Experiencing food is a communal act. Humans traditionally eat, prepare, and even hunt, forage, or farm meals together. Gatherings almost always feature food, and if they don’t, I believe you have a license to leave. Recipes are passed between generations and brought home from trips across oceans, as well as trips from just across the street. Even when we are eating alone over our kitchen sinks, the food we consume ties us to the people, communities, animals, and the very land that it came from. When I started thinking about where I come from, my mind instantly went to food.

I am mixed-race, raised by my white mother. While she tried to keep me connected to my Japanese and Filipino heritage, in the days before the internet, I only learned what my local library could teach me. Decades later, the wave of Filipino restaurants opening in NYC introduced me to the Philippines in a way I had never experienced before and fueled my curiosity about my roots. What I knew about Filipino food could fit into a crock pot (there’s adobo in that crock pot), but I bought myself some Patis and datu puti and got ready to eat some home cooked Pinoy food! But why the blog?

My half sister had recently started a supper club in London, Baboy Club, serving family-style meals to a rotating crowd of Brits from the worlds of art and publishing, and using that outlet as a way to reach back to her own early days growing up in Manila. She shares her recipes online, so I decided to hop on her bandwagon (she was always the trendy one) and start a sister site where I could experiment with Filipino food and other foods I’ve been introduced to by people and places that I love.

At Baboy Club NYC, you can expect recipes I’ve developed and tested in my own kitchen and maybe a story about what the food means to me. Hopefully it can be a launch pad for your own kitchen experiments.