- Is it mackerel?

- [Employee] Yeah.

Do you want the meal?

- Yeah.

This is how much I would get for myself, by the way.

Can I have one more of that?

- Oh, this one also.

- (laughs) Yeah, it's my favorite.

There was this one time I ordered food from three different places to get delivered to my house.

When the delivery driver came in, I opened the door and I was like, "Hey guys, the food's here!"

because I was kind of embarrassed that I ordered that much food for myself.

Not like he would know, but it made me feel better.

♪ ♪ I'm chef Chrissy Camba.

From running restaurants to cooking for the circus, nothing excites me more than feeding people.

As a first generation Filipino American, the flavors from my family's kitchen make me feel at home.

Join me as I explore cultural grocery stores in the US and discover the recipes and stories that make this country's flavor so rich.

This is "The Grocery List Show."

(upbeat music) Today I'm at Seafood City, my favorite grocery store in Chicago, and the first Filipino supermarket here.

It's got locations mostly out west in the US and even in Canada.

I remember when Seafood City first opened, it was a huge deal.

Like, my family was talking about it, and I remember there being a line for weeks.

Some people like to go to the spa to relax, but I like to go to the grocery store to relax because there's something very calming about the order and like, the noises and the smells, especially this one because they have a food court over there and you can smell barbecue pork.

There's like, a waft of frying fish and like, jasmine rice, and it reminds me of home.

This is one of my favorites.

During special times like holidays, we would order like, 250 of these.

My brother and I would always get into kind of fights like, who would eat the last one.

But this is like, tangy and sweet and it has that char flavor.

Ooh, and then the grilled mackerel.

Look at that.

It's like, perfectly grilled.

Mackerel is a popular fish in Filipino cuisine because it's abundant over in the Philippines.

It's like an oily fish, and it's great grilled.

In Filipino culture, another way to eat is called Kamayan, which is "with your hands," and honestly, I think it makes the food taste better.

The Filipino ice cream is kind of the best ice cream.

They have all these fun flavors, ube, which is like a purple yam, but it has cheese in it.

I don't know if this is true for everyone, brands are very important.

For oyster sauce I typically have one brand, soy sauce I go for another brand because all the brands like, taste kind of different.

I grew up with these.

My lola always used to clean the kitchen with this.

She had this one, which is also another form of a broom.

You kind of just do that, or if you're in trouble, she'll like, kind of hit you a little bit with it.

My family would always grab pandesal and we would put something called coconut jam on it, which is like, this delicious like, caramelized coconut thing.

But we would eat this in the morning, or we would eat this with like, butter and shredded cheese.

I could spend hours here.

- [Natalia] I love this place.

Where else can I get a home-cooked meal when I don't want to cook?

- [Chrissy] That's true.

- [Chrissy Voiceover] This is my friend Natalia Rojas.

She describes herself as a Filipino gastronomy advocate.

She's knowledgeable about how food connects with culture from the history and traditions to the agricultural and social aspects of Filipino cuisine.

- I was partly raised in the Bay Area and in the Philippines for the first 10 years of my life, and then I moved here when I was 15.

We did not grow up having Filipino grocery stores here in Chicago, and I feel like right now it's just important for our identity to have that central space just to eat, to do our grocery shopping, or sometimes meet people and they have Bingo, karaoke, and like singing competitions.

They have ballroom.

So, Seafood City has become the hub.

- [Chrissy Voiceover] Chicago has one of the largest and fastest growing Asian communities.

There's a strong Filipino presence in neighborhoods like Jefferson Park and Sauganash, and right between them is Seafood City.

- The most important thing that we need to realize about Filipino food, it's technique based, and one dish can already have like, 30 interpretations within that one region itself.

For example, adobo.

Adobo is, we can cook adobo, like 50 million ways to sunshine.

- We're very like, passionate.

- [Natalia] Yes!

- Like, you could tell me like, No, you have like.

one peppercorn.

And I'm like, "That is completely wrong."

- Yeah.

- Not that, "Oh, that's different."

- No.

- I will say like, - It's wrong.

- "No, that's wrong."

- [Natalia] Yes!

I can challenge everybody who is Filipino descent here to make adobo and everybody would come out differently.

- Who do you think makes the best adobo?

- I will not answer that.

- [Chrissy] Oh, you gotta say your mom.

- No, because my mom actually does not make the best adobo.

My grandma does.

- [Chrissy] Mine does too.

(upbeat music) I'm having some friends over for dinner tonight and I'm going to make my Lola's crab torta recipe.

So I'm back at Seafood City to pick up the ingredients and some lively blue crabs.

- Welcome to bingo.

