30+ Filipino Vendors, Endless Vibes! Inside Smorgasburg LA’s Ultimate Filipino Food Fest
There’s always something special about seeing Filipino culture celebrated in the heart of Los Angeles, and Smorgasburg’s recent “Filled Market” event brought that joy to life. This past weekend, I checked out this unique pop-up at Smorgasburg L.A., an open-air food market known for showcasing nearly 100 small businesses from SoCal’s food, beverage, and shopping scene. Smorgasburg, with locations in cities like New York, Jersey City, São Paulo, Miami, and Toronto, gave a platform to over 30 Filipino vendors, transforming the space into a vibrant barrio fiesta. Join me for a recap of all the incredible eats and treats from this special Filipino-filled event!
Today felt like a special day to not only celebrate Filam culture but to also support and encourage local small businesses. So to start our day off and get our heads straight, my wife stopped by Offshore Tea for a Buko Pandan Milk Pandan Latte and I grabbed a Kyoto drip coffee from Boondocks Coffee. Honestly, both were the perfect way to get our energy into high gear to see all the vendors. Offshore uses oat milk in all their drinks for any Lactose kaibigan out there. Their buko flavor was perfect in taste, not just coconuty but it really captured the true pandan flavor. The thing that caught my eye about Boondocks is the fact that their beans are sourced from the Philippines, it brought my heart joy picturing a world where we are drinking straight from Filipino soil! I got a drip coffee for the strength but next time I was to try their “Kano” which is their version of an americano but made with coconut water.
For our appetizers we went to Lobsterdamus and got the lobster garlic noodles which are inspired by Filipino cuisine, yakisoba noodles which get sautéed with roasted garlic, spices, garlic oil, and the ubiquitous grilled lobster. Small bursts of garlic with every bite to wake up our taste buds but a nice sized dish to hold us over in line while we waited for the main course. In addition, to truly honor “merienda”, we grabbed some treats from the Ensaymada project, it was so yummy and smelled so good, I finished it before I could take a picture. But trust me, you can’t go wrong with whatever you get but we highly recommend the ube ensaymada for a buttery / light treat!
So many options to choose for our actual meal, so we just chose the longest line and trusted that it had to be the best and we were not disappointed. We found ourselves in the line for Mano Po, where the modernize Filipino cuisine while prioritizing honoring tradition and Filipino culture. We got the BBQ Liempo with the pickled veggies nad the garlic fried rice. Chefs kiss!! I get why the line was over 30+ minutes, the chicken was grilled over an open fire in true Filipino fashion but it had a slight sweet / tangy flavor. Pair that with the sweet and soured pickled veggies made every bite a dynamic spoonful of flavors. Of course they had to bring the knockout punch with the garlic fried rice, overall a very balanced dish that completely satisfied me, my wife, and our 9 month baby. And if you’re of age, washing down with Engkanto Brewery’s Honey Ube Lager was the perfect drink to balance the sour and sweet flavors of the meal.
Just like any dish, we needed a palate cleanser and something fresh so we didn’t feel so slumped walking around all the vendors, and our stomachs brought us to SweetGrass Sugarcane Juice for a cup of Calamansi Cane. Freshly pressured sugarcane juice and calamansi, what’s not to love? With the LA heat starting to come down, this really helped the food settle and give us energy to wander the retail shops.
The first stop for us and many other event goers was Queen of Needles, the first Filipina-owned all-female tattoo and piercing studio that was providing flash tattoos and piercings on the spot. From hello kitty, to halloween themed, to American traditional, Queen of Needles had a line waiting to get inked up and the work to prove that they’re worth it! But maybe getting a photo permanently on your body isn’t your aesthetic and maybe nostalgic glamour photo booths are! Syd studios is a Filipino creative representation that brought back all the 2000s feels of going to a local photo studio with your best friends, all denim outfit, bangs parted like antenna, and awkwardly close posing… but they make it fun and so much better! Both were some of the more popular vendors we passed by.
Nearby we stopped by a few Filipina owned and inspired clothing shops, Kamahalan co & Vinta gallery. Incorporating filpinana’s and Filipino slang into their styles, personally I loved the Toxilog sweater and the Maarte crewneck with the old english font across the chest. One of the hidden gems in the clothing section was, Salvaged Trea$ure, that specializes in vintage and thrift finds. Whichever shop you stepped into, you were definitely leaving that much more stylish, that’s a fact.
A few of the other specialty shops caught our attention as we strolled through the market like Urban Tropicals, which is a Filipino owned Plantcuration & StylingSolution one stop shop. I mean, who doesn’t love walking into a room with beautiful, flourishing plants surrounding you. I think plants can be so calming and can really set the tone to any environment with the right details. Maybe details like leather pieces handmade from Orange Leather Co.? My ideal interior design aesthetic would definitely be natural lighting, maybe a few fiddle leafs, a monstera placed on the shelves, and some nice leather accents like a journal or my camera adding decor to my coffee table. Now imagine all that but made / designed from Filipino owners! How awesome is that? And of course setting the visual is just as important as the sounds and smells we are taking in, luckily we had time to wander by Rikki’s Wickie’s, which is a Filipino and woman-owned candle shop that are all hand poured, asian inspired candles like calamansi, sampaguita, and pumpkin spice + ube.
Of course on our way out we had to grab a few snacks for the road, so we stopped by Lei’d cookies that claim “cookies so good, you’ll feel like you just got lei’d” and they weren’t lying. This was the perfect way to end our day, we went for the 4 cookie box with ginataang bilo-bilo cookie, ube bae, buko pandan sapin-sapin, and s’mores. I could probably write a whole post just on these cookies because they were that breathtaking! The ube bae was filled with house made Ube Halaya, the Buko pandan was STUFFED with sapin-sapin, and the ginataang cookie brought me back to my childhood, eating ginataang that my lola made. It was honestly the perfect way to end our day and we only got to venture a small portion of the 30+ vendors. We definitely can’t wait to check the @filledmarket IG to explore some other vendors we might have missed.
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