Eric Cabrera is no stranger to entrepreneurship. As a former tattoo artist, boba shop owner, Costco Executive and sober living director, he’s had his fair share of business ventures spanning all directions.
But his latest project hits a bit closer to home.
Cabrera is the owner of Lumpia Bros Cafe, a family-run restaurant based in Grover Beach. They specialize in authentic, traditional Filipino dishes, like pancit, adobo, ube lattes and of course, lumpia.
Lumpia is the hallmark of any Filipino gathering, featuring loads of meat, cabbage, carrots and seasoning packed into a razor-thin deep-fried dough wrapper. As the cafe’s name suggests, Lumpia Bros is known best for this one delicacy.
“We started selling lumpia out of the boba shop just for some extra food during slow times,” Cabrera said, gesturing to the industrial kitchen behind him. “It just morphed into something just bigger, which is this place.”
Despite his background in just about every business you can imagine, Cabrera’s heart has always belonged to the kitchen. In fact, his love for cooking and sharing meals started much earlier.
The recipes used at the cafe belonged to Cabrera’s late mother, who began teaching him how to cook at five years old.
“My mom would make me stand on a chair, stir the pot, and I didn’t even know what I was doing,” he said. “But over the years, just watching her, she would tell me to put in pepper, put in this and put in that, and then, fortunately, it stuck in my head.”
Although Cabrera’s mother has since passed, he dedicates every meal to preserving her legacy, her food and her story.
“She died of lung cancer, never smoked a day in her life, but developed lung cancer.” Cabrera said. “But I believe she’s smiling down on us right now, and I was able to memorize her, memorize her lumpia recipe. And now we have introduced the world to my mom’s lumpia.”
Preserving a legacy is no easy feat. In fact, there are very few people Cabrera trusts with his mother’s recipes, including his wife and his cousin, Josh. Together, they make up the small but mighty team that keeps the cafe up and running, no matter how many customers stop by.
“Sometimes there’ll be slow times and we think, do people hate us or something? Are they tired of us already?” Cabrera said.
While the anxiety of low sales days is normal in the restaurant industry, as the only Filipino restaurant in San Luis Obispo County, the team also faces another hurdle– introducing the Central Coast to a brand-new cuisine.
“Some people are like a creature of habit. They just love what they love, they don’t want to go outside of the box,” Cabrera said. “But step out of your comfort zone and try something new, try a culture that is so beautiful and has been around for a long time.”
So, what makes Filipino food so special?
Well, in order to unpack the full story, we have to travel back in time.
The Philippines is an archipelago of over 7,000 islands tucked in the Southeast Pacific. Historically referred to as the “Pearl of the Orient,” it was a key location along many trade routes, leading to significant cultural impact from neighboring countries.
“It was the perfect place for different cultures to meet each other, to mesh together and influence each other, especially with cooking,” Cabrera said.
As a result, fundamental Filipino cooking techniques were born, such as the heavy use of soy sauce and vinegar, which preserved meats in the tropical sun, while giving dishes like adobo their signature tang.
The Chamorros brought over red rice, spices and seasonings introduced from India. And of course, there’s lumpia, the dish that shares an uncanny resemblance to the Chinese spring roll.
“Filipinos would take that and make it their own,” Cabrera said. “And that’s how you get this amazing Filipino food that’s inspired by all different types of countries from Spain, Portugal, Italy, China, India and South America.”
However, the nation’s proximity to trade routes and abundance of natural resources also made it a target, as it would soon face threats to sovereign rule, according to the Association for Asian Studies.
The Spaniards attacked first, holding the nation under their colonial rule for hundreds of years, influencing everything from religion, class structure, and of course, food.
Yet, despite the centuries of Spanish presence, Filipinos continued to share and perfect ancestral recipes. To this day, each dish is a declaration of perseverance, a commitment to Filipino pride and identity in the face of colonial rule.
Although the nation has been independent since the late 1940s, introducing Filipino cuisine to the American public has taken time.
But for Cabrera, who’s been cooking since he was five-years-old, the wait is worth it.
“People will come in, saying, ‘why did I not know this type of food existed?’” he said. “Now [you’re] educated on it. If anything, just come in, we’ll make you smile.”
Cabrera’s mission is simple. Whenever the door opens to a new customer, he hopes to share his food, his culture, and his mother’s legacy.
“That’s what my mom always said, cook with love. And that’s what we do.”
