Under the radar: Filipino food is winning Istanbul one plate at a time

Istanbul, Türkiye – Roaring laughter rang across the dining area behind the neoclassic Nativity of Our Lady church in Istanbul’s Buyukdere neighbourhood, as guests gathered for late lunch on a recent Sunday. The faint smell of garlic drifted from the freshly fried spring rolls, lumpia. Empty stomachs were churning.

Aside from lumpia, platters brimming with the sweet and tangy chicken adobo and the meat and vegetables noodle recipe, pancit, were laid out on the table. Of course, the buffet would not be complete without a large bowl of rice and some serving of fruits and desserts, including the jelly-like treat, gulaman.

The only thing required of the guests were their appetite. It didn’t hurt if they could also sing a karaoke tune, dance to a folk song and shimmy to the latest Zumba steps, or even participate in outdoor games. All those would follow after the luncheon.

It’s a Filipino feast, after all.

With a full belly and wearing a wide grin, Mehmet Yontem, a middle-aged Turkish businessman, chatted away with his Filipino friends after the satisfying meal. Others sipped from cups of soda while taking shelter from the sun under the cool shade of a nearby Malta plum tree.

“I had never tried Pinoy food until four years ago,” the former restaurant owner later said, using a slang to refer to anything Filipino.

“Now, I am always craving for some. My favourite is of course pancit,” he added. Mehmet came to the right place that summer afternoon.

Finding Filipino food in Türkiye, however, may not be as easy as ordering Japanese or Chinese takeout.

In Istanbul, Pinoy food remains a niche menu with access mostly limited to the far northside, near where many Filipinos live. There's the Mama Jen restaurant in Esentepe, which is famous for its own version of sisig, made of finely-chopped chicken meat or tofu seasoned with lemon juice, onion and chili, and cooked in a skillet to achieve that sizzle. Jenny Ozdil, the Filipina chef and owner who is married to a Turkish guy, opened the place during the pandemic.

As Covid-19 lockdown eased, the place started to attract more customers prompting Jenny to find a bigger place near one of the city's largest malls. Lately, Turkish diners from the nearby business district have also been coming for lunch, seeking for more food variety in the area, she said. Recently, her restaurant was featured in popular Istanbul food vlog, Istanbul Bucket List.

Next-door is the Asian Sora Noodles and Sushi, a Filipino fusion eatery owned by Wahid Guialab, a native of Datu Piang, Maguindanao in the southern island of Mindanao. He also runs a cargo delivery to the Philippines.

Down the street, Chow Queen in Gultepe is famous for its combo Filipino meal of stir-fry noodles, rice and meat.

Otherwise, this entire category of cooking is only available in Filipino kitchens. And you have to be invited to partake in it.

Fusion of East and West

When Filipinos started working in Istanbul around four decades ago, they brought with them the Philippines’s rich culinary tradition – a fusion of flavours from the East and the West – owing to its colonial past and geographic location in Southeast Asia. Istanbul itself is known as the meeting of the East and the West, the bridge between Asia and Europe.

The Philippines was a colony of Spain for over 300 years beginning in the 1560s before the Americans took over with a brief Japanese interval during World War Two. Before that, the islanders had recorded contact with China and mainland Southeast Asia as early as the 10th Century, and that greatly shaped its culture, including its cooking.

Consider adobo, the Filipino’s unofficial national dish. The chicken stew has a trademark Castilian-sounding name, which comes from the Spanish word, adobar, to marinate. But it’s actually soaked in Chinese-style soy sauce mixed with a concoction of indigenous spices and herbs like bay leaf and peppercorns, as well as a dash of sukang pinakurat, a vinegar extracted from native coconut sap added for that extra kick that could startle an inexperienced palate.

Far from their immediate families, Türkiye's Filipino workers, most of them women, would find every opportunity – may it be a birthday party, anniversary or a church event, even a karaoke session – to get together and prepare food. They would whip up native dishes, sharing them with compatriots – if only to momentarily ease their longing of home.

