Cooking for the Cause
/One participant, Channing Centeno, doesn't hold a sign. He can't — his hands are full. He weaves through the crowds holding a tray piled high with food: pork and shrimp lumpia (egg rolls); Venezuelan arepas (cornbread sandwiches); Ukrainian varenyky (dumplings); or anything else he and his friends could crank out in his apartment kitchen that day. And he gives it out for free.
Channing Centeno, founder of Purple Pineapple, serves free food to protesters at the nightly vigils at McCarren Park in Brooklyn. (Photo courtesy of Channing Centeno)
Centeno, who is Filipino and Black, has a visceral relationship with police violence. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, near the park where Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy, was killed by police while playing with a toy gun in 2014. Centeno himself was held at gunpoint by Cleveland police when he was 14; the officers had confused him with a suspect wanted for 15 counts of rape.
"I'm still scared that I can get killed by a cop any day," he says — one of the reasons he chose to participate in the vigils instead of the more volatile marches.
At the vigils, he found his niche. "I want to create a draw in the park to get people to come, so they come and can listen, so they can be called to action, and to not let people forget about what's going on in this country," says Centeno, a bartender and beverage director who most recently developed the cocktail lineup at the restaurant Otis in Bushwick. "I know these are my skills, what I'm able to do, so this is what I offer."
Centeno's offerings include donations from restaurant industry friends — including, on one occasion, a leg of jamon iberico. (Photo courtesy of Channing Centeno)
A growing number of Filipino American chefs and restaurateurs are joining Centeno as they offer their skills in support of social justice. This movement isn't unique to Filipino restaurants — even multinational food brands are joining the conversation, with varying degrees of sincerity and action. But for Filipino chefs, who have worked to promote their cuisine and culture in a white-dominated mainstream, supporting the anti-racist cause isn't a matter of optics; it's personal.
"A lot of Filipino generations before us, including my parents and my grandparents, they were taught to assimilate, to kind of quietly become part of society," says Carlo Lamagna, who owns the restaurant Magna in Portland. In June, Lamagna donated up to 75 percent of sales each week to organizations including Campaign Zero, Black Visions Collective and The Portland African American Leadership Forum.
"But if I can use whatever platform that I have, whether it's Instagram or my popularity as a chef, or whatever it may be, if I can make my voice heard, I'm going to make my voice heard," he says.
Other Filipino restaurants using their platforms this way include Musang in Seattle (which donated to Northwest Community Bail Fund and Black Lives Seattle), Little Skillet in San Francisco (Black Visions Collective, Project Level and The Movement for Black Lives) and Wanderlust Creamery in LA (Color of Change and Pretty Brown Girls) — and the list goes on. These restaurants are still hurting from the coronavirus shutdowns and will continue to hurt as the pandemic continues (and some, including Wanderlust, were damaged during the protests). But solidarity comes first.
"Some of us Fil-Am chefs grew up in the low-income neighborhoods, so we relate to the injustice as we have been piled in with everyone since our skin tone is brown," says Harold Villarosa, the head chef and founder of Insurgo Project, a nonprofit in New York that connects low-income communities with resources and training in food, hospitality and social entrepreneurship. "We as Fil-Am have an obligation to acknowledge what’s happening and use this time and platform to help."
Carlo Lamagna, owner of Magna in Portland, raised money for Black Lives Matter and other organizations through a buy-a-meal, give-a-meal program put in place during the pandemic. (Photo courtesy of Carlo Lamagna)
But "using your platform" should involve more than posting black squares and hashtags to gain social media attention, says Villarosa. "There needs to be a body of work that has to be built from hard work and continual activation in the communities," he says. "You have to leave the ego at the door and work to make the world a better place."
Some of that work should be done within the Filipino community itself. "How many times in our community do you hear our elders talk about the African-American community in a negative light?" says Lamagna. "It's frustrating, because that's kind of what's been embedded in them. So you've got to break it all down. We have to kick down all those doors, and basically break down the house and rebuild."
Carlo Lamagna's family took part in their local marches. (Photo courtesy of Carlo Lamagna)
In McCarren Park in Brooklyn, Centeno has begun to build. He's expanding his food offerings into "a big safe space" called The Purple Pineapple — a reference to the pineapple as a symbol of hospitality, and to the color he ascribes to his aura. Visitors will be able to charge their phones, join yoga and meditation classes, listen to music "and sit down and relax and feel comfortable and taken care of," Centeno says.
His goal is to keep the protests oiled like a machine, to keep them going as long enough to lead to real change. "I've seen my friends who aren't Black stand up and fight, and it's really inspiring, and it makes me feel like, well, maybe things can change," he says. "So this is what I can do to help feed the fight."
For updated information on the vigils: https://www.instagram.com/mccarrengathering/
Jennifer Fergisen
Jennifer Fergesen is a Filipino-American writer with a focus on food and the stories behind it. Learn more about her project to explore the Filipino diaspora through its restaurants at globalcarinderia.com.
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