The Third Wave of Lumpia

August 10th, 2025 maricris

The Sound Of Sizzling Oil And Witnessing Magic

When I was a child, the sound of sizzling oil was my cue to rush into the kitchen. My grandmother stood there, her small frame almost swallowed by the oversized apron she wore, her hands working quickly but gently, wrapping vegetables and meat into paper-thin lumpia wrappers. The kitchen smelled of garlic, onions, and soy sauce, a scent that would drift out into the street and pull in the neighbors like some invisible rope. She never used a written recipe — everything was measured in handfuls, pinches, and that mysterious “just enough” she seemed to instinctively know. Watching her make lumpia felt like witnessing magic, except the magic ended in a plate of golden, crispy rolls that somehow tasted like home.

The Golden Standard of My Grandmother’s Lumpia


The lumpia of my grandmother’s time was simple — ground pork, carrots, green beans, and cabbage, seasoned with fish sauce and pepper. She’d lay a wrapper on the palm of her hand, spoon in the filling, roll it tightly, and seal it with a dab of beaten egg. Then came the frying, each roll bobbing and tumbling in the hot oil until its wrapper turned a perfect sunlit brown. It was always served with a vinegar-garlic dipping sauce, sharp enough to make you pucker, but somehow completing the balance of flavors.

More Than a Meal — A Bridge Between Worlds


Over the years, I learned that lumpia wasn’t just a dish; it was a bridge. It connected my grandmother to her childhood in the Philippines, to the parties where relatives would gather under capiz lanterns and pass plates of lumpia until the trays were bare. When she moved to another town, lumpia became her way of keeping those memories alive. She made them for birthdays, holidays, and even casual Sunday lunches — it didn’t matter the occasion. What mattered was that everyone gathered around, talking, laughing, and always eating “just one more” until the plate was empty.

My Mother’s Adaptations For Lumpia-Making Duties


When my mother took over lumpia-making duties, the recipe shifted slightly. She still kept my grandmother’s flavor base, but she began adding water chestnuts for crunch and replacing fish sauce with soy sauce to suit the tastes of her new friends. She also baked lumpia sometimes instead of frying them, a move my grandmother would’ve frowned upon but ultimately tolerated. My mother’s lumpia was lighter, less oily, but still comforting. She made them in big batches and froze them so they were ready at a moment’s notice, something my grandmother never did — lumpia, in her eyes, were meant to be made fresh and eaten hot.

My Twist on Lumpia Tradition

When it was my turn to make lumpia, I carried forward both their lessons but added my twist. My friends, many of whom had never tasted Filipino food before, encouraged me to experiment. I tried swapping pork for ground turkey, adding shiitake mushrooms for umami, and sometimes even using spinach in place of cabbage. For one dinner party, I made “fusion lumpia” with Korean bulgogi beef inside and a gochujang mayo for dipping. My grandmother would have raised an eyebrow at that one, but I like to think she’d still appreciate the crispy wrapper and the joy it brought people.

The Infinite Possibilities of a Crispy Wrapper


What surprised me most was how adaptable lumpia is — a perfect vessel for both tradition and innovation. My friends started requesting my “signature lumpia” at potlucks, and soon I found myself making dozens at a time, a process that felt like a ritual. Each roll carried the quiet repetition of my grandmother’s hands, the adjustments of my mother’s creativity, and my restless desire to see how far the dish could go. In those moments, standing over a cutting board with a stack of wrappers beside me, I realized that I wasn’t just making food — I was carrying forward a piece of my family’s story.

The Third Wave of Lumpia in the Exact Evolution


The “Third Wave of Lumpia,” as some food writers have started calling it, is about this exact evolution — dishes that maintain their soul while embracing the influences of the world around them. Across cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto, I’ve seen chefs push lumpia into new territory. Some stuff them with pulled pork and pineapple, others with smoked salmon and cream cheese, and a few even make dessert versions filled with bananas, jackfruit, and chocolate. It’s a far cry from my grandmother’s pork-and-vegetable filling, yet the heart of lumpia — that crisp bite, that communal joy — remains untouched.

Cooking for the One Who Taught Me Everything


About twenty-three years ago, I visited my grandmother in Uson, now well into her 90s, she sat at the kitchen table while I made lumpia for her. Her eyesight wasn’t as sharp, and her hands trembled slightly, but she watched me with an expression I can only describe as both pride and amusement. “You roll them too fat,” she said, chuckling, and I laughed because she was right. I plated them next to the vinegar dipping sauce, and we ate together, just the two of us. She chewed slowly, then nodded. “Still good,” she said, and I felt like I’d just passed a test I’d been preparing for my whole life.

Lumpia as a Legacy


In that moment, I understood that lumpia was never just about the food. It was about continuity — the way flavors carry through generations, adapting without losing their anchor. My grandmother’s lumpia told the story of a young girl in the Philippines learning to cook in a small kitchen with a wood-fired stove. My mother’s version told the story of migration, adaptation, and practicality. My lumpia tells the story of blending identities, of honoring heritage while embracing curiosity.

The Invisible Rope That Pulls Us Back

Every time I roll a lumpia, I think about those who will eat it. I imagine the laughter, the “mmms,” the way people will inevitably reach for another one. That’s when I realize that the magic my grandmother conjured all those years ago hasn’t gone anywhere — it’s just taken on new shapes, new flavors, new meanings. And maybe one day, someone in the next generation will roll lumpia their own way, adding something I never thought of, yet still keeping that invisible rope that pulls people in, one crispy bite at a time.