Comfort food

Adelina Liwanag came to Istanbul over 30 years ago from a suburb of the Philippine capital, Manila. There were only a handful of migrant Filipino workers around back then and their shared experience turned them into a band of sisters braving a new city.

“Many of us met in church. So each week after attending Sunday service, we would hang out at someone’s apartment and we would cook Filipino food,” Adelina recalled fondly.

“Honestly, I didn’t even know how to cook back then. But it didn’t matter. The more important thing was that we had a chance to get together with other Filipinas at least once a week. We found our own community in our times of triumph and adversity,” she said, speaking in Filipino.

Over the years, Adelina has managed to send her children and grandchildren to school while putting roof over their heads. Most of her contemporaries have already retired and returned home. She has chosen to stay.

Since Adelina’s time, the population of Filipino migrant workers in Türkiye has grown to around 5,000, according to the official registry of the Philippine embassy in Ankara. Most of them are still based in Istanbul. A few are spread in other parts of the country. In comparison, there are about two million Filipinos working across the Middle East and East Asia.

Bing Bulac is also one of the Filipino pioneers in Türkiye, moving to Istanbul in 1992. She hails from the central Philippine province of Bohol, one of the country’s 7,107 islands. Every time she misses home, she also seeks the company of other Filipinos, sharing home-cooked fares with them.

“I really relish every opportunity I get to eat our own food, whether at events or at home, where I make it with my own hands. It means so much to me,” she said. “I find it comforting,” she professed.

Growing up as an island girl, who lived next to the beach, Bing developed an affinity to fresh seafood. Her favourite Pinoy creations is escabeche, a Spanish-inspired fried fish immersed in sweet and sour sauce with a certain touch of spiciness coming from the added ginger.

Winning the Turkish palate

Because many of the migrant Filipinos work in Turkish households, they have also introduced their distinctive Southeast Asian cuisine in kitchens across the historic city of Istanbul and elsewhere.

When Catherine Bermudez, a nurse from the northern city of Cabanatuan, started working for a Turkish home on the Asian side of Istanbul years ago, she won their taste with her sinangag na kanin, a Filipino-style fried rice recipe with egg, spring onions and garlic. She eventually earned their love and trust, practically becoming a second mother to the family’s grade school-aged daughter, whom she looked after almost since birth.

Catherine, an avid sportswoman and Filipino community leader, has been active at Saint Anthony Church along Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue for about 15 years. She's also one of the main organisers of the recent gathering in Buyukdere attended by fellow church members and their guests from different parishes.

For that event, Catherine brought the chicken steak as well as the lumpia, which she had meticulously prepared overnight, rolling each dollop of seasoned ground beef and wrapping them individually in paper-thin pastry skin that were cut up into bite-size pieces, ready to be fried the morning after.

Her labour of love was amply rewarded that Sunday when guests quickly dispatched both her dishes. So appetising were the lumpia that one could finish 10 rolls before realising it. Even the gravy of the chicken steak was wiped clean.

Catherine's housemate, Leny Jugueta, meanwhile prepared the desserts, also staying late into the night to bake some pastries. Their friend, Lita Punay brought the pancit.

Four days after, Catherine and Leny were still recovering from organising the annual church luncheon. But they still managed to invite close friends over at their shared apartment rental in Harmantepe to do some post-event evaluation, while exchanging laughs and life's regrets over mid-afternoon grub.

As expected, they over-prepared the table ending up with their guests being overfed with lumpia, the noodle soup, sotanghon, and daing na pusit – fried dried squid that has an aroma not to everyone's liking.

Then they brought out the halo-halo, the Philippines' most popular summer treat made up of shaved ice, evaporated milk mixed all together with various fruit ingredients including purple yam, sweetened beans, sweet corn, jackfruit and a scoop of ice cream. Halo-halo literally means mix-mix in English. It's as decadent as it could get.

Mehmet, the Turkish businessman, was there again as an invited guest. He couldn't help but smile at his luck.

"Masarap," he said. The halo-halo was so delicious that he managed to say it in Filipino.