- Welcome to our Filipino Food Tour. Today we are going to two amazing spots in Historic Filipinotown
to try some amazing dishes, maybe some Filipino snacks, all sponsored by Fanta 'cause we're looking for
the best flavor match today. - I'm trying to become the next Fantana, but I want to be the pina colada one. - I mean, you should be. - And my dress will be. - Sheer. - Sheer. (both laughing) (Try Guys theme music) - We are here with our lovely wife, Becky. - [Keith] Mm hm, mm hm, Becky's
here with us, our quadruple. - Becky, Matt, what do y'all
know about Filipino food? - It's like a melting pot
food 'cause there's a lot of different influences in Asia and they were conquered
by the Spanish for awhile. - Yeah, colonialism. - So there's a lot of different flavors to kind of meld together. - I don't think I've ever
been to a Filipino restaurant. - What, y'all have never been before? - No, I don't think I have. - I think my only real experiences with Filipino food are from like Jollibee. - I've only been I think a
few times actually in my life, so this is going to be a new
experience for all of us. - Now I have had some Filipino food here or there in different videos. I've always loved it and I also know we have a really rather large Filipino audience watching. - Yeah, hello, Philippines. - So I hope you're watching, hi! - Hello Filipino Americans
and everyone around the world who are Filipino. I certainly know more
about the Philippines than Filipino food. Like have you seen their reaction videos to when their girl wins a beauty pageant? They flip out. - [Announcer] It's the Philippines! (group screaming) - Well, our first stop
today is HiFi Kitchen. It's a fairly new spot. It's been open for a few years
in Historic Filipinotown. I know they do some fusion so let's head there and find
out what it's all about. - What's going on, guys. My name is Justin. I'm the chef and owner of HiFi Kitchen, based in Historic Filipinotown. - How would you describe Filipino cuisine? - We make Filipino-Angeleno food, is what we call it. So basically Filipino food that's influenced and inspired
by the area I grew up in. I feel like it's something that you can't really like pinpoint because there's so many influences that come from so many different places. You're touching on Malaysia, Thailand, stuff like that. So there's some like Muslim influence. Chinese, Japanese influence
and stuff like that, right? And then colonized by the
Spaniards for quite awhile. So there's a lot of like, there's like European influence. That cross section of cultures and that respect between
the dishes is something that we really prioritize, and so finding the common thread between the recipes is where we start. And also hope, you know, like after you bite into it, you have like, yo, you need to try this. One of those moments. - A lot of stuff out here. I think we're going to start with these. What are these? - [Justin] So that's the lumpia. Pork egg rolls. We make 'em in house. We hand roll them. They are my aunt's recipe. The long name for these are
called lumpiang Shanghai. - [Eugene] Chinese influence. - [Justin] Influence in their here, yeah. - [Eugene] You just improved on it. - We just Filipino-ized it. - It looks delish. (Becky crunching) (Eugene crunching) - Ooh, sounds so crunchy. - Yeah, it's similar to an egg roll. - Mm hm. - It is very much to me
in between an egg roll and a taquito, and I love
both of those things. - I could eat 100 of these. - I'm gonna try this pina colada Fanta. Remember the soda Rank King video I did? I didn't have the pina colada. This is like a different flavor, right? - Mm hm. - I have never even seen it before. Is that new? A new flavor? - It's good. - [Justin] Chicken adobo
is always something that everyone does differently. My dad taught me super
traditional the first time. Soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorns, garlic. We also do some cranberry juice. Kind of rounds out that tartness. I was going to go with the rice. The rice has an egg on it
because if you liked it, you should have put an egg on it. - Wonderful philosophy. - There's also some of
the adobo jus on the rice. That's pretty much like
almost my favorite part, is just like the jus and
the rice is like amazing. - It smells incredible. - Wow. - [Keith] Smells so rich. - Ooh, look at that. - This smell, there is something
else going on in there. - Look at that chicken. - That's like sweet and
sort of like warming spices. It smells really good. - So this is the first
Filipino dish I ever had and typically what I think a lot of people order when they
go to a Filipino restaurant. They think I'm going to
get the chicken adobo 'cause it's just so good. You can't go wrong with amazing chicken, and egg, and rice, right? - Wow. - It's just so tender and it kind of just falls apart in your mouth. And then it has a great acidity to it. A lot of depth of flavor. - I would eat this every day. - It looks like it would taste