I'm the announcer of numbers.

- Before I start shopping, I'm going to try my luck at Seafood City's popular weekly bingo.

- G 48!

- I'm having friends over and I'm cooking Filipino food.

I need one more person.

- To eat.

- I - 24.

- So I'm picking up some onion and potatoes and garlic for my lola's crab torta.

It takes the longest time to make because you have to pick all the crab from the cooked crab, but the ingredients are actually like, maybe four ingredients.

Five.

There're only a couple of days a week where you can get live blue crab at Seafood City.

I try and get the longest tongs, and then you have to kind of move them around and see which ones are the feistiest who will fight you back.

I don't know why.

That's what my lola taught me when we used to shop for crabs.

See, look at that one.

They all hate me.

And then we're just going to head over to checkout.

- How are you doing today?

- I'm doing well.

I'm cooking dinner for my friends.

Do you ever make torta?

- It took a lot of time to make it.

I can't.

- It takes all day.

Thank you so much.

- Have a nice day.

Thank you for shopping.

- You too.

Thank you.

I got the angriest crabs.

They're like, "Oh, what's that?"

I'm going to get you.

Boom.

I am kind of intense when we cook together.

- It can lead to some tension.

- That's a nice way of putting it.

Thank you.

It is not that there's tension.

I think he feels tension because the way I cook at home is also the way I cook at work.

Ashlee has done a wonderful job of small dicing yellow onions and we're sautéing that and minced garlic in olive oil.

So I'm about to take the crab from the sink and put in a bowl and then throw it into the pot of water.

The water is only about an inch deep because they're going to release a lot of water.

Whenever my lola would do this, I think she would grab it without tongs.

She was kind of a (beep) actually.

- [Ashlee] So you think she was like a Filipino grandma superhero?

- [Chrissy] Yeah, of course.

And I'll pour them in.

Right?

I'm going to pour some salt because this is what my lola used to do.

I don't know why just on top and after 10 minutes it should be done.

And the small diced potatoes, I'm going to cook in olive oil in a non-stick pan because otherwise they're going to start sticking to the bottom.

And that's not something you want.

You kind of want them to maintain their shape.

(device beeping) So the crabs timer went off, and then what I'm going to do is just open it and let it cool off a little this way.

Okay, let's start cracking these crabs.

- [Ashlee] Oh, boy.

- So I take all the legs off.

You're going to go like this, and then you kind of use your finger to like squish out the meat.

- So that was like, one gram of crab meat.

- It's not even a gram, like this, all of these crabs will probably yield half a cup at the most.

You'll take this part and then there's like the back paddle fin, and then you'll open it up and it should easily come out, like that.

And because my lola taught me how to do this, and she is like a stickler about following through with everything.

I have this thing like in me that I need to make sure that all the meat is gone, or I'll feel like I've disappointed her somehow.

I remember I would eat what she was picking, but because she's my grandma, I don't think she minded.

Until it got to a point where she's like, "We're not going to be able to make torta if you keep eating all the crab meat."

So then you had to kind of stop.

We're going to take the picked crab, which ended up being quite a bit.

We have our sautéed onions and garlic, and we've added our sautéed potatoes.

So now we're going to add the egg, and we're just going to like ahh, let it sit for, I don't know, five minutes while we get the crab shells cleaned up.

And I like to fill these up and we're going to do this.

And I like getting into the like, crevices.

'Cause I know when I eat it out of the shell, I'm like, oh, there's still more left.

I thought I finished it all, but then there's a surprise.

For this, you want it super caramelized, super sizzling.

(oil sizzling) And then we'll just keep doing this until all of the crabs are done.

My lola was a second mother to me.

She was very giving and very supportive, but not in a traditional way.

She just had this very strict demeanor about her.

She knew what was in you and what you could achieve, and she pushed you and supported you so you can achieve it yourself.

And so that's how I've always been.

(dog barking) (doorbell rings) Sandy says they're here.

Okay.

Okay, Mister Mister.

Hi.

Thanks for coming.

- Yeah.

- So let's start over there.

So those are barbecue pork skewers.

In between is longganisa and then crab shells filled with the crab torta filling.

All right, let's eat.

- [Natalia] Good thing I wore stretchy pants today.

- [Chrissy] I wore stretchy pants too.

- [Natalia] It's been a hot minute, Chrissy.

I always miss your food.

- [Chrissy] Aw.

- Mmm - Mmm Seafood City keeps my lola's memory alive because everything's like a trigger.

That's why ethnic grocery stores are so important because they provide the community with products that they could not source elsewhere.

And this preserves memories, their recipes and their country in American life.

(light music) (bright music) (bright music continues)