Helen Teodoro’s Thai and Japanese Kitchen has quietly brought Filipino home cooking to Mansfield Road
by Chris Jay
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“Alright, it’s done,” said Helen Teodoro, the 41-year-old owner of Thai and Japanese Kitchen (9369 Mansfield Rd., Shreveport), as she passed me the completed tower of halo-halo.
She had spent several minutes carefully assembling the parfait-style frozen dessert, layering in sweet potato, jackfruit, gelatinized coconut squares called nata de coco, slightly firm red beans, shaved ice, sweetened condensed milk, and homemade taro root ice cream. The end product was almost, but not quite, too beautiful to stick a spoon into. Halo-halo sells for $7 at Thai and Japanese Kitchen.
“This is a street food,” Teodoro said. “Growing up in the Philippines, you’d go outside, and neighbors would be making it and selling it, every summer. In my neighborhood, we had like ten neighbors who sold halo-halo, and even with so many, they would all sell out every day.”
Halo-halo translates to “mixed together” in English, but don’t let the name fool you. According to Teodoro, there is a correct way to eat halo-halo—and it’s not by mixing the layers.
“The right way to eat it is from the top to the bottom,” she said. “A lot of people mix it all together, but that’s not the right way to do it. This way, you can enjoy all of the different flavors.”
Teodoro grew up in Pampanga, a province outside of Manila, where she went to work as a street food vendor when she was only seven years old. Like the “Cajun Country” of Southwest Louisiana, Pampanga is regarded as a region in possession of unique culinary secrets and talents. It is considered by many to be the culinary capital of the Philippines.
“If you say ‘I’m from Pampanga,’ people say ‘Oh, you can cook,’” Teodoro said. “I learned from my aunt. She is a cook, and I’d go with her all of the time. I helped her for free, just to learn. You’re young, and they don’t want you to touch anything because it’s hot. But I insisted. I said ‘No, I don’t care if it’s hot. I want to learn.’”
A Louisianian for two decades, Teodoro spent twelve years working for a Japanese restaurant before opening her own restaurant in 2017. This summer, she opened her own grocery store, ThaiJap Asian Market on Shreveport-Barksdale Highway.
Thai and Japanese Kitchen doesn’t get a lot of love from the local foodie crowd, but it has quietly become one of the bright spots of pandemic-era dining in Shreveport. Undeterred by the pandemic, the February 2021 ice storm, labor shortages, and ongoing supply-chain issues facing the restaurant industry, Teodoro has seized the opportunity to start serving Filipino home cooking at regular grab-and-go style pop-ups at her restaurant. Some of the most exciting meals that I’ve eaten during the pandemic have been purchased at these pop-ups, which are promoted on the ThaiJap Asian Market Facebook page.
Bright, fierce, and eloquent, Teodoro speaks about the past year in the tone of voice that you’d expect from an unranked featherweight boxer who’d just knocked out a heavyweight champion.
“During the pandemic, I’ve never closed my doors. We were open. On the snow days, I never closed my doors,” she said. “We don’t close.”
At the same time, she and her staff are among the most cautious and respectful that I have encountered, in terms of masking and social distancing. She encourages anyone who is uncomfortable entering the restaurant to call and arrange to have their food brought to them in the parking lot. Signage promoting masking and social distancing, as well as a clear plastic barrier separating staff from diners at the register, have remained up.
“We will find a way to serve our customers here, and we want them to be safe,” she said.
But getting back to that halo-halo.
It’s difficult, as a white American who is conscious of the ostracizing power of language, to describe the bottom of a cup of halo-halo without exoticizing its contents. After you’ve eaten your way through the silky, homemade taro root ice cream (which would be right at home on the menu at Eleven Madison Park) and shaved ice sweetened with condensed milk, your spoon will excavate a loosely packed treasure trove of colorful goodies.
If it’s your first time eating halo-halo, the gelatinized nata de coco squares and firm red beans, chunks of boiled sweet potato and jackfruit may look strange or even off-putting. You may be tempted to politely sneak away and dispose of these goodies. Don’t do it.
I asked Teodoro if she had a favorite bite of halo-halo, or an ingredient that she found particularly delightful.
“I like the red beans,” she said.
I told her that I didn’t know if the average Shreveporter was ready for red bean desserts, and she smiled.
“I get that a lot,” she said. “There are lots of ingredients that people think can’t be used. But back home, we can always make something great out of it.”
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