very heavy or like thick, but it's actually very light. - [Keith] Is it improper to drink the jus? - [Justin] Dude, do it. I mean, I always dip my rice in it. That's like the move. - Whoa, that's really good. It's so flavorful. - [Eugene] Some adobo I've had has been like really soy forward. - [Justin] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, this is a little
more on the sweet garlicky, it's got like a solid
jus, which I really like. - [Justin] It airs on the
side of like teriyaki, almost? - Yeah, the eggs, so it was
like a perfectly cooked egg so that when you chopped it, it just ran over everything. - Honestly though, it does pair well with Fanta
because this is so savory and salty and this is like very sweet, and the pineapple works really well. I'm excited actually to have
the pineapple with the tacos 'cause I think those are
going to be just perfect. - [Justin] We're going to
go with tocino al pastor. So tocino is like this breakfast
meat in the Philippines, typically cured with pineapple juice and then we simmer it
in the al pastor spices. Then we also have the potato taco there. So we were like really mad that a very popular taco
place took the potatoes away. - Same. - And like, right? Yeah, totally. And so like when they removed it, we're just like, (beep). I mean, we're just going
to do it ourselves then. - I love pastor when I get tacos in L.A., so this sounds incredible to me. - Mm, mm. - My turn? - Mm hm. - That's incredible. - It's like a, it's like
a sweeter al pastor. - I don't know what it is
about like Asian cuisines meeting Mexican cuisine? (Eugene clapping) Divided by an ocean but
the flavor combined, like Captain Planet. - [Justin] Typically tocino is served with a side of vinegar. So we make like a spiced vinegar here. You would dip that for breakfast. So I would do the, instead
of like a lime wedge, right? I would do vinegar. - It's good vinegar. I wanna try the potato one. - I'm very excited for the potato because I too was a big
fan of the major chain that decided to discontinue
their potato taco. - The texture is great. It's like crunchy, pillowy inside, and the sauce on it is so good. Little spice at the end. - Every single thing so
far has had such a density of flavor and has tasted so
different from the thing before. Like your world of flavors
here is remarkable. How's everybody's pairing
with their chosen Fanta for today's meal? The pineapple for me is
great because everything so far has had this like great acidity and the pineapple just
melded really well with it. - I mean, I just love the
orange flavor so much. It just goes with everything. - Would you say it's a Fanta five, Matt? - It's a Fanta Five. - Fanta Five! (inspirational music) - I noticed there's a lot of nods to music in your restaurant, so can you talk about the impact of that? - Before I became a restaurant owner, I was a professional B-boy. - Wow. - Oh, sick. - Breaker, yeah. That's kind of where I
discovered my creative autonomy and the decor and the
nod in the restaurant are like kind of just a shout
out to like my journey here. This is the la'ing. - [Eugene] Is that crispy pork belly? - Yeah, so that's a crispy pork belly. We call it, it's traditionally
known as lechon kawali. We call it talib kawali here. So la'ing is taro leaves
braised in coconut milk, super aromatic, similar
in texture to like saag if you guys are familiar with Indian food. Then we top it off with crispy pork and that's prepared pretty traditionally with like the pork crackling
and stuff like that. - Beautiful. - I'm going to try to do a perfect bite. - I am also going for a perfect bite here. Cheers. - Yeah, cheers. - The taro leaf is like so creamy. - [Eugene] The treatment is
almost like a saag paneer. - [Keith] Yeah, it really is. - [Justin] You'll see
like a chili oil on it. - Bigger than I thought. - What I love about the cuisine so far is the influences
feel very Pan-Asian and even American because of
some of these Mexican fusion. So all of these dishes
just feel like I'm kind of hopping to a different
country altogether in terms of flavor profile. But it kind of comes together
in a really harmonious way. - Being Filipino is one thing. Being American is one thing. Being Filipino American is
another thing, you know? And now there's a lot of us
that have that upbringing. So I was like, oh yeah, cool. I'm like that too. So that's kind of what
like HiFi Kitchen is. - [Keith] Cool. - All right Fantanas, you ready to hit the next spot? - Yes. - Let's do it. - [Becky] Let's do it. - You ready, purple? - I sure wanna. - That adobo was orgasmic. - Now we're headed to The Park's Finest. But before, we thought
we'd stop off at one of these places that does outdoor sort of skewered meat grilling. You basically go inside, you buy anything you want, you come outside and
they have grills setup. - [Eugene] Oh, really? - [Keith] You get to choose what you want and grill it yourself. It sounds really fun and also, you know, that's a very street food-esque thing. I've never done outside grilling of my own food at like a
