Kansas City, Missouri is home to many delicious cuisines, but one particular cook is making waves in the food industry with his unique and flavorful Filipino dishes.
Dexter Chuck Reyes Tiongson, a 28-year-old chef from Valenzuela, is sharing his love for Filipino cuisine through his vlog, “Chuckie’s Kitchen.”
In a recent video, he shred how he influenced his non-Filipino coworkers to love Filipino food.
Working at a big Italian restaurant in Kansas, Chuck takes advantage of his lunch break to treat his multi-racial co-workers to his traditional Filipino dishes, ranging from sisig to bistek. His cooking tutorials, which also feature reaction shots from his taste testers, have earned him a massive following on Facebook, where he has over 1.1 million followers.
What sets Chuck’s cooking apart is his love and pride in Filipino food, which shines through in every video. Chuck’s inventiveness is also admirable.
For example, his unique take on kare-kare, called “Lumpiang Kare-Kare,” has been a huge hit. He sautés minced beef with traditional kare-kare vegetables like string beans and eggplant, then wraps the mixture in a lumpia wrapper before deep-frying.
His maruya, a classic Filipino merienda, has also become a fan favorite. Chuck’s version is made from a batter of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, whole milk, melted butter, and a bit of oil, and is served with a drizzle of kondensada.
Chuck uses his own money to buy ingredients for the meals he prepares for his co-workers, and says he does it because he wants to introduce them to Filipino cuisine. It’s a treat to see the reactions of his non-Filipino colleagues, who are often surprised and delighted by the flavors they’re trying for the first time.
In one of Chuck’s videos, he served his version of sisig, which was a huge hit among his co-workers. They enjoyed the spicy pork dish with white rice, and couldn’t get enough.
Another favorite dish of Chuck’s is sweet and salty beef pares, which he introduced to his co-workers in another video. They were blown away by the flavors, with one colleague exclaiming, “Oh my god, this [is] fire. It’s really good.”
