Lechona-Lechón Lunch: A Feast Celebrating Culture, Flavors, and our Connection <3
Brought to you by Ola LA 02 with Lasita, El Chilito, Weiser Farms, & Mas Vino Please and more! Tickets available!
I have always felt a connection to the Philippines. Something about the food, the people and the culture have always felt so familiar to me. I grew up with many Filipino friends in LA, always feeling welcomed by their multigenerational families and my favorite foods: lumpia and pancit, at family parties. When I moved to Barcelona in 2017, I didn’t know a soul but my first friend (and now one of the most special people in my life) was a Filipino man named Aian. We bonded over smoking the same cigs: Camel Crushes outside of class. I told him about life in Colombia and he taught me Filipino slang like pogi and charot lol. We realized quickly the overlap in our cultures. The bond between Filipinos and Latinos is strong. We felt like distant primos with so many shared memories of food and family, beaches and language—and how religion loomed over everyone, whether they chose to believe or not. Aian is one of the best damn cooks I know. His food seared in my memory from long days in Barcleona where he would cook us feasts of adobo and share his family recipes. Food is connection for so many of us. Reminders of home, of friends, and of memories. I started to understand why Filipino culture felt so familiar: they’re basically Colombian, but on the other side of the world! We care about Miss Universe pageants on the same national level, we’re late in the same ways, we’re loud in the same ways, we celebrate the same and have a lust and a joy for life that’s unique to us. But most significantly, we share a lot of foods: tropical fruits, cooking in banana leaves, guava, tamales, longaniza and lechon/lechona (just to name a few).
I am PROUD and EXCITED to share this connection and exploration of cultures with you all at the next OLA 02 event: Lechona-Lechon Lunch with my friends at Ola, Lasita, Weiser Family Farms, El Chilito, Peads and Barnett, and Tehachapi Grain Project. I don’t think there’s been anything like it before and I want you to be there for it!
It will be a true farm to table celebration: Lunch will be served at Weiser Family Farms in Malibu featuring Alex’s beautiful produce, wines, snacks, 3-course lunch, salsas, pickles and more! Now, I’ll share some words about this project by Juliana, creator and soul of Ola:
Long before Los Ángeles was founded as part of New Spain in 1781, indigenous peoples of North America and pueblos of the South shared a rich history of exchange, making LA a longstanding cultural trade spot. Foods such as corn, chilies and tomatoes made their way north through such exchanges, traces of which can be found in LA food markets, and beloved dishes. Food, like people, travels and migrates. Sometimes by luck, by obligation or by mere force of spirit. Tracing the paths traveled by ingredients leads to shared food experiences such as the one that shapes OLA 02: Lechona, Lechon Lunch, from Colombia to the Philippines via Mexico, LA and back.
The encounter of Colombian and Filipino people is like an episode of a Telenovela, featuring meeting a long lost brother or sister, with whom you share the same last names (Reyes, Valencia, García), a different language, connected memories and a share of misunderstandings. Not in vain demasiado means too much in Spanish, and di masyado is not too much, not so much, or not really in Filipino.
My own personal conundrum with the Colombian-Filipino food question dates back to May 2012, to The Great GoogaMooga edition featuring the best of NY, including Cooking with Coolio and Maharlika, the East Village modern Filipino restaurant. I approached thinking I'd smelled Colombian Longaniza, but ended up realizing that corn, banana leafs, lechon and many dishes I found deeply personal were more so of a shared colonial existence. Four years later, the Filipino connection found me again while researching why Colombians don’t really eat sweet potato anymore, with its harvest gone scarce in the country, even if it's endemic. The Spanish colonial trade, and the Philippines, turned out to be the cornerstone of the story of how China ended up producing 90% of the world's sweet potato. Along with sweet potatoes, many of the crops from Spanish colonizers were introduced to the Philippines from the Americas: guavas, pineapples, papayas, avocados, corn, tomatoes, and peanuts.
The Spanish colonization which lasted more than 300 years in the Americas of the South and North and in the Philippines created foodways, dish interpretations and trade routes that brought the history of LA, the viceroyalties of south and central america, Colombia and Mexico, and the Phillipines together. It is not a surprise then, that the Filipino-Latino connection found me again in LA, this time via Eric Tucker of Melody Wine Bar from whom I first learned about Lasita’s famous Lechon, while hosting a Mesa Franca Pop Up earlier last year, and via Debbie Gonzales, El Chilito maker and Kids of Immigrants’(KOI) creative over chile, culture and immigration stories. As KOI puts it, “we are all cut from different fabrics but together make a whole”.
Geography is destiny. And just as the Philippines and coasts of Colombia share the ecosystems that make rice, yams, root vegetables, coconuts, achiote/achuete, banana leafs, and mango staples to each country, geography, or being in LA, is how Txeis and Nico from Lasita, Andrea from Más Vino Please, Debbie and Evelyn from El Chilito and I, ended up seated at this table speaking about chisme or tsismis (gossip) as a binder of our cultures. Add a shared enthusiasm for pork in its sisterly interpretations of Lechon and Lechona Tolimense, and love for a specific pig - Peads and Barnetts succulent bellies - a passion for vinegar and a shared understanding of fried egg over white rice as a respectable and reliable dinner, and this pop up came to be.
