by Joy Cariño, ETA ’20
The Pinoy Grill is like a restaurant in many ways. To the right of the entrance, there’s a counter with a cash register. There are two refrigerators full of drinks and a multitude of shelves selling Filipino spices and snacks like Silver Swan soy sauce, Boy Bawang and mani. At any time, people might be eating or drinking at the four tables in the center of the room. Upon entering the restaurant, especially in the height of summer, the humidity is stifling. You can smell the flavors wafting from the back kitchen—pork marinating in soy sauce, grilled chicken, and the sour tang of sinigang.
At the same time, walking into the Pinoy Grill is like walking into a large family’s living room. To the left of the entrance is a tall shelf of succulents (with a sign saying DO NOT TOUCH), couches, some chairs, and a large billiards table. Behind the chairs, there’s a carpeted mini-stage with a TV showing a Netflix drama or a YouTube playlist of romantic ballads. There’s a children’s playroom in the back right corner and two smaller rooms built into the right-side wall, which serve as tiny bedrooms for napping babies, or as a storage space for children’s items.
The Pinoy Grill isn’t a sit-down restaurant. If you want to order food from the menu, you have to call or text the owner at least 24 hours in advance so she can prepare. The menu has several dishes, each of which is 7,000 won. There are meat dishes, pork or beef calderetta, corned beef, hamonado, dinuguan, humba, dinakdakan, smoked pork, or adobo pata. There are noodle dishes, like sweet banana ketchup spaghetti and bihon. There are siomai and lumpia, fried rice and bananacue. My favorite soups—sinigang na bangus, sinigang na baboy, and tinola manok are there as well.
When someone in the Filipino community has a birthday, a baby dedication, or any other community event, friends and visitors need only pay for the drinks. All food is on the house, and someone always brings a Paris Baguette cake to share. After eating and gossiping at the tables, visitors gather around the royal blue billiards table for a drawn-out game. These games are always interrupted by a child holding a toy car and attempting to get involved. Others retreat to a side room to drink San Miguel and take their turn on the karaoke machine. Sometimes there are two karaoke sessions running at the same time—a slow Korean ballad playing in tandem with “Country Roads.” Children run throughout the restaurant playing tag, giggling and chattering in Korean. The room fills with noise and unapologetic laughter. When I’m invited to such events, I’m reminded of the Filipino parties my family took me to in the US, where my parents would chat and gossip around the table in Filipino or Tagalog and I would hang out in the living room with the other kids—chattering in English.
Now, I’m a somewhat adult, somewhat Filipino living in Korea temporarily. I’m an outsider here, but when I come to the Pinoy Grill I can feel a semblance of home. I’m always a bit shy and apprehensive before I walk through the restaurant doors. Yet, coming here is better than staying alone in my one-room on a Sunday evening, nervously anticipating the next school day.
Even though I can understand when people speak to me in Tagalog (and I welcome this change of environment where I can understand all the words being said around me), I know I’m still an outsider in this community of Filipino immigrants to Korea. I’m still more American than I am Filipino. Still, there have been many moments that will make me miss this tight-knit, unexpected community.
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One chilly October evening, I stopped by the restaurant for some dinner and the owner told me she was hosting a Halloween event on a Saturday. The Friday before the party, she texted me asking if I was free to help decorate, so I showed up. Someone else was allegedly going to come, but it ended up just being me, her partner, her children, and Netflix Pororo.
When I arrived, the owner was assembling ethernet cords, another one of her many part-time jobs. She put down her work and asked what she always asked when I came in: “Kumain ka na? Kain muna tayo!” (Have you eaten? Let’s eat first!) I responded that I hadn’t eaten yet, but she was already heading to the back room to pull out her stash of last year’s Halloween decorations. She spread them across the billiards table—crumpled up cotton spider webs and tissue paper ghosts tied onto the ends of burlap rope. A “Spooky Tree” and white curtain would act as a photo station backdrop. I helped her untangle some pumpkin and skull string lights.
After several iterations of “Kain muna tayo!” and contemplative discussions of potential Halloween decorations, she and her partner wrangled their two children—a two-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl—into chairs at the dinner table. I sat between the kids while large portions of rice and sabau were spooned onto their plates. I followed suit and ate at what felt like a dinner table with family. I live alone in my one-room, so this was only the third time I’d eaten a home-cooked meal in Korea. The seven-year-old refused to turn off YouTube on her tablet, and her father kept telling her to eat while she ignored him. The two-year-old screamed and rattled around in his high chair while the owner joked about how stubborn and angry he was. Her partner talked with me about his family in the United States. I listened and nodded, while eating the best fish stew I’d ever had. Again, I felt a semblance of home. Was it my home in Mississippi, at a table with my parents and two siblings? Was it the home my family left behind in the Philippines, with rice meals and salty sinigang stew? I couldn’t, and still can’t, put a finger on it. Regardless, I knew that I was warm. I was accepted. But it has hit me now that I will have to leave it.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to have had this nook in Jeongeup, Jeollabuk-do. In a cozy restaurant in South Korea—a shorter plane ride from the Philippines than from my home in the United States—I found bits and pieces of all the homes I’d left behind.
[Featured Photo by Nina Horabik]