Pass the lumpia

Ethel “Inday” Geiger and her husband, John, together run a new food cart at the Thursday Night Market that sells authentic Filipino food. John (who owns the popular Crazy Dog hot-dog cart on West First and Warner streets) takes customers’ orders while she mans (“womans”?) the barbecue grill. But as Inday (pronounced “In-dye”) proudly reminded me from behind the grill on which she was busy cooking rows of chicken and flavorful longaniza sausages on sticks, “This is mine.” In other words, Inday’s Filipino Food is her baby, inspired by the food of her childhood and young-adult years growing up in the Philippines before she moved to Chico 15 years ago.

Inday’s food cart, decorated to resemble a colorful, tropical beach shack, bears a hand-painted red sign trimmed with bright blue with the words “Inday’s Filipino Food.” It’s the only Filipino food for miles around. “I think I hit the jackpot at this time,” Inday told me, referring to being the only game in town when it comes to Filipino food.

And it’s a welcome addition to the local food and food-cart landscape.

Inday’s has a simple menu consisting of five items: Two sticks of barbecued meat (either chicken or longaniza); halang-halang, a spicy ground-pork-and-vegetable dish; gulay (seasonal veggies topped with spicy peanuts); tino-no-an (chicken in coconut milk); and pansit bihon, which consists of rice noodles dotted with shrimp and bits of chicken. Pricing is $5 for one item, $7 for two items and $9 for three items; all are served with white rice. Filipino-style egg rolls called lumpia are also available for $3 each, or two for $5 and five for $10.

On most Thursdays, Inday said, there is also a special of her choosing. “Oh, let’s see—I feel like eating this tonight,” she explained of her selection method, “and I’m gonna have dinner over there [at the market] so that’s gonna be the special.” Last Thursday’s special was manok adobo (“manok” means “chicken” in Filipino, Inday explained).

The previous Thursday there was no special offered, not that it mattered—I was perfectly content munching on my skewered barbecued longaniza and chicken, and tasty pansit bihon.

Last Thursday, I splurged on a three-item meal consisting of halang-halang, tino-no-an and one lumpia (lumpia can count as one item in a dinner box). The halang-halang—something I had never eaten before—was delicious. It brought back memories of a curried-ground-meat dish my Australian mother used to make me when I was a child—the ground pork was full of spicy flavor, and punctuated by peas and chunks of tender cooked carrots and potatoes. The chicken in the tino-no-an was super tender and scrumptious, due largely to its being cooked in sweet coconut milk.

And the one lumpia I allowed myself made me want more. In fact, I thought how easy it would be to become addicted to chowing down several at a sitting. The snappy, soy-based sauce that came with it (in which floated a squeeze of lime) made it all the more enjoyable.

Inday’s cart appears to be getting increasingly more popular, based on the growing lines I’ve observed. Inday told me last Friday that she sold out of food the previous night.

“I always wanted to have it,” said Inday of her food cart, which has been in business at the farmers’ market since early April.

And, she reminded me, it’s a family business. Her 9-year-old son, Geo, and 6-year-old daughter, Ally, are always with her and John at the farmers’ market. “I could never leave them at home,” she said.