- The one sauce of all
sauces in the world.
Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce.
Put it on anything.
Hamburgers, roast pork,
sprained ankles.
Everything.
I ain't gonna come to
Houston and not do me.
That's right, we're gonna do Filipino.
This next that we're gonna go,
we're gonna probably see those flavors
of longanisa, banana ketchup,
mixin' it with a little bit American.
Whassup, guys?
(speaking Tagalog)
'Sup, man!
I brought a little present
for you guys, right here.
Check that out.
- [Michael] Hey! Mang Tomas!
- [Michael] Our goal is to
share our Filipino culture and our food.
Marrying it with something
familiar for everybody,
like the burger.
So we kinda like used
the burger as a bridge
between our culture and
the American culture.
- Who's crazy idea was it
to open up a food truck?
- This guy right here.
Ruined my life.
- What'd you do before that?
- I did IT for 10 years.
Had to make my parents happy.
- And both of you, cousins.
Your parents came here
from the Philippines.
- Yeah, back in the '70s.
- For what reason?
- Both my parents were engineers.
- And how's the Filipino community here?
- Here? Very small.
- Oh yeah.
- [Michael] In this area.
When me and Don were talking about it,
we're like, can we just serve
straight up Filipino food?
Are people gonna come?
Or do we give 'em something familiar.
Oh, there's burgers.
Oh, I like these burgers.
Okay, I trust this team.
Lemme try their Filipino rice plates now.
You can kind of see them
slowly trusting Filipino food.
- How was it to take that leap of faith
and open up a truck?
- The opening day, we
just got slaughtered.
- We marketed a certain day.
Our builder couldn't
get it to us until 11 PM
the night before.
We loaded the truck up,
and then prepped all night.
It was crazy stupid.
And when we opened the windows,
there's like a hundred people in line.
And we're like, oh dang!
I mean, it was part-time
for the first two months.
We'd just go out on weekends.
But as soon as we knew
that people loved this,
we dropped our day jobs,
and we went full-time.
- And here we are five years
later with the truck still.
- We do about a thousand to
1200 pounds of fries a day
in the truck.
We hand cut it and flash
fry it, freeze it, bag it.
(darker, funky dance music)
This is our secret chicken sauce.
It's called the pupu sauce.
Like a sweet ginger soy sauce almost.
The original recipe from
our lola, or our grandma,
is chicken wings.
So it's hard to eat
wings off a truck, right.
So we made it into a boneless form.
So we just cut up some
thighs, lightly bread it,
par cook it, then cook
the par-cooked chicken.
- [Sheldon] That's gonna be
the topping for the fries?
- Yes, sir.
Do a criss-cross drizzle.
First our spicy sauce, and then
banana ketchup aioli.
This is our chicken pupu Flip'n fries.
("Gwan Wid It" by Bromley)
We have our in-house ground
certified angus beef.
Then our house-made longanisa.
We use our siopao, which is a steamed bun
in the Philippines, and
kinda tweaked it to where
it fit the burger flavors.
("Gwan Wid It" by Bromley)
We top it with a fresh tomato.
Banana ketchup aioli.
Then our house-made longanisa.
Then we top it off with a sunnyside egg.
That's it right there.
The Jeepney Burger.
Oozin' all over.
- [Sheldon] Hey, a messy
burger is a good burger.
- [Michael] This is like one of our
traditional Filipino rice plates.
Garlic toasted rice, which is
sinangag in the Philippines.
Bite-sized chicken thigh pieces.
We call it the pupu sauce.
Like a sweet ginger soy sauce.
It's inspired by Don's grandma's recipe.
We actually roll these
pork lumpia in-house.
- Pupu plate is in honor of my lola.
Lola's grandma.
- Lola was the cook of the family?
- She was.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Took care of us, took care of other kids.
Whole bunch of kids just
running around in the house.
- So this is your lumpia
you buy from Costco?
(Don laughing)
What's the filling for your lumpia?
- Pork shoulder.
We grind it,
put a little bit of
carrots, onions, seasonings.
Little bit of magic.
The best pupu you'll have in your life.
- Good one, man.
- Thank you.
- Lola would be proud, bro.
- I hope so.
(darker, funky dance music)
So each of our burgers have a theme.
This is kind of like a Jeepney Burger.
Jeepneys are a mode of transportation
in the Philippines.
So this is kinda like our
mode of transportation
from being drunk to sober.
- I'm gonna jump in to the Jeepney Burger.
- Geddit.
- You guys didn't go into
culinary school or anything?
- No, we went to the culinary
school of Lola and Mama.
Uncles, aunts, moms, dads.
Culinary school family.
- As you got older, you kinda,
you wanna know where your roots are,
and then...
My way of connecting to
that is through food.
- Yeah, we're here in America,
living the American dream.
But, you know, remember
where you came from.
- This is just the start though.
I mean, we wanna bridge way more gaps,
indulging in Filipino food.
- You guys puttin' out legit food, man.
- We also experience the karaoke part.
'Cuz like every Filipino party--
- Karaoke.
- Yeah, at the end of the night,
everyone's singing karaoke.
- Wind Beneath My Wings.
- Yes, sir.
(laughing)
(dance music)
- Raja Sweets is like
King Sweets, you know?
- King Sweets.
Comin' to the right spot, man.
