To remember a visit to Sarap, a Filipino restaurant that opened in Brixton, London in January and closed temporarily in March, is to remember how much the pandemic has taken from us.

Founded in 1972 as the Mexican American Chamber of Commerce, the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has 550 members in the region, with the majority concentrated in Sacramento. Comstock’s spoke with president and CEO Cathy Rodriguez Aguirre about SHCC and how it has worked to meet the needs of its members during the pandemic.

They aren’t just feeding protesters and donating to Black Lives Matter, they’re also doing the work to help enlighten the Filipino-American community itself.

Señor Sisig, the San Francisco food truck phenom that helped spark the modern Filipino food movement in the United States, was built to withstand a recession. But co-founders Evan Kidera and Gil Payumo never expected what California Governor Gavin Newsom called a “pandemic-induced recession”—especially not on their tenth anniversary.

In Capiz, I served the dalagang bukid simply, fried in the charcoal-fired “dirty kitchen” with a side of ensaladang ampalaya. I’ve had it rarely since; Caesio cuning is hard to find outside of her Southeast Asia, and I’ve spent the past five years traveling far afield. Yet I think of her often.

Rowena Bech still remembers the salmon factory. “It’s hard work,” she told me, when I visited her one-year-old Filipino buffet in Vágur, a sleepy village on the southernmost of the Faroe Islands.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the myth of the American Dream has centered around cities. As the story goes, the most promising rural youth leave their hinterland homes to seek their fortunes in the metropolis, perhaps never to return.

At first blush, Backbone Café in downtown Sacramento seems patterned after the virtuous vegetarian restaurants that have become ubiquitous in Northern California. A glance at the offerings, however, reveals that Backbone is no garden-variety plant cafe.

The oldest Filipino restaurant in Iceland does not have a Filipino name. The sign outside says “Matstofan,” but locals will tell you the place is called “Dússabar,” after co-owner Dússi Grönfeldt. The only hint at a foreign presence is written in slim letters, barely visible from across the street: “Filipino taste.”

A collection of recipes and vignettes collected on the field in Capiz, Philippines.

From outside the blocky building it shares with the local library, Safnahús Borgarfjarðar passes as the kind of low-tech local museum one finds in any small town around the world. You know the type—glass cabinets full of staid-faced porcelain dolls, phased-out farm tools, empty eggshells arranged by species—the dust-coated debris of obsolescence.

When the light is just right, one can see a resemblance between Sacramento and Amsterdam. Both cities are tree-lined and pancake-flat, with robust bicycle cultures and the infrastructure to match. Soon, there will be another Dutch detail in Sacramento: the sweet scent of stroopwafels — syrup-filled waffle cookies — wafting on the breeze. Follow that scent and you will find neither a brick-and-mortar bakery nor a food truck but a bakfiets, a front-loaded cargo bike that is as quintessentially Dutch as tulips and wooden clogs.

Josefina Magallanes’ food stand is a fixture outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Midtown Sacramento on Sundays. As her menu advertises, she specializes in homemade tamales, but her accompaniments range from drinks to dessert. In the winter she ladles out hot champurrado, a corn-based chocolate drink that thickens to a pudding when it cools. Come summer, she switches it out for fresh juices: red hibiscus, green chia seed, amber melon. Coolers and boxes of single-serve chip bags surround her table, and when she sits in her low-slung lawn chair, she nearly disappears behind them.

Cru Chocolate’s packaging means its candy bars are well-suited for artistic display — their labels designed to evoke the Surrealist tradition of Central America, featuring motifs symbolizing their cacao’s country of origin: Guatemalan macaws, Haitian butterflies, Nicaraguan jaguars. They stand out even in the packed west wall of Andy’s Candy Apothecary, where craft chocolate bars are showcased, labels out, like paintings in a gallery.