On his blog, Food Nomad (foodnomad.net), Leandro Lagera covers the food scene in Baltimore and beyond, and he doesn’t shy from controversy, either, often addressing the complicated ways race mixes with food. He talked with Chef David Thomas of Ida B’s Table about the intersections of cuisine and race, the barriers chefs of color face in the restaurant industry, and more. Thomas didn’t hold back with his answers. [Editor’s note: The Baltimore Beat has partnered with The Real News Network, which houses Ida B’s Table.]

Leandro Lagera: Why is it important to have a soul food restaurant in Baltimore?

David Thomas: A better question is why do we need to have an Ida B’s Table here in Baltimore. Ida B’s Table is about reclaiming history and continuing a culinary journey since we landed on these shores from Africa. Through food, we’re refreshing the narrative about the African-American experience and bringing that to the Baltimore community. As everyone who lives here knows, we’re more than “The Wire.” For a blue collar city like Baltimore, one that’s majority minority, we get very little representation in the national food scene. To get the attention we deserve, we have to tell a very compelling story. Ida B. Wells is that story. Her biography and her life’s work couldn’t be more relevant to this day and time. We try to create a place that does justice to her legacy.

LL: I saw you posted something on Facebook about celebrity chef John Besh and sexual harassment in the restaurant industry. How rampant do you think the problem is? What can be done to fix it?

DT: I think like in any other industry, when you have men that wield power they’re going to find a way to abuse it. The restaurant industry is not an exception to that. Now that being a celebrity chef is a thing, they think they’re bigger than they are and create these whole eco-systems that center around them. We all work so many hours in close quarters, you can easily end up crossing a line. This isn’t a surprise to anyone in the industry. It is more widespread than we know, because most people don’t say anything and these men in power aren’t about to give that power up willingly. How do we change it? We need to elevate more women to management or ownership. Chain restaurants or corporate environments have HR departments, but private entities don’t have those checks and balances. That’s part of the reason why this culture is so pervasive. The way to change that culture is to keep talking about it. And for men to talk about it to each other. I should not be the only one talking about John Besh in Baltimore. You’ve got to be willing to stand up and say what’s uncomfortable.

LL: We hear a lot about how significant the immigrant contribution is to restaurants. What is your viewpoint on that and how has the current political climate affected this?

DT: The immigrant contribution can’t be overstated. There’s not a restaurant in the country that doesn’t benefit from immigrant work, from the hot dog stand on the corner to the best restaurants in the country. If we didn’t have immigrant labor, I doubt we’d have a world class food scene. I know it definitely wouldn’t be run as efficiently as it is. It’s a stereotype, but from my experience: They work hard. They care about what they do. My sous chef is from Oaxaca, Mexico. Francisco [De Los Santos, who has since left and ben succeeded by Bruce Fisher] has been working with me for seven years. I brought him to Ida B’s Table because he knows me, he knows how to run my kitchen, and he’s a smart, intelligent cook. Dylan [Ubaldo] . . . brings a reverence for his Filipino culture that I admire, so I’m happy to train him to get him where I want him to be. . . . I’m excited to work with this new-to-me cuisine.

LL: Where do you draw the line about when food is appropriated or when it is a homage to a certain culture?

DT: I think that question goes back to the very founding of this country. When you have an entire economy built on the backs of Africans [who are] shut out from the benefits of that wealth (still to this day having trouble accessing that wealth), it’s very hard to “pay homage.” It’s hard when you see your fingerprints all over something and you don’t get the associated benefit or acknowledgment. What was taken was intellectual property, and it’s a daily struggle to take that back. It’s great for folks to heap praise on this cuisine. Southern food, Creole, Cajun, soul food—the same hands were involved in all those cuisines and it’s the only true American cuisine. And yet, the only thing African-Americans get credit for is the chicken box. Whole hog or whole animal cooking? The next greatest thing in food? Not wasting any part of the animal is no revelation to African Americans. There’s a very prominent restaurant chain in Baltimore that I think is an excellent example of crossing the line from homage to appropriation. I’m not knocking the food—in fact, I’m friendly with the chef and respect her work. It’s named after an African-American woman, and they’re using her recipes, but she never had an ownership stake. Her children come into the restaurant named for her, and they pay for their meals. It’s been so ingrained in the American psyche that that’s OK.

Not to go too off-topic, but I think the current administration is proof that this way of thinking isn’t going away. You can pay homage by cooking at home, trying to recapture what you’ve come to love about other cultures. We all do that and should do that. I do that with German, Italian, Asian foods. I love learning about what different continents do to the same ingredients.

LL: For a city that’s 70 percent black, Baltimore’s food scene seems to be primarily recognized nationally (though this is changing slightly) for restaurants like The Charleston and Woodberry Kitchen. Is there a cultural ceiling for recognition in Baltimore for more culturally diverse restaurants?
DT: Absolutely, there’s a ceiling. We can hope for the best and keep working, but there are two things that have to be recognized. One: There are some amazing African-American chefs working in Baltimore. We just need to talk about them more (in columns like these, for instance!) Two: There are many restaurants that focus on cooking what they know, for their community. Is their plating and presentation as thoughtful as the work that goes into cooking the food? Maybe not. We have to decide as a culture, or as part of the national food scene, what’s actually important to us. Are we going to make space for places that don’t have white tablecloths? I see Ekiben out there getting notice. Land of Kush has gotten some wonderful write-ups recently. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Chef Rey [Eugenio] at Points South Latin, my friend Audiel [Vera] who is now running Avenue Kitchen & Bar. And, of course, you can’t leave out Chef Damian [Mosley] at Blacksauce Kitchen.

