to try it. So you exemplify to me,
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  someone who is thriving and living up to your promise and potential,
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  which is amazing and a great example for all of us.
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  And at NILC, we believe in a vision for this country where all of us can thrive
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  and where the country lives up to its promise and potential as well.
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  So I'm going to give you a magic wand and you get to wave your wand around and reshape this country.
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  What does your reimagined country look like?
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  Some of the reimagined country looks a little bit like the same.
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  There's a lot of people in my community that are applying themselves with their
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  own passions and skill set.
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  Being in hospitality myself, that means I know how to throw a great party. I know how to be a host.
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  And something that I did back in 2017 was try to create these utopias of spaces, spaces at nightlife.
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  And we've been able to bring together for about eight years now people that
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  are BIPOC, people that are lesbian and trans into these spaces of joy.
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  But that type of community building can sometimes feel like a bubble.
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  And so we also need to think on a larger scale of instead of individuality and
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  individualism, collectivity.
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  I'm so focused on liberation of my people, people that are overlooked.
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  You know, I come from a background of multiple times of colonization and colonization,
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  abolished prisons and apartheid. There's a lot of different ways that we can
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  think about applying ourselves in this.
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  We have these microcosms and little worlds that we apply ourselves,
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  but how do we think bigger?
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  And I think there's a lot of collectivity that's happening right now and so
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  exciting to see in the younger generation.
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  That is a powerful vision. And I love that you've included joy in that liberation
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  because joy can be a radical concept.
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  And so I appreciate you flagging that. I'm going to throw one last question
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  at you before we sort of start to close out.
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  And that is, I'm asking for a friend.
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  The friend is me. If someone wants to try your food, are you cooking somewhere
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  at a restaurant where someone can go and try your food?
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  Or are you just sort of traveling the world?
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  I'm bopping around at this point. You know, restaurants and I worked in restaurants for many years.
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  I worked in hospitality by way of hotels.
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  Right now, I've been able to enjoy this lifestyle that's.
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  Better for my mental health, better for my physical health, and working freelance.
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  And I'm so lucky to do that. But I get to bop around and do things for the public.
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  I'm going to be doing a small event at the ICA in LA and making little free
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  treats for people with a Taiwanese fellow artist.
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  And so we're going to make these almond jelly little treats.
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  And so I do small scale events, I do private events.
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  And so, you know, if you watch out, there might be something going on.
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  And I'm always somewhere unexpected.
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  But a little it's a little Carmen San Diego at this point.
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  But I try to both do things that like, you know, a large scale,
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  a fine dining type of cuisine, but I love cooking accessible food.
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  And so I really prioritize that in the type of jobs that I take.
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  So just give me a follow, I guess.
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  Are you on Instagram? How can people find you? Yeah, I mean, I'm on Instagram.
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  I post occasionally and I definitely post the events that I'm participating in.
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  So yeah, just Angela.Demayuga and you can find me.
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  But I really love this idea of being able to feel close to me and close to my
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  story and my family story by cracking open that book.
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  And tasting flavors that way, too. I love it, too.
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  And I'm going to follow you on Instagram, and I promise not to stalk you.
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  I know the line. You're welcome, too.
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  Thank you, Chef Angel, for being here with me today. And I wish you continued success.
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  I'm really excited to see what you do next. And I want to thank everyone for
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  listening and taking time out of your day.
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  It is so important that we keep telling our immigrant stories and our truths.
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  For more immigration truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
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  And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
• 25:47
  I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.