Image source: Merlina McGovern
I have been slow posting because my husband and I have been enjoying a vacation to Asheville, North Carolina. It’s a short one 1.5-hour flight for us from Boston, and I am really loving it here. The town is tucked close to the Smoky Mountains, a phrase that I didn’t look into until I saw the cool blue fog and low clouds wending around the mountain tops here.
We’ve done the requisite touristy things like visit the Biltmore Estate, visiting quite a few of its 35 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms, and taken a tour of Thomas Wolfe’s Old Kentucky Home boarding house (our tour guide was able to tell us the heart-wrenching story of Thomas coming home for his brother Ben’s tragic death during the 1918 flu pandemic, all while reminding yelling toddlers to look with their eyes not their hands, bravo to him!).
We’ve also eaten fabulous southern food, like an absolutely delicious grilled cheese biscuit at the Well-Bread bakery in Biltmore Village and yummy shrimp and grits at the Corner Kitchen, a fun restaurant set up in charming 109-year old house.
But, by far, the best food we’ve eaten on our trip was at the Fabulous Neng Jr.’s Filipino restaurant in the funky West Asheville district. My mother is Filipino, so I’ve grown up eating foods braised in soy sauce and vinegar, the herby flavors of stewed bay leaves, and pork, pork, and more pork. And I always use her home-made lumpia, a crispy bite of heaven, as my measuring stick for authenticity. My mom always searches out the thinnest of lumpia wrappers and lovingly chops the carrots, celery, and green onions she uses into the smallest of pieces she refuses to use a food processor. She seasons the ground pork she uses with just salt and pepper and then always manages to put just the right amount of filling into the cigar thin rolls that she makes. It’s mouth-wateringly delicious every time, especially when she makes a soy sauce, green onion, and calamansi dipping sauce for us.
And so to Neng Jr.’s. It was a truly transcendent experience. You enter through a back alley off the main road and climb up darkened stairs while music with heavy bass is pumping. Your hostess takes you to a tiny dining room where you have a view of the open kitchen. You have a few items that you can choose from and the hard-working waitstaff describes each dish in detail in case the terms are unfamiliar to you. We picked soy marinated egg yolk on oysters, a melt-in-your-mouth tuna crudo with soy and lime marinade, the lumpia starter, the grilled sea bass with coconut braised greens, and a to-die-for pork belly with hand pulled noodles in a soy butter sauce.
The lumpia were brought to our table fresh from the fryer. I dipped one crispy end into the tangy clear dipping sauce they had and as soon as my teeth crunched through the crispy, paper-thin wrapper and hit the hot ground pork filling, I knew that we had found a winner. The filling was a tiny bit different then my mother’s (nothing can beat her lumpia, of course), but it was the perfect savory bite to introduce us to the rest of our Filipino feast.
I am now spoiled, and I hope to find more Filipino restaurants when I head back home. One restaurant close to us in Somerville, Massachusetts, that specializes in a specific type of Filipino food, the tanam feast, is sadly closed now. Filipino food is so warming, comforting, and different. It’s filled with savory tang, with noodles, with soups and stews, fish, and pork. I’m hoping that we see more of this delicious cuisine in the American culinary landscape soon.
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