Nenette Luarca-Shoaf remembers the Noche Buenas, noisy Christmas Eve dinners with a house full of relatives, a table laden with Filipino food, titos and titas in noisy conversation, a gaggle of cousins finding a place to eat where they fit.
Almost every weekend, the family would gather for someone’s birthday, generations bonding in one place. It’s family ties that defines a large part of her Filipino American-ness, said Luarca-Shoaf, The Huntington’s director of education and public engagement.
It’s also the not-so-secret ingredient to “Sunday Supper with ‘This Filipino American Life’ podcast” on July 26. The first of three free “Sunday Suppers” at The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, the event treated about 90 guests to an “exploration of centuries of Philippine culture and Filipino American food, storytelling, and legacy through historical archives and dishes.”
And in true Filipino fashion, food anchored the experience.
The idea was to offer a taste of the Filipino American experience as curated by chef Justin Foronda of HiFi Kitchen who came by his culinary success after finishing his studies as a nurse.
Foronda chose dried pineapple and fried peanuts with crispy garlic for starters, then offered his version of a Philippine tamale (coconut rice with chicken, annatto and egg wrapped in banana leaves) to honor
Luarca-Shoaf was most impressed with Foronda’s homage to the islands the United States colonized in the early 20th century, cooking up tostones with kalua pork in a calamansi-mojo sauce and garnished with pickled papaya to represent the Philippines, Cuba, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
Foronda’s twist on the vegetable dish pinakbet eschewed the “bagoong” or shrimp paste that is a mainstay ingredient and replaced it with a vinaigrette.
The final fish was his own “HiFi Hotdog,” the name is for Foronda’s restaurant, and also short for Historic Filipinotown where it’s located. This bit of yumminess featured a steamed bao with grilled onions and green peppers, topped with cilantro, chili oil, mustard sauce and banana-glazed Spam.
In between the tastes came nourishing stories from historian Joe Bernardo, one of the co-hosts of “This Filipino American Life” and DEI director at Loyola Marymount University; and Linde Lehtinen, curator of photography at The Huntington.
The “Sunday Supper” series is connected to “This Land Is…” a multiyear initiative that digs into and cultivates relationships land, American history and American identities.
Lehtinen and co-curator Josh Garrett-Davis, who wrote the book that accompanies the “This Land Is…” exhibition, picked items from the library’s collection to tell the layers of stories and unearthing roots, amendments and disturbances in American history that’s evidence of “the messiness of it, but also the act of observing, and taking in nature and changes to the land over time. History is not this perfect polished thing all the time.”
As part of “This Land Is…” Lehtinen included the scrapbook of Domingo Salas, who worked as a chauffer in Pasadena in the 1920s, served in both World Wars, and died in 1985 in his ‘80s.
“He hand-colored portraits of himself and other friends, communities he belonged to, even his boss is there, but also girlfriends, which is interesting because this is during a time when there were anti-miscegenation laws. Knowing that, you can decode what’s actually behind some of these beautiful, joyful photographs about life and love here in Pasadena.”
Like many “manongs” of that generation, it doesn’t look like Salas ever married, Lehtinen said, and his story will unfold through her research.
“I’m not done with Domingo yet,” she said.
For Sam Vong, unpacking Filipino American history was a literal job. Vong curated “How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories” an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History open through Nov. 28, 2027.
He went through 26 steamer trunks owned by Filipino farm workers in Stockton, discovered in a lodge there in 2005. Expecting to find work clothes and agricultural field tools, Vong said he instead found three-piece suits, photo albums and hundreds of letters dating from the 1910s.
The trunks tell the different aspects of Filipino men and women’s lives, “from the fraternal organizations they built, the backbreaking work that they did in the field, earning 20 to 25 cents an hour, picking harvests that fed the entire nation,” Vong said, giving them back their full humanity.
“And one thing I think is very powerful and timely about this object is that this year we’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of America, and it’s an opportunity for us to reflect on the ideals of liberty, happiness, and independence,” he added.
“What these trunks do is it forces us to really reflect on who gets freedom, right? Who gets dignity and respect, and who has to fight for that kind of sense of belonging in the United States, because many of these men were needed as workers, but yet they were refused citizenship, voting rights, but expected to pay allegiance to the United States.”
“Sunday Suppers” is co-presented by The Huntington and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and is designed to inspire the kind of dialogue that happens with people gather around a table. It’s inspired by “This Land Is…” and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Each program will offer a menu that will be curated to the topic. The second “Sunday Supper” is set for Aug. 30 and is a collaboration with the nonprofit media group Zócalo Public Square on regenerative agriculture.
The third offering will feature LA Commons, an arts and culture organization based in South Los Angeles, and will celebrate the “vibrant cultural tapestries of Altadena and Leimart Park and honor regional African American artistic lineages.
A poignant focus of this final “Sunday Supper” will be artist Betye Saar’s commissioned installation at The Huntington, which was inspired by her Pasadena childhood and earliest visits to The Huntington. Saar died on July 26 at age 99. Two of her granddaughters are set to speak at this program.