Black Southern and Filipino BBQ meet on the grill

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

There is no better time for grilling than right now - high summer. Corn on the cob? Always a crowd-pleaser. Beyond that, why not get creative? NPR's Neda Ulaby visited a chef in New Orleans who is bringing two grilling traditions from opposite ends of the world together on one plate.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: OK, think of two of the very best barbecue cultures on the planet. Marlon Green grew up with both of them.

MARLON GREEN: My mom's Filipino. My dad's Black. My dad's from Mississippi.

ULABY: So on any given summer weekend as a kid, Green's dad would smoke ribs with sweet sauce while his mom grilled skewers and spent hours making lumpia - fried Filipino-style spring rolls with pork and cabbage filling.

M GREEN: So lumpia and gumbo as appetizers, you know?

ULABY: If you're lucky enough to live in New Orleans, you can try Green's cooking at his pop-ups here at local restaurants. He calls his Filipino Creole cuisine Barbekyu - spelled K-Y-U at the end. That's barbecue Tagalog style.

M GREEN: Hey, how y'all doing?

ULABY: On one recent night, Green starts prepping in a kitchen on Tchoupitoulas Street, a hopping thoroughfare known for its bars and clubs. He slices lemon grass and cilantro alongside his brother, Frederick Nonato.

(LAUGHTER)

ULABY: The brothers have worked in restaurants since they were kids. Eventually, they hope to open one of their own, but for now, says Nonato, they're testing out recipes with the pop-up.

FREDERICK NONATO: We turned one of our staple dishes of the Philippines, adobo, into a boudin ball.

ULABY: Adobo here is a vinegar-based stew, the national dish of the Philippines, and the boudin balls are fried sausage, a beloved Louisiana snack. The brothers' take on them rolls the balls into savory little bites.

NONATO: I was trying to call it something fancy at one point.

ULABY: What?

NONATO: Boulettes - I was going to try and call them boulettes.

ULABY: But who needs fancy when the food is so good? Here's their mom, Anita Green.

ANITA GREEN: It's, like, simple.

ULABY: Green says Filipino food, Black Southern food, all home cooking she believes is basically the same.

A GREEN: A piece of meat, the greens, cook it together. That's it.

ULABY: Anita Green allows there is some specificity in various cultural traditions. But her late husband's cooking, she says, had plenty in common with the kind she grew up with, like a focus on rice, pork, black pepper and enormous portions. Her son, Chef Marlon Green, is there for all of it.

M GREEN: So if there's chicken adobo and collard greens on a plate with some corn bread, I'm good. Yeah, I can tear that up.

ULABY: And at his pop-up, Barbekyu spelled K-Y-U, he's creating a following for a truly local, truly global all-American menu. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SLY & THE FAMILY STONE SONG, "FAMILY AFFAIR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.