On a recent afternoon, in what became a sudden, drenching downpour, I drove to Columbia for Filipino food from a food truck I’d been following on Instagram.
Filipino cuisine is a fascinating and delicious mashup of Spanish, Malay, Chinese, and the many Indigenous cultures from the archipelago. For a long time, Filipino food in this country was mostly found in homes, and though there are now many Filipino restaurants—from Jollibee to Chicago’s Kasama, the first Filipino restaurant to earn a Michelin star—they’re harder to find than they should be. Surprisingly, there are few Filipino restaurants of any kind in Baltimore. And Washington, D.C.’s lauded Bad Saint closed in 2022.
Namit Filipino Barbecue turned out to be well worth the drive to Howard County. The truck was posted up in a massive parking lot beside towering office buildings—and, thankfully, next to a covered picnic area perfect for a midday lunch in a rainstorm.
Started three years ago by a family from Talisay, in the Cebu province of the Philippines, Namit specializes in skewers of barbecued meats and Filipino dishes like sisig (sauteed meat and veg), lumpia (fried eggrolls), inasal (grilled, marinated chicken), pancit (noodles), and lechon. The lechon alone is worth the drive: thick crunchy chunks of roasted pork belly with skin so fried that it resembles chicharrónes more than barbecue. The dishes come with sides of pickled vegetables and various sauces, plus wedges of lime and cucumber for a fresh crunch.
Namit’s food is superb: deeply flavorful, well-seasoned, and nicely executed. The lechon is a terrific iteration of the famous dish—shatteringly crispy and served with domes of golden-yellow garlic rice. Sauces come in cups of sweet soy-garlic and sweet chile, rather than the pork liver sauce that traditionally accompanies lechon—which is maybe a knock on Namit’s bona fides, but a welcome variation for most of us. The lumpia, filled with either vegetables, pork, or shrimp, arrive in collections of crisp golden cones. And the sisig here translates into a small mountain of savory grilled and diced chicken tossed with scallions, pretty red chiles, crispy garlic, and citrus.
There are also desserts, like buko pie made with young coconut and kalamansi cheesecake—kalamansi is a splendid citrus thought to be a cross between a kumquat and a mandarin orange that appears in various forms in traditional Filipino cooking—though they were mercifully out of that one the day I went. (Mercifully, as I’d already ordered, lechon, sisig, and skewers.) Also occasionally on the menu are lavender wedges of ube cheesecake, made with the purple yam that’s a favorite in Filipino cuisine.
Namit moves around a bit, from its base in Columbia to occasional trips to Glen Burnie and Fort Meade, parking next to offices, hospitals, army bases, or breweries. This will likely change by the end of the year, as the family is opening their first brick-and-mortar location in Columbia in December. (Follow for updates, here.)
This is happy news. Although sitting outside and sharing a table with workers on their lunch break—barbecue smoke filtering through the rain—is a comradely and deeply satisfying experience, an actual restaurant—and more space for cheesecake—will be a welcome upgrade.