An expansive 220,000-square-foot museum celebrating Asian American history and culture will join the Irvine Great Park sometime in the next decade. In the meantime, museum leaders hope to foster a stronger sense of community across Orange County as they raise support for the building’s construction.
The museum will host several food demonstrations and Mahjong activities at the sixth annual Mid-Autumn Festival at the Great Park on Friday, Sept. 25.
Another recently held event was part of its Rooted in Flavor program, a series of immersive dining experiences that explore a different Asian cuisine alongside its cultural history, the museum’s Executive Director Jack Toan said.
The idea came to museum leaders from conversations with community members and business partners to gauge public interest, he said. Food was a recurring topic.
“The Asian American community as a whole — our lives and our culture — really revolves around food,” Toan said. “Food just happens to be one way that we sit down and get to people’s hearts.”
But it isn’t just about eating, Toan said.
“It’s also a gathering time for families to come together and share with each other and just tell stories,” Toan said. “It’s a way to pass on legacy, whether that’s recipes or stories handed down by grandparents while they’re sitting at the dinner table. That’s what we’re trying to recreate.”
Food remains an important aspect across cultures, but some cuisines are more mainstream than others, he said. Through its series, the museum hopes to increase visibility for underrepresented Asian ethnic groups.
Last month’s Rooted in Flavor event took place at TERRACE By Mix Mix, a Filipino fusion restaurant located at South Coast Plaza.
While Filipinos are among the largest Asian ethnic groups and some of the earliest individuals to have immigrated to the United States, their cuisine is not widely available, said Oliver Wang, a sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach, who has studied Asian American pop culture, including culinary history, for over 30 years.
Despite the fact that more than 4.5 million Filipinos live in the United States, there are only about 2,000 Filipino restaurants that exist across the country, Wang said.
“Filipino cuisine, I think, is just at the beginning of breaking into a greater awareness,” Wang said. “I think that it is both a challenge for restaurateurs to be able to make Filipino cuisine legible, but that also means there’s all of this potential and excitement.”
Food represents how culture has evolved uniquely among members of the Asian diaspora living in America, Wang said.
As one of the Asian American Museum at Great Park’s focuses — the campus will include a dining area with incubator kitchens to kickstart new Asian food businesses — food represents a key part of Asian American culture and identity, both locally and nationally, Wang said.
“The thing about Asian American food is that for a lot of our parents, who are immigrants, food was an economic means to mobility,” Wang said. “They didn’t do it because they necessarily loved food, but it was a way for them to make a living. With their kids and younger generations of Asian Americans, food is about identity, it’s about community, it’s about a pathway for expression and empowerment.”
Ross Pangilinan, the owner and chef behind TERRACE by Mix Mix, said he was excited to feature both traditional and fusion dishes during the event’s menu. In between courses, he spoke with Wang and Toan about the food’s cultural significance.
The menu included classic Filipino dishes, as well as ones with American and European influences, such as shrimp lumpia, chicken barbecue, and pinakbet, a traditional Filipino vegetable stew.
“When I do Filipino dishes, it’s always inspired by my childhood and the dishes I grew up eating,” Pangilinan said. “The flavors are really delicious, and you’ve just got to go out and try it.”
During the Mid-Autumn Festival Friday night, the museum will host a demonstration cooking with the pomelo fruit with Chef Jessica VanRoo, a mooncake demonstration with 1983 Bakery and a Japanese tea demonstration with Omotesenke Domonkai of Southern California.
The festival is 5 to 9:30 p.m. in the Irvine Great Park Palm Court Arts Complex and surrounding area. Information: cityofirvine.gov/midautumn