Filipino

The crisp Hokkien oyster pancake I grew up with, not the soft Taiwanese kind, and one of the hardest recipes to find written down.

A Chinoy comfort dish from my mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens: pork belly braised with Shaoxing wine, star anise, shiitake and eggs.

For Hokkien families, Mid-Autumn isn’t only mooncakes and lanterns. It’s six dice, a porcelain bowl, and sixty-three prizes to play for.

In Hokkien families the noodle is the birthday cake. Everything else on the plate is negotiable — the noodle is the one thing nobody cuts.

Dinner before a Mamamoo concert turns into an argument for what Vancouver still doesn't have: an upscale-casual Filipino restaurant, full stop — not a pop-up, not a special occasion, just somewhere this good on an ordinary Tuesday.

A dish-by-dish look at how 17th-century Fujianese cooking became Filipino cuisine — and why it may preserve that heritage better than China itself.