In Portland, Filipino pop-up Anak serves up vegan adobo, BBQ, lumpia, and halo-halo

Photos from anakveganpdx/Instagram

Filipino food is slowly making its presence felt in Portland. While there are a few established restaurants serving Filipino classics to its diaspora population, fewer still—if any—are ones that offer vegan options.

This is in part because what is recognized as Filipino food in the mainstream are mostly meat-based dishes, when in reality, the vast vernacular of our cuisine includes a hundred or more recipes that are exclusively vegetables. But that’s a different discussion altogether.

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Many Filipino-Americans are also pushing for produce-centric vegan takes on essential Filipino dishes. One of them is Mike Mendiola, who’s behind vegan Filipino pop-up Anak in Portland.

The name takes after his father’s stories often taking pride in his children or anak’s accomplishments. Meanwhile, the menu is influenced by his mother’s cooking, which sustained him and his family in the absence of Filipino restaurants in Portland when they were young.

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Anak’s menu consists of popular Filipino dishes like adobo, barbecue, lumpia, pancit, and sinangag or fried rice—all made meatless. To achieve this, Mendiola uses a variety of plant-based meats to mimic the texture of the real thing while sticking to the tried and tested flavors he grew up with and Filipino-Americans like him know and love.

For the barbecue and adobo, he uses soy-based “chicken” while the lumpiang Shanghai is a mix of vegan ground beef, mushrooms, carrots, and water chestnuts.

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Mendiola also came up with a version of the beloved halo-halo for desserts but made vegan. In lieu of milk and egg-based leche flan, he tops his halo-halo with a cheesecake made with cashew milk from his first business Cultured Kindness that sells vegan cheese. There’s also sweet lumpia filled with ube cheesecake—vegan, of course—that’s since been a hit to its loyal customers.

In the future, Mendiola wants to tap into Filipino cuisine’s inherent plant-based nature. For example, he is already exploring an iteration of siopao buns filled with shredded jackfruit meat instead of pork. 

More than a year in, Anak eventually plans to venture into lesser known Filipino dishes in the US like batchoy but made with pork and egg alternatives as well as a lechon made with vegan pork belly.