Uncommon Filipino Food Pop Up Comes To Santa Cruz

July 26, 2022 – Some pop-ups are more powerful than others. 

In the case of chef Paul Suniga’s pop-up series Pare, it has little to do with the food, though the food is prodigious.

He has been popping up with increasing frequency around Santa Cruz, including at Soif tonight (starting at 5pm) where he presents two of his favorite fish dishes with typical Pinoy pop, fried bangus (or milkfish) with a mango and tomato salad and his own take on kinilaw, a Filipino-style fish ceviches with local cod, pork cracklings, annatto oil and coconut vinaigrette.  

Along with that come soy egg-plantain tamales, chicken adobo and top-shelf tropical cocktails.

“Doing everything with kindness and love is the essence of what we are about,” says Suniga. “The way you make people feel is what they remember and we want people to feel good when they leave us.”

Come 5pm Sunday he’ll produce another stunner at Ulterior above Motiv at 110 Pearl Alley in Santa Cruz. Longanisa burgers, furikake fries, adobo mushroom tamales, chicken confit, purple yam bread and mango mousse flan will pair with oldies and funk music curated by Ruca Records.

As Ruca and Suniga post on Instagram, inviting guests to bring empty stomachs and comfortable dancing shoes, “WHO ELSE YOU KNOW THAT’S SPINNING VINYL AND SERVING FILIPINO FOOD?”

But there’s an added layer to this that provides the profundity: Suniga is using self-employment to make a point.

He writes at length about it on Instagram, referencing the ugly and racist incident that occurred as restaurants started to reopen amid the first year of the pandemic. Edible covered the violent encounter in depth with the piece “Racist Attacks Rock Two Local Restaurants” and a follow-up on Alderwood’s reopening and questionable handling of the incident. 

“[My new business] was made in response [to] not being able to work for an employer that puts these issues I find important on their radar,” Suniga writes. “My career as a cook and my values as a person can no longer be mutually exclusive. This brand allows me to be my authentic self and to never be quiet about the things that I feel need to be said.

“It’s been extremely hard for me to share this story because it has had more of a negative effect on me in my community and public eye rather than being a positive talking point for me to make some actual change,” he continues. “I was extremely depressed and displaced after this all went down but I finally feel like this story no longer holds the kind of weight it did on me and I can talk about it as truthfully as I want.”

As Suniga told Edible in the aftermath of the incident, part of what can and should emerge is an evaluation of how restaurant workers are valued. 

As the July 2020 piece reads: People are asking the wrong questions. That’s an important takeaway for Suniga. They’re asking whats (What happened? What was said?) and whos (Who started it? Who is responsible?) when they could be asking the whys and hows.

“Everyone who’s worked in this industry knows that this is not an isolated incident. People are used as stepping stones all the time, especially at the higher-end restaurants, to do everything they can for valued guests,” he says. “It’s the environment we let in the doors.”

It’s a surprisingly wise, grounded and—more than anything—calm perspective for someone who was attacked verbally and physically by at least three imposing and intoxicated aggressors after politely asking them to be more courteous. That’s partly because none of this is all that surprising to him.

“‘When things turn violent we shouldn’t shy away from standing up,’ Suniga says. “Unfortunately it happens every day and we have to be able to protect our workers and hold people accountable—not valuing the money but valuing the workers who make the place what it is.”

Which makes the environment his pop-ups foster that much more meaningful.

More at Suniga’s Instagram feed.