Senor Sisig Serves Up Filipino-Inspired Ice Cream
“I’m an ice cream fanatic,” says Evan Kidera, cofounder of the San Francisco Filipino food truck Senor Sisig, which recently started serving the dessert.
And after having one of the truck’s burritos or tacos, a little ice cream can help put out the flames in your mouth. Sisig is a zesty Filipino dish made with any type of protein or tofu and is seasoned with citrus, onion, and jalapeno peppers.
Kidera, who opened the truck with his high school friend Gil Payumo in 2010, says that it only made sense to start serving ice cream. He teamed up with Ian Flores and Annabelle Topacio of Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous, an ice cream shop located in Dogpatch, and started collaborating on flavors in the summer, premiering their first flavor on July 8 at Off the Grid at Fort Mason.
“Annabelle is Filipina and she was always excited to do Filipino flavors,” Kidera says “We started our businesses at the exact same time, so it was good to collaborate with another business that was going through the same struggles we were going through.”
This partnership is paying off.
Annabelle and I go back and forth with the flavors every week and we talk about how we want the flavors to come out,” Kidera says “We’ve done leche flan [caramel custard], turon [sweet banana egg roll], salty mango … San Miguel [beer] with peanuts was the first one.”
The inaugural flavor pays homage to “pulutan” known as the Filipino “happy hour” when salty snacks and small plates are paired with beer such as San Mig Light or Red Horse.
While you can easily find Filipino flavored ice cream such as ube (purple yam), mango, and macapuno (sweet coconut) in your grocer’s freezer, Kidera wanted to summon flavors that people thought of and heard of before, but never tasted as an ice cream. The truck recently served Calamansi Slushie— using a small tart citrus fruit which has characteristics of a lime, kumquat, and orange—at Off the Grid at Fort Mason.
“We want to be a stepping stone for people who haven’t tried Filipino food before, but also take Filipino street food to the next level,” Kidera says. This coming Friday on September 2, the truck will be serving champorado ice cream – a take on Filipino Chocolate Sweet Rice Porridge! Get it at Off the Grid Fort Mason.
Visit the Senor Sisig website [senorsisig.com] for the truck’s weekly schedules or follow it on twitter @senorsisig.