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On Dec. 16, the Baltimore Museum of Art hosts chef and musician Dylan Ubaldo for a Calasag pop-up event. Below is a report from Ubaldo’s Calasag pop-up from earlier this year…

Growing up, Filipino food has always been best served by your family. There were a smattering of small take outs and bodegas that served Filipino food but none were too memorable and none of them certainly were better than my family’s food. Yes, there is obvious bias but that’s what Filipino food is all about. It is, much like other cultural cuisine I would suspect, one of those memories and cynosures of life that is very much intertwined with your heritage and upbringing. So, to me, eating Filipino cuisine outside of our family gatherings has always been a little bit of a disappointment. It’s not that the food isn’t good, it was just that it was never as good (which, admittedly, is a pretty tall task).

However, it seems like Filipino food is finally taking hold as a restaurant concept. I know, I know, this has been predicted for years and years now, but there is Bad Saint, a quaint little 24-seat restaurant in Columbia Heights that was even named the #2 best new restaurant of 2016 by Bon Appetit. D.C. is getting a new one in Kaliwa, Filipino Kitchen in Chicago is getting rave reviews, it’s hard to get a seat at Perla in Philly, and we can’t forget Maharlika and Talde in NYC. There’s even a traveling chef, Yana Gilbuena, who’s made it her mission to travel the country under the name, Salo Series, and spread the gospel about Filipino cuisine.

Despite all these developments, I didn’t think the Filipino food movement would ever reach Baltimore for a variety of reasons—from it’s proximity to D.C. to Baltimore’s reputation for being slow to accept new cuisines (this is changing though!). I mean, Filipino food may have not yet arrived at the shores of Baltimore, but you can certainly see it on the horizon. There was a Kamayan by Chef Gilbuena at R. House and a Calasag pop-up at the Compound, which I attended back in June.

Calasag is a collective of friends, artists, and cooks headed by Chef Dylan Ubaldo. The name comes from a small village in the province of Bulacan where Dylan’s family hails from. It’s about three hours north of Manila and about two hours north of Quezon City, where I was born. A Kamayan, by definition, is a feast that you eat with your hands. It’s usually served on a communal table covered with banana leaves. In Calasag’s pretty handout—which also included the menu, a history of the Philippines, and their bio—they write “A Kamayan gathering is [a] celebration of indigenous heritage in the Pilipinas. It is a reminder that during Spanish and U.S. colonization, eating with your hands was considered savagery and Pilipinos were forced to adapt to eating with utensils.”

While the importance of this is true, most Filipinos these days just think of it as the best kind of backyard communal feast. The lineup for this Kamayan included coconut ube rice (white rice steamed with coconut milk and ube extract), bagoong greenery (baby bok choy and Chinese broccoli sauteed in shrimp paste with cracker nuts and crispy garlic), blue crab lumpia (Filipino egg rolls with Maryland lump crab, ginger, cabbage, and cilantro), chicken adobo (chicken legs and thighs braised in soy sauce and coconut vinegar seasoned with lemongrass, whole peppercorn, and bay leaves), and pinoy BBQ skewers (grilled pork belly and shoulder marinated in banana catsup, calamansi, and soy sauce with bird’s eye chilies).

The food was laid down carefully and intricately: Rice went down first, followed by careful placement of the other dishes. They also served colorful papaya and individual pieces of calamondin (small, tart citrus fruit, kind of like a cross between a tangerine and a kumquat). The food and flavors were spot-on to this balikbayan; I especially enjoyed the ube rice and adobo. The rice was creamy and provided a good base for all the food I was shoveling in my mouth.

I’m used to larger lumpia, but having crab as the sole filling was a great change up. The BBQ skewers evoked some great childhood memories, especially since we could see them cooking it on an open makeshift barbecue drum. The greenery was a welcome addition of vegetables, but I couldn’t find the bagoong (shrimp paste) flavor in the dish and wished that it came through more since it may be one of my favorite things ever.

The meal took almost four hours, but barely felt like it was 30 minutes. At the end of the night, Chef Dylan turned into singer Dylan and the amphitheater became a karaoke soundstage. I was only able to stay for a rousing rendition of Enrique Iglesias’ (half pinoy) ‘Hero,’ an inspiring cover of the Backstreet Boys’ ‘I Want it That Way,’ and a booming ‘Roxanne’ from the Police. Each song brought down the house and created a sea of smiles. If my whole evening consisted of those three karaoke performances, it would’ve been a great night but it wasn’t even the best part.

Overall, I’m not sure I am ready to cede Calasag’s food and flavors over my mother’s but Chef Ubaldo and the rest of Calasag never lost sight of the meaning of Kamayan. They essentially welcomed us into their home and brought a small community together. Filipinos surge with pride at the advent of our food across the country (as I’m sure how people of other cultures have felt when their food became mainstream) because it also introduces Filipino culture as a whole to widespread consciousness with a community of mindful Filipino chefs and their friends leading the way. Calasag’s food was a good representation of Filipino food, but the vibe was much more important. Filipino food and Kamayan aren’t just cuisine—there’s a whole experience to bring to the table.

A version of this review first ran on Leandro’s blog, Food Nomad (foodnomad.net).

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