Portland’s Filipino Restaurants Are Fundraising For The Lapu Lapu Car Attack Victims

Flowers near the site of the car ramming attack at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu Day. | Liang Sen/Xinhua via Getty Images

Magna Kusina, Baon Kainan, and others are hosting an event on Monday, May 5

On Saturday, April 26, a car plowed through the Lapu Lapu festival in Vancouver, Canada, a celebration of Filipino culture and heritage. Eleven people died in the attack; the alleged perpetrator has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder. The tragedy sent ripples of shock throughout the wider Filipino community all over the West Coast. Now, some Portland restaurant owners have decided they can help by doing what they do best: cooking.

From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, May 5, a collection of local Filipino food carts, pop-ups and restaurants will be throwing a fundraising “meryenda” — a word with Spanish roots for a between-meals meal — at the Kolectivo event space in Hosford-Abernethy. Participants include Balong, Magna Kusina, Baon Kainan, Heyday, Kalesa, and Makulit. They’ll be serving a menu of traditional Filipino items like pandesal, calamansi cream puffs, empanadas, and longanisa.

The event is called a meryenda not just because it’s taking place before dinner, but also because the word is “a nostalgic piece of our culture that we think resonates personally with a lot of Filipinos everywhere,” Baon Kainan co-owner Geri Leung told Eater in an email. “The heart of it is sharing a meal with friends and family and catching up.”

“Our personal motivation is to help in the best way we know how, which is to dedicate our time and resources to provide food. We think it’s our natural response when we see our community hurting,” Leung wrote, adding that she and her husband and co-owner Ethan Leung went to college in nearby Bellingham, Washington, and got to know the area a bit. “Vancouver was a place we’d frequent often as they had more Filipino stores and restaurants than our college town. We have a personal tie to the city and have friends there.”

This isn’t the first fundraiser Kolectivo has hosted this year; there was a similar meryenda-themed event to benefit those impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires in January. Run by several Portland hospitality industry veterans, Kolectivo provides services for AAPI community members who might not have the means to book an event space normally, sometimes offering a sliding scale for fees. “If we can give to our community, eventually it’ll give back to us as well,” says Carlo Lamagna, a Kolectivo co-owner who also runs Magna Kusina.

“Whenever something happens in the community... the Filipino businesses come together,” he says of Kolectivo. “We’re like, ‘Hey, somebody needs our help. Someone threw up the bat signal.’”

Proceeds from the Monday event will go to families of victims of the Lapu Lapu attack, using links to individual crowdfunding campaigns provided by Vancouver’s Filipino Emergency Response.

“This tragedy that happened in Vancouver, it doesn’t matter the distance,” says Lamagna. “They’re still our community members.”