A restaurant has only one address. I’d rather come to yours.
American restaurants will generate over $1.55 trillion this year and employ 15.8 million people, according to the National Restaurant Association’s 2026 State of the Industry (opens in a new tab). People love to eat. I got lucky and landed in the business of feeding them.
I read the rest of the math before I signed anything, and it is sobering. You’ve heard that 9 in 10 restaurants fail in the first year. That’s a myth, but the research that killed it is no comfort: a study of 2,439 restaurant licenses in the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly (opens in a new tab) found 26% close inside twelve months, and nearly 60% are gone within three years. A lease does not care how good your adobo (opens in a new tab) is. Mine included.
I’d take a dining room someday. The sign, the tables, the fancy plating, all of it. What I don’t want is only one address.
The wheels are the point
Opening a food truck in the United States costs about $55,000 on average, says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (opens in a new tab). A dining room with a build-out and a long personal guarantee is a different kind of promise entirely, and I have kids who depend on my stability each year.
But money is the boring half. Here’s the half I actually think about.
A restaurant waits for you. A truck comes to you. The brewery on a Thursday, a farmers market on a Saturday, an office lot at lunch on Tuesday (opens in a new tab). I don’t need one neighborhood to fall in love with me and my food. I get to go where people are already hungry, and some weeks that’s a different town every day. For a chef with something new to say, that isn’t a smaller stage. It’s a bigger one, and it moves.
Twenty years, three countries, one flat-top
None of this happened overnight. Behind that window are over two decades of professional kitchens across three countries (opens in a new tab) and formal culinary training. Most of what I know, I actually learned mid-service while there was no time to look anything up.
I can cook a lot of things. This is the one I chose to build a life on.
Fil Up! is Filipino fusion, and the fusion is the whole argument. Sisig meets a tortilla (opens in a new tab). The Hawaiian plate lunch (opens in a