street place, you know? - [Eugene] Keith loves grilling. I don't know if y'all know. - [Keith] I do love grilling. I've been grilling a lot in the past year. - You're maybe the most dad
of the Try Guys right now. Is Ned grilling every day? - No. - Does he have a mustache? - Well, he has a beard that
has a mustache included. - That's not that. - It's not the same. - Let's dive in. - Y'all, I'm going to
try this chicken feet. It's kind of tough and
has like gelatinous flesh. So you kind of suck the
flesh off of the foot. - [Keith] Hot. It's quite difficult to eat these feet. - The flavor's good, though. - Flavors is good. I'll say the flavor in all
of this is really good. - I don't know how they make this. - It's not blood sausage, it's just blood. - Yeah, it's very like livery. - [Keith] It's so tender. - [Becky] Intestine. - [Matt] That's intestines. - It's good. - [Becky] It's egg. - It's all egg, it's all egg. - These quail eggs are really good. Look, these are quail eggs. - [Keith] Hot dog on a
stick and strawberry soda. This is a Fanta five right here. This is like, this is very, this is a very American
experience right now. - [Matt] It's the same color. - Yeah and also like as a kid, I definitely would have had this combo. - Well, I don't think
we should get too full because we have one last
restaurant we have to do. - [Matt] Yeah, this is just our snack. - This is just snack time. - Hold back. - We'll just save the
rest of this for later. - Save some for later. (car beeping) - Is it going to eat me? Oh, no, no, no! So now we are headed to
our last stop of the day, Park's Finest. - Well, I hear if you're
not full of meat yet, this is a barbecue spot. - Oh boy. - Whoa. - [Eugene] That's what I
hear, I might be wrong. - Getting a hard dose of protein today. - So before we get to our final place, it's going to be a gauntlet
between Matt and Becky to claim who is the
official orange Fanta girl. Okay, are you ready? - Me.
- I think it's me. - The question is where does
the word orange come from? - Orange. - Orange. - Which came first? The color orange or the fruit orange? - The color. - The color. - You're both wrong. (both gasping) Orange as a word or term didn't
exist prior to the fruit. It was always called like in
literature and common language, they would just call it like
a certain red or yellow. But after orange the fruit was starting to be like mass cultivated, they decided to use that name
orange and make it color. - So on Snapchat, Fanta also has some cool
new filters out right now for their flavors. I tell you what, they look insane. Whoo! I'm feeling good, look at this. Oh my gosh. All right, so here we
are at Park's Finest. Let's go try it out. (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Johneric Concordia. I'm a member of The Park's Finest. - I'm Christine Araquel-Concordia. I'm one of the co-founders
of The Park's Finest. - I'm Ann Pajimula. I am one of the co-founders
of The Park's Finest. Also part chef and I invented
the cornbread bibingka. - Ooh! - I've already heard about this cornbread. - You're going to taste it today. - I can't wait. - [Christine] At The Park's Finest, we do American cuts of
barbecue with Filipino flavor. - [Ann] You know, the savory, the sweet. So we try to put everything together. It's what makes your mouth water. - Filipino food is the vehicle for you to remember a good time. - Wow. - Wow, put that on a poster. - Yeah, what a sell, I'm in. - Let's start off with
Mama Leah's coconut adobo. It's beef and it has coconut and vinegar. - [Johneric] That we stew
for at least 24 hours. It's a cooking process that
reminds you of the Philippines but it's something very
distinct to this block because it fed so many people
that came through our home. We're also going to do some
pork loin baby back ribs. Dry rub sauce on the side so each bite can be a
little bit different. The whole point about Filipino food is that we do not get offended
when we give you a plate and you already start customizing it. - So we have two different sauces. We got our special The
Park's Finest barbecue sauce. So this is our tomato base and it has pineapple and
coconut in there as well. And then this is our vinegar
based barbecue sauce, and vinegar, soy, garlic, pepper. Lots of spices in there. And then last but not least, the cornbread bibingka. It's a pastry, a bread that's actually
baked on banana leaves and it's made out of
rice flour, coconut milk. Wow. - It's beautiful. - It's beautiful. This looks like an
appetizer and a dessert. - It can be anything you want. - What should we start
with in your opinion? - I guess cornbread. - The cornbread! Oh, awesome. - Start with the cornbread. - Thank you so much. We're going to dig in. Kain na, eat now. - Kain na. - Kain na. - Eat now, eat now. - Eat now. - Thank you. - It's the most moist cornbread. It's almost like cake. - [Becky] It's almost like a cake. Cheers. - Wow, that's really good cornbread. - It's very delicious. You can really, the corn
flavor really comes through and the texture is really great. It's very moist from banana leaf. - Oh my God. - I thought it might be too sweet 'cause of all the sugar on top, but no, it's so balanced and so corny. Tastes very like corn. - It's moist. - [Keith] So moist. - That's a moist cornbread. - Wow. - I want this for my