Filipino Food Tradition Meets VR in Kamayan 2025

August 10th, 2025 maricris

I still remember the first time I joined a kamayan feast as a child, sitting cross-legged on the bamboo floor of my grandmother’s house in Uson. Banana leaves spread like a green tablecloth across the floor, fragrant piles of rice steaming at the center, fish fresh from the morning market, grilled pork, crisp vegetables, and dipping sauces glistening under the afternoon light. No forks. No spoons. Just our hands—warm, eager, and clumsy at first—lifting food to our mouths in a shared rhythm that felt older than language. It wasn’t just eating; it was communion, a silent promise that you were part of something whole.


Fast forward to 2025, and I’m sitting in my apartment in Cawayan, wearing a haptic glove, looking at a virtual table through my VR headset. The banana leaves are rendered in such detail that I can see the tiny veins. Steam curls upward from digital rice mounds. My friends are there too—some in the next neighborhood, some halfway around the world. We’re about to have a kamayan feast together… in the Metaverse. And it’s both absurd and moving.
The fusion of a centuries-old dining ritual with immersive tech isn’t as random as it sounds. In 2025, Filipino cuisine is riding three overlapping cultural currents: the revival of traditional cooking, the embrace of globalized fusion, and the rapid adoption of food tech. Kamayan in the Metaverse sits right where these three meet. At first glance, it might seem like novelty—another gimmick in the endless parade of virtual experiences—but in practice, it’s revealing deep truths about identity, community, and the evolving ways we share a meal.
Traditional kamayan is more than just eating with your hands. It’s about physical closeness, the mingling of flavors and textures in real time, the act of reaching for food together in a shared space. In rural settings, it’s often tied to harvest celebrations or fiestas, where abundance is displayed and eaten collectively. The Metaverse version, of course, can’t replicate the smell of grilled tilapia or the stickiness of rice between your fingers—at least, not fully. But the newest haptic dining gloves have made shocking progress. They use micro-pressure nodes to simulate texture, and temperature-control pads to mimic warmth or coolness. Some even release faint scents in sync with what you “pick up.”
The question isn’t whether this is “as good as the real thing.” It isn’t. The question is whether it offers something different but equally valuable: a space where geography no longer dictates who can sit at your table. In the diaspora, where millions of Filipinos live oceans apart from their families, virtual kamayan dinners are becoming a quiet revolution. They’re not replacing the real gatherings—nothing could—but they’re filling the spaces between them. Families scattered across continents can now share the same meal in synchronized time, discussing the same lumpia and lechon as if they were in the same room.
This trend started with Filipino tech entrepreneurs in California and Singapore experimenting with VR pop-up dinners during the pandemic years. What began as “heritage food in VR” quickly grew into a hybrid movement: restaurants offering both physical kamayan events and their digital twin. A small but growing number of chefs are now designing menus specifically for the virtual experience, balancing visual appeal with the tactile limitations of current tech. In physical kamayan, sauce drips and messy hands are part of the charm; in the Metaverse, those moments are translated into satisfying “virtual stickiness” and perfectly simulated crunch sounds.


Critics call it a diluted version of tradition. And they’re right, to a point. There is an irreplaceable intimacy in passing a real piece of grilled fish to your uncle, or in watching your cousin sneak an extra slice of mango when they think no one’s looking. But the Metaverse kamayan adds layers that traditional dining can’t offer. Imagine eating side-by-side with relatives who live in Canada, while a historian narrates the origins of each dish in real time. Or attending a charity kamayan where your ticket funds coastal restoration in the Philippines, and the host is a holographic version of a famous chef guiding you through plating techniques.
There’s also a generational element. For younger Filipinos raised in sprawling, hyper-connected cities—or entirely abroad—food is often their first and deepest connection to heritage. Many can’t speak Tagalog or their family’s local dialect fluently, but they know the taste of sinigang or the feel of adobo sauce on their fingers. Bringing kamayan into the Metaverse speaks their language: a digital-first environment where identity is flexible and shared experiences are not bound by location. It’s less about “saving tradition” in its purest form, and more about letting it breathe in new air.


I attended my third virtual kamayan last month, hosted by a group called “Banana Leaf Futures,” a collective of chefs, technologists, and cultural workers. They shipped out meal kits to participants across the globe, each with instructions to prepare the dishes before logging into the VR event. The kits weren’t just food—they included banana leaves, dipping sauces, and printed cards with anecdotes from farmers and fishermen who supplied the ingredients. When we entered the Metaverse space, the table was set to mirror exactly what we had in front of us in real life. The haptic glove let me “touch” the pile of rice on the screen, while my actual hands were doing the same with the real food in my kitchen. The overlap between digital and physical created a strange, beautiful duality—I could see my cousin’s avatar in London scooping the same grilled eggplant I had, knowing she was tasting it at the same moment.
It struck me that this wasn’t replacing tradition—it was refracting it. Like light through glass, the essence of kamayan was still there: shared abundance, mutual presence, the act of feeding and being fed. But it was bent into new shapes by technology, reaching places the old form couldn’t. The Metaverse table might never smell like my grandmother’s kitchen, but it could hold my entire far-flung family at once, and that’s its own kind of magic.
Filipino food has always been adaptive. It absorbed Chinese noodle-making, Spanish stews, American fast food, and Japanese convenience culture without losing its soul. Kamayan in the Metaverse is simply the latest wave in this long story of blending. It’s not the final form, either. As VR hardware becomes cheaper and sensory tech more refined, the experience will get closer to “being there.” Maybe one day, we’ll have aroma diffusers smart enough to replicate the scent of freshly grilled bangus exactly, or gloves that can simulate the tenderness of ripe mango flesh down to the fibrous detail.
But even if that never comes, the point isn’t perfection—it’s connection. In the end, kamayan was never about the tools, the leaves, or even the dishes themselves. It was about the people gathered around; however, they could not share food with their own hands. In 2025, those hands might be wearing haptic gloves, reaching across continents instead of across the table. And that’s still Kamayan.