Comstock's magazine • 2nd February 2023

Neighborhood Favorite: Good Things to Eat

A light appeared in the window of a long-empty storefront in Sacramento’s Curtis Park neighborhood last summer. In front of the curtains, a hand-drawn notice about the size of a bumper sticker beckoned passersby to check Instagram for the menu. No sign hung above the door, but a sandwich board stood on the sidewalk some evenings, with “Open” painted in bright yellow letters.

Comstock's magazine • 12th August 2022

The Seeds of Conflict

This year, overzealous Instagrammers are the least of sunflower farmers’ troubles. The region’s most photogenic crop is facing a barrage of challenges, including supply issues related to the war in Ukraine, global currency volatility and drought.

Eater • 13th July 2022

Kimchi With a Side of Whale

An Iñupiat staple and its unexpectedly perfect Korean complement bring Alaska’s many cultures together on the plate.

Eater • 13th July 2022

How Filipino Adobo Became a Southeast Alaska Staple

“You Filipinos may have invented chicken adobo,” says Chuck Miller, a.k.a. Daanaxh.ils’eikh, the cultural liaison of the Sitka Tribe, “but we Tlingit perfected it.”

San Francisco Chronicle • 18th October 2022

There’s a whole world of Filipino vinegars. Will they finally go mainstream?

At modern Filipino restaurant Abaca, the longanisa skewers come with a glass dish of vinegar, an egg yolk floating on the surface like a rising moon. The vinegar, sepia-toned and turbid, is a reduction of sukang iloko, a speciality of the Ilocos region in northern Luzon that’s fermented from sugarcane wine. Breaking the yolk sends Van Gogh swirls into the dark.

Time • 21st October 2022

Soil’s Power as a Climate Solution Has Often Been Overlooked. Until Now

Soil, that layer of organic material and crushed-up rock that covers much of the terrestrial earth like a chocolate coating, contains about 2,500 billion metric tons of carbon. It’s the second-biggest carbon sink on the planet after the ocean, currently holding about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. Some scientists and activists think it could do even more.

Time • 17th October 2022

The Complicated Popularity of Net-Zero Emissions Climate Targets

Whether it’s a public learning laboratory, nonprofit organization, small business, corporation, or government doing the math, achieving net-zero involves balancing an equation.

Time • 14th October 2022

Here’s How The Ocean is Being Harnessed as a Climate Solution

The ocean’s ability to absorb carbon and stabilize the climate is attracting attention from scientists and companies alike looking for ways to counteract the rise of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Comstock's magazine • 23rd May 2022

The Might of Mycelium

The goddess Fermentia looms over The Better Meat Co.’s production facility in West Sacramento. In a digital painting that hangs above the entrance to the fermentation room, she resembles a shieldmaiden from Norse mythology — though dressed in a lab coat and sensible shoes. A supplication is printed below her sneakered feet: “Oh Fermentia, please protect us from contamination and bad data."

ABS-CBN News • 16th February 2020

Migratory species: The Filipina fish processors of the Faroe Islands (Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award Winner)

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.

San Francisco Chronicle • 23rd May 2022

The legacy of slain Oakland restaurateur: Lucky Three Seven is about more than Filipino food

There was a line outside Lucky Three Seven in Oakland this weekend, though not for the spicy-sweet G-Fire Wings or shatteringly crisp, fried-to-order lumpia that put the Filipino restaurant on the map after it opened in 2013. Instead, friends and family gathered to leave offerings of flowers, candles and twisted bicho-bicho doughnuts at a memorial for co-owner Artger “Jun” Anabo, who was shot outside the restaurant last week.

Comstock's magazine • 16th February 2022

The New Fusion Food

The Capital Region has long been a blended place, home to one of the country’s most ethnically diverse populations for decades. The region’s young restaurateurs are increasingly opening concepts that reflect the experience of living and eating in a diverse place, rather than hewing to an amber-glazed idea of authenticity.

Comstock's magazine • 11th May 2021

How Cornish Pasties Got to California

On the counter of Marshall’s Pasties in Grass Valley, next to a few of the awards the 53-year-old shop has accumulated, there’s a blackened metal lunch pail. It doesn’t look like much against the stacks of plaques and framed certificates, but the pail is a direct connection to the mines that once powered this gold rush town.

ABS-CBN News • 1st March 2020

The Mountain Maiden of the Seas (Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award Winner)

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.

Comstock's magazine • 23rd November 2021

Neighborhood Favorite: Kehaulani’s Cafe

At Kehaulani’s Cafe in Vallejo, the loco moco starts with short ribs braised for 12 hours.

ABS-CBN News • 30th September 2021

Meet the Fil-Am chefs making a splash in what might be America’s most vibrant food scene

These young women are rewriting the definition of authenticity in "the best food city in Alaska."

ABS-CBN News • 8th August 2021

They serve 'silog' in the world’s northernmost carinderia

In Utqiagvik, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, the Arctic Ocean forms a jagged crust of ice up to the gray sand beach. A few yards away from the beach, under polar night or midnight sun, sits a little Filipino restaurant called the 57.

Comstock's magazine • 19th July 2021

New Life for Iconic Sacramento Spaces That Closed During the Pandemic

In the months before the May opening of his Italian restaurant Mattone Ristorante in East Sacramento, June Chang fielded a lot of hopeful questions. Some neighbors approached him while he worked outside to ask if he would be reopening Español, the 97-year-old restaurant founded in a downtown Basque boarding house.

Comstock's magazine • 21st January 2020

Young Entrepreneurs Are Staking Claims in the Countryside

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.

The Reykjavik Grapevine • 5th November 2018

The Unlikely Success Of Matstofan: The “Filipino Taste” In Borgarnes (Plaridel Award Winner)

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.”