birthday cake every year. - [Eugene] Yeah, that is good. - [Becky] Like I want
to take back any cake I've ever eaten before. - We started the catering
company back in 2009 and then in 2012 is when we
opened our doors to the public when we found this space
here on Temple Street, which has historically
been an ethnic enclave for Filipinos in the United States. Culturally, we embrace everything Filipino that we can learn about. We also struggle with trying to be Filipino enough or American enough. So there's that aspect
of us constantly trying to just be us and that's
what The Park's Finest is. It's us trying to just
show what we love about both being Americans and also Filipinos. - Okay, let's go to the adobo. - [Eugene] This one's a
beef with a coconut cream. - Just go hog wild. - Do you want more? - Go hog wild. Yeah, yeah, that's good. - You want more than mine? - I mean, I wouldn't stop you. Yeah, that's what we're
looking at right there. - Let's try. - So I can lift it. - Of course. You know, I thought it was going to taste, oh wow, it's got some
spice in it, doesn't it? I thought it was going to
be really, really coconutty but it's actually really quite balanced and that spice is so nice. It really warms up the whole mouth. - [Johneric] So the
heat is yellow chilies, California yellow chilies. So we grew up eating Tommy's, we grew up eating In-N-Out. So instead of using bird chilies that we traditionally
use in Southeast Asia, we use California yellow chilies. - There's a kick at the end but the texture of the sauce is so good on the beef with the rice. - You know, when I was hearing about this, I thought this would be a sweet dish, but it's actually very
savory, indulgent, like. - That's very savory. - Delicious. Feels like a Sunday night
dinner with your family. - Yeah, very multi-layered. - And can I just say, we've got a Fanta five right
here with this pairing. It's excellent, it really is so so good. - But it's really cool to see how adobo can be different from one restaurant to the next. - So different. - Just the sauce by itself
would be a good, good gravy. - Oh my God. - I'd put that on some
chicken fried steak. - All right, let's move to the ribs 'cause I would just continue
eating everything else. - [Christine] Barbecuing has been a part of our upbringing as sons and daughters of immigrants here in Los Angeles. It's been something that's been a part of just what we do
regularly in celebration. So we wanted to be able to
share this with the community. - Mm. - Mm. That is a pepper rub. - Hoo! - The rib is like fall off the bone, melt in your mouth. I mean, you can see all
the different spices and flavors on it. You add kind of that vinegary sauce on, it just like hits the spot, it's so good. - Both of these sauces are
like nothing I've ever had. So delicious and yet
still feel very barbecue. - We got something that's
like real Filipino street. - What could that be? - Well, they prepared it special for us and it happens to be Fanta. - Orange? - It's Fanta orange. - What? - My favorite! - It's Becky's favorite. - My favorite, Matt. - There enough Fanta for both of us. - We want you to like
experience a little, you know, street way of drinking Fanta
orange in the Philippines. - Wow, I've only ever
had alcohol from a bag. (Ann laughing) - Like a liquor store, like, you know, little hole-in-the-wall wall stores. If you ask for a soda, they'll actually give it to
you in a bag and a straw, and then they'll recycle the bottles. - It's like all your senses. You could feel it, you taste it. You can hear it. - It feels like being a kid. - This is a Fanta five. - Fanta five, this is a Fanta five. - The whole spirit of
taking care of each other, it's really unique to this place. And for us to be able to just advocate for the interest of the
people who live here and also we're from here, we live here. Building community is something that's been extremely important to us as well as meeting the
needs of the people here. - Today was so great. We got to eat so much good food, meet so many great people. In fact, they should come over. We should just have one, you know, this whole thing was about how everybody's together all the time. It feels like you should
be together with us. You fed us so well. Squeeze in sort of behind us. Just come in and fill in back here. You have shared so much of your food and your stories with us. To anyone out there who's curious about trying Filipino food, what sort of advice would you give them? - Grab a beverage, grab a plate, and have fun with family. - I feel like we did that today. Get out there, try something new. Thanks to Fanta for
sponsoring today's video and we'll see you next time. Bye! - Bye! - [Group] Bye! (Try Guys theme music) - This is beautiful. - We all are going to need to take a bite of this together at the same time. - Delicate. - Oh wow, it smells so good. - Matt ate it. - [Keith] Matt!