Today, there is an opportunity for an exciting examination of the food-ways that make LA, LA. Californian agriculture and restaurants are fully supported by migrant workers, who contribute to make LA a natural center of cultural creativity. This is why we invite you to join us for a three course lunch to celebrate these flavors alongside farmers Oliver from Peads and Barnett and Alex of Weiser Family Farms in the land he harvests in Malibu. Everything we’ll serve has been carefully picked by Oliver and Alex, featuring the produce of the farm we’ll be eating at. Expect a side of vermouth, full vino pairing and hot sauce.
AT THE TABLE:
Ola.la is a pop up club that honors LA’s history as an exchange point to bring Latin America’s cooks together with cooks making their way across the city. OLA encourages creative dialogue and collaboration in the way Latin American culture does it, by means of celebration. From open tables designed in the tradition of market meals, to fine dining formats, OLA runs popups every month with rotating chefs to keep you curious about the culture. Expect fine and not so fine dining, market crawls and guides of all things ceviche, tamales and more.
Lasita. Lasita is a casual Los Angeles Filipino rotisserie and natural wine bar located in Chinatown’s Far East Plaza, and one of Bon Appétit’s 50 best new restaurants of 2022. Hang & chill in their intimate, Philippine sunset inspired 32 seat dining room or in their easy breezy 25 seat patio. Drop by for a bite of Chicken Inasal or Lechon, and wash it down with a bottle of something natty.
El Chilito. Hecho con amor y sabor, El Chilito is a family made hot sauce based on a cherished recipe passed down for generations. Once only savored in the Gonzales household, sisters Debbie, Rubi, and Evelyn now handcraft their deeply flavorful and one-of-a-kind sauce with their father’s blessing. The original recipe originated from Sahuayo Michoacan, handmade by their great grandmother.
Más Vino Please. Natural, unfiltered wine commentary. LA-based natural wine lover Andrea Jaramillo has her hand in a lot of different things. From creating TikToks about natural wine––to her own natural wine newsletters and podcasts, Andrea promotes sustainability, inclusivity, and accessibility within the wine world. She’s sipping (natural) wine, reviewing, recommending, unpacking what ‘natural’ really means, and connecting with her community through wine events she hosts around the city. Her hope is to inspire others to continue exploring their own wine journey.
Weiser Family Farms. Weiser Family Farms began in 1977 when Sid Weiser, a chemistry teacher and counselor at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles decided to pack up the family and follow his dream of working off the land. Sidney and his wife Raquel laid down roots in Tehachapi, California. In 1982 their son Alex jumped in to assist the family in selling at local Farmers’ Markets. There he encountered chefs, the public and specialty produce buyers who wanted seasonal, high quality and superior tasting produce. Listening to this input, Alex began to focus on creating a bio-diverse farm dedicated to applying sustainable farming techniques. His overriding desire was to supply people with unique fruits and vegetables at their peak, rather than picked for commercial usage. Today, Weiser Family Farms grows in the Greater Bakersfield area, Tehachapi, the Lucerne Valley, and Malibu, cultivating a tapestry of high quality produce year round. Alongside Alex, his brother Dan, and his sister Esther run a family farming entity in the true sense of the word.
Peads and Barnett. Peads & Barnetts is named after a very old farm outside of Oxford, England, where Olivers’ grandparents first got their start raising pigs in the late 1950’s. Peads is a stream on the property, and Barnett is an old English turnip that was originally grown on the farm. The area has always been good pig country, with vast woodlands blanketing the gently rolling hills and a mild, wet climate. It is where the famous Berkshire breed of pig originated, one of the oldest recognized breeds in the world, prized for the wonderful, richly marbled meat it produces. This is the pig that he now raises in California, putting into practice the knowledge gained from more than 60 years of farming. The pigs live their entire lives outdoors in a beautiful natural setting, with the emphasis placed on growing them slowly and respectfully and feeding them the best possible diet. This means absolutely no soy, corn, other GMO feed stuffs or animal byproducts, etc. All their pork is butchered fresh at the beginning of every week. They specialize not only in classic American and British butchery, but also in cuts popular to Japanese, Chinese and European cultures such as ton toro cut from the jowl and culatello cut from the back leg.
Tehachapi Grain Project. The Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project's aims to grow and preserve heritage organic grains which are naturally drought-tolerant and low in gluten, trying to bring back many different types of heirloom grains. Wheat and the other small cereal grains have been planted in California since the establishment of missions in the 1760s, with California once leading the nation in barley production and being second in wheat production. But in the early 20th century, grain farming began to be replaced by higher value orchards, vineyards, and row crops. Today, the project ignites the movement to restore some of California’s rich grain-growing heritage, to help cultivate beautiful, healthy, non-GMO grains for home cooks, chefs, bakers, and brewers.