At Folklorama’s Mabuhay Philippine and Punjab pavilions, the menus began with familiar favourites—food that can welcome a newcomer while reminding someone else of home.
Folklorama food is expected to do a lot. In one plate, a pavilion must welcome unfamiliar diners, satisfy members of its own community and offer a meaningful introduction to a much larger cuisine.
When Folklorama Food Tastes Like Home
By the time I reached the counter at the Mabuhay Philippine Pavilion, I can already smell the introduction. Reading out the menu.
Pancit guisado. Chicken adobo. Beef kaldereta. Lumpia. Pork barbecue. Sweet-and-sour fish.
These were not obscure dishes selected to test how adventurous Folklorama visitors might be. They were some of the Filipino foods most frequently ordered from restaurants and served at gatherings around Winnipeg. For many Filipino visitors, the menu offered familiarity. For someone new to the cuisine, it offered an accessible place to begin.
I ordered Combo 2: pancit guisado, chicken adobo and five pieces of lumpia.
The chicken adobo reminded me of my auntie’s cooking. It wasn’t necessarily the same recipe, but the familiar combination of soy sauce, vinegar and garlic brought back the feeling of food I already knew. The pancit was also good, but my favourite was the lumpia.
That probably would not surprise anyone who has introduced Filipino food to friends outside the community. Throughout the years of sharing it with my non-Filipinos, lumpia has consistently been the favourite. Crisp, savoury and easy to eat, it does not require much explanation. You can tell someone it is a Filipino egg roll, hand them one and let the first bite do the rest.
At the Mabuhay Pavilion, every combination included pancit and five pieces of lumpia. Diners then chose an entrée such as chicken adobo, beef kaldereta or sweet-and-sour fish. Familiar drinks extended the introduction beyond the plate, with San Miguel and Red Horse beer, Tanduay rum, calamansi lemonade, mango nectar, guava juice and young coconut water among the options.
The menu also listed the ingredients in each dish. A visitor unfamiliar with pancit could see rice noodles, chicken, pork and vegetables. Someone curious about adobo could read that it contained soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, onion and bay leaf. Even before ordering, the food had been translated into recognizable parts.
The selection did not try to be everything in the Filipino cuisine. No festival menu could. Instead, it concentrated on dishes that could satisfy someone who grew up eating Filipino food while remaining approachable to a first-time visitor.
A plate like mine can therefore serve two purposes at once. For me, the adobo carried a memory of my auntie. For another diner, it may have been their first experience with the dish. One person recognizes home while the other discovers something new.
A Familiar Welcome at the Punjab Pavilion
Later, I visited the Punjab Pavilion at 1770 King Edward Street and encountered a similar approach.
The meal included curry chicken, lentils, naan and jasmine rice—the kind of selection found at many Punjabi and Indian restaurants around Winnipeg. The plate was completed with gulab jamun, a sweet finish after the curries and bread.
Here again, the pavilion appeared to begin with recognizable favourites. Curry chicken, lentils, rice and naan do not represent the full range of Punjabi cooking, just as adobo, pancit and lumpia cannot summarize the food of the Philippines. But they provide visitors with an entry point.
The room surrounding the meal was part of that introduction. Volunteers served food in traditional clothing. Cultural displays presented textiles, clothing and decorative objects. Rows of chairs faced a stage prepared for music and dance. Food may have drawn visitors toward the table, but it was situated within a larger presentation of Punjabi culture.
The Menu Must Make Choices
That is one of the interesting things about eating at Folklorama. Each pavilion is asked to introduce a community in a limited amount of time. Visitors arrive, choose a meal, view the displays and watch a performance before moving on to another part of the city. Organizers cannot communicate every regional difference, family tradition or generation of change within that brief encounter.
The menu must make choices.
At both pavilions I visited, those choices seemed to favour food that Winnipeg already knows—or is at least ready to know. This does not make the dishes less meaningful. Familiarity can be what allows a deeper conversation to begin.
People sometimes expect cultural food events to lead with the rarest, most traditional or most unfamiliar dishes available. But introducing a culture doesn’t always require beginning with what makes it super different. Sometimes it means finding the food most likely to bring people closer.
At the Mabuhay Pavilion, that first connection might have been the vinegar and garlic of chicken adobo. At the Punjab Pavilion, it might have been tearing off a piece of warm naan and dipping it into curry. And for many people being introduced to Filipino food, it begins with lumpia.
A crisp wrapper, a savoury filling and an invitation to take another.
It may not tell the whole story of a cuisine. But lumpia always opens the door.
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