Let’s eat!

As much as we enjoy experimenting with the exotic flavors and exciting foreign fixins that surround us here in San Jose, one of our most favorite-est ingredients to cook with is still nostalgia. What mom made, the treats that grandma snuck you, crazy snacks that dad would concoct, the foods that your stinking drunk funny uncle promised would put hair on your [chest], all the familiar aromas and tastes of childhood, these are the things we crave. And we crave them often.

Those comforting flavors connect us to something deep inside us all that we sometimes forget is there. That’s the high that we chase here at The Wooden Table. Like Anton Ego taking that first bite of ratatouille, we want to be transported to better happier simpler times. So it comes as no surprise that our menus regularly include more than a few tributes to Filipino cuisine. But, alas, as enamored as we are by our culture, we have yet to create a menu entirely inspired by the Philippines . . . until now.

Every item on this week’s menu draws deeply from Filipino cuisine (but we do have a bitter melon pizza on the menu, I just couldn’t resist throwing a twist on the traditional ampalaya dish). We’ll be preparing this meal for some very good friends of The Wooden Table and their parents. So needless to say, we’ll need to be on top of our game to deliver some proper Filipino food.