At Jollibee, Chickenjoy, the chain’s crispy fried chicken gets most of the attention with TikTok creators flocking to the fast-food joint to grab a bucket for a mukbang video. Typically filmed in their car on a kitchen counter, they’ll tap their nails on the paper bucket as they show off their prized possession. At the moment of biting into the chicken, the volume temporarily increases to capture the satisfying crunch, and they moan or nod, indicating that the chicken is indeed that good.
But let’s not ignore the younger child. A Jollibee meal wouldn’t be complete without Jolly Spaghetti. It’s fun, a little sloppy, and not taken seriously. The sweet red sauce, slurpable noodles with hot dog slices, then topped with bits of shredded cheese are the ideal complement to the crunchy fried chicken. Even if you didn’t grow up eating Filipino spaghetti, it feels nostalgic and comforting. Americans grew up eating most of this spaghetti’s ingredients. Even fellow founder-owner Amy McCarthy turned to the spaghetti as a medicinal cure on a miserable rainy day.
Jollibee’s first U.S. location debuted in 1998 in Daly City, California, and as I grew up in the ‘90s and early 2000s, the chain slowly expanded along the West Coast. I lived in New Jersey, and the only time I had Filipino spaghetti was at home without fried chicken in sight. Filipino spaghetti was the main dish; it wasn't just the side chick. Spaghetti with hot dogs would show up at big family events, especially at kids' birthday parties. It fulfilled the tradition of eating long noodles on birthdays, which is a practice that Filipinos adopted from the Chinese. We’d fill up our plates with spaghetti alongside rice with a stewed meat like adobo chicken or beef bistek.
When introducing Filipino spaghetti to non-Filipinos, I’d always give them a warning, kind of like a rearview car mirror: “This spaghetti will be sweeter than it appears.” The reactions were polarizing. Most people would be completely shocked by the experience. Their expectations of an Italian American meaty bolognese did not match up with what they were consuming. I’ve had an ex tell me it’s weird, acting as though it was blasphemous to make this sweet spaghetti with hot dogs. For the longest time, I didn’t share Filipino spaghetti with others until after I introduced them to other Filipino foods, like lumpia and adobo that I considered "safe." It was only after multiple exposures to Filipino food at my house that I reluctantly introduced the spaghetti. I’d watch friends grab a forkful of noodles, watching their initial looks of confusion melt after a delightful second bite. The tide was turning. After a 2015 trip to Manilla, Anthony Bourdain described it as "deranged, but strangely alluring” in an episode of Parts Unknown.
The story of the creation of the Filipino spaghetti actually starts more than a century ago when an Italian American named John Canson opened the Santa Ana Cabaret, a bumping dance hall in Manila. In 1921, the Philippines remained a U.S. colony, and its military maintained a major presence in the capital. Canson advertised a “spaghetti dinner” to troops, and eventually its popularity spread among Filipinos. Since tomatoes aren’t as prevalent in the Philippines, they had to turn to ingredients available locally. Food technologist Maria Orosa invented banana ketchup made with mashed bananas — the main ingredient in the Filipino spaghetti sauce. Banana ketchup gives Filipino spaghetti a distinct, sweet taste.
Outside of Jollibee, there’s only a handful of restaurants giving Filipino spaghetti a permanent spot on the menu. While lumpia, ube, silog, and sisig have grown in popularity, the spaghetti remains underrated. Chef Eric Valdez at Naks in New York City has served a version of Filipino spaghetti on tasting menus, but hasn’t made it available à la carte, telling Ravenous that non-Filipino customers are still hesitant about its sweetness. He’s developed a more “approachable” take at his casual sandwich counter Sanwits, which opened earlier this summer, through the mac and cheese side. Instead of using spaghetti, he uses macaroni, and the sauce is his mother’s recipe that uses the classic combo of banana ketchup, tomato sauce, and hot dog, plus a mixture of ground beef, ground pork, corned beef, patis (also known as fish sauce), and liver sauce. Topped with cheddar cheese, it seems like the mature older sister of Jolly Spaghetti. “Sanwits is the right place for that dish because I think people just want to have fun eating there — it’s not very serious,” Valdez tells Ravenous. In a more casual setting, the Filipino spaghetti-inspired mac and cheese fits in nicely with the sandwiches stuffed with fried chicken, lechon, and beef ribeye caldereta.
In LA, Sampa has an upscale take with bucatini made in-house and topped with longanissa XO sauce, plated beautifully with flowers. Filipino American cookbooks have also developed their own versions of the beloved staple. In Filipinx, by Angela Dimayuga and Ligaya Mishan, they’ve removed the banana ketchup and instead sweetened the sauce with the veggie combination of onions, carrots, and celery. Woldy Reyes adds spiciness to store-bought banana ketchup and fresh cherry tomatoes in his sauce in his book In the Kusina. Thanks to the rapid growth of Jollibee — with 1,700 locations around the world — Filipino spaghetti often one of the first Filipino foods that people will try. And as Jollibee has plans to expand to 500 additional locations throughout the U.S. by 2030, it’ll only become more popular. Banana ketchup is on shelves at some Whole Foods locations. Filipino grocer Seafood City continues to expand, stocking Filipino spaghetti sauce with some locations housing their own Jollibees. This provides me with some optimism that one day, hopefully soon, I won’t have to warn people about the sweet sauce.
Another story you may like:
Jaya Saxena
