Every time I travel out of the country, after about a week, I hanker for Pinoy food, and if I can’t find any, I go for Chinese or Japanese, or Korean. With this trip, it didn’t take me long to start dreaming of my favorite Pinoy specialties.
Since my US and Canada-based siblings joined me in Vancouver to help me celebrate my birthday, we decided to go for real, honest-to-goodness Filipino cuisine.
Naturally, we had to scrounge the Internet for whatever we deemed would be the best restaurant among those which offered Filipino culinary delights. It’s a good thing that my Seattle-based daughter already did some research before my birthday, so she immediately pushed forward what she considered fit to be on the same level as our “Mama’s home cooking.”
My siblings and I were looking for dishes that we used to enjoy over Sunday lunch with our parents, recipes that were really meticulously prepared by Mama’s magic hands. We looked forward to traditional food like those carefully prepared by any loving mother for her children.
Trusting my daughter’s choice, we made arrangements with the restaurant that, for my birthday, we would close the whole place for ourselves because my siblings, nephews, and nieces, plus my children and grandchildren were more than enough to fill up the entire venue.
Kulinarya was established by co-owners Rosette Samaniego, Philip Samaniego, and Roy Pagulayan. The restaurant opened its doors to the public at its first location in Coquitlam back in 2009, then expanded to Vancouver, on Commercial Drive, in 2017. We were at the Coquitlam location.
A chat with one of the owners revealed that the restaurant’s philosophy revolves around keeping their cooking technique Pinoy, using local meats and vegetables freshly prepared while staying true to the flavors that come with their Filipino roots and traditions. Thank goodness for sensible restaurateurs like them who felt the need to highlight Filipino culture by way of food, we certainly found the perfect match for our gustatory cravings.
What we did was order various platters, each containing their top-seller specialties. This way we could really have a taste of all the popular delicacies that the restaurant offers. The platter of appetizers, as shown in the photos, was filling enough. The Fried Lumpia was crunchy-crunchy all the way, and the Lechon Kawali which came with a mango and veggies salad was heavenly.
But a very pleasant surprise was their version of the Lumpiang Ubod, as shown in the photo. One order could easily feed three people! No kidding! A giant round dough was folded over to keep the ubod and the minced meat inside, sprinkled on top with grated peanuts and minced veggies, and served with an abundant supply of tangy garlic sauce. It is really delicious. Even just writing about it makes me crave another serving!
It was definitely a satisfying culinary experience at Kulinarya. The best part about our evening get-together was that all of us in the family felt we were right at home because partaking of good Filipino food brought us back to the Sunday lunches that we used to have with our parents when we were still in our teenage years in Cebu City. I guess our “probinsyano” taste will always be with us wherever we go.
And I have to give credit to Kulinarya’s owners because they have succeeded in reframing how people think of Filipino food, as something that is modern, authentic, and relevant, and not just as an afterthought. Next time I visit Vancouver, I’ll know where to go for “Mama’s home cooking.”
YOUR MONDAY CHUCKLE:
A refined lady walked up to the pharmacist and said, “I’d like to buy some cyanide.” “Why would you need cyanide?” asked the pharmacist. “I need to poison my husband!” said the lady. The pharmacist exclaimed, “I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband! Absolutely not!” The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a photo of her husband in bed with the pharmacist’s wife. The pharmacist looked at it and said, “You didn’t tell me you had a prescription!”
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