Asian Journal- The Filipino-American Community Newspaper

IT’S 10:30pm on a Friday, outside the Verdugo Bar in Glassell Park, Dr. Kevin Cressey hovers in front of the bright sun-decorated, yellow and orange food truck parked along the curb.

Cressey, an American chiropractor based in Pasadena, looks up at the well-lit paper menu with bold prints taped along the glass – chicken adobo, sisig over rice, lumpiang shanghai, vegetable lumpia, the original Manila dip pan de sal slider, ube cupcakes, and the night’s special -- longganisa with garlic rice topped with egg.

The menu is foreign to Cressey, who has never tried Filipino food before and must read the description of each item before deciding.

The heavily tattooed man wearing hipster glasses turns his head and looks a few feet away, down the block, where a person is cooking "dirty dogs", oily bacon-wrapped hot dogs a popular meal for club and bar goers after a night of drinking.

Does he go for the safe route with the hot dog or try an ethnic cuisine?

Cressey went for the latter.

"I got the special of the night longganisa with rice and the original Manila dip," said Cressey. "I’ve never had Filipino food before so I wanted to try it."

"And I must say it was very good," he said.

Capitalizing on the growing trend of gourmet food trucks that has taken Los Angeles by storm over the past year, Fil-Am food bloggers 27-year-old Nastassia Johnson and 32-year-old Marvin Gapultos went from their laptops writing about these trucks to creating The Manila Machine, bringing traditional Filipino cuisines to the LA street food craze.

Johnson and Gapultos said the goal is to introduce traditional Filipino flavors to a mainstream public not accustomed to seeing or tasting Filipino food.

"Idealistically, we wanted to do something that represents Filipinos," said Gapultos. "We know Filipino food is a cuisine not many people know about so we want to bring traditional home-cooked Filipino food to them."

"There’s been a growing curiosity with Filipino food for a long time," said Johnson, who is half-Filipino, half-Caucasian. "I personally think this is the next food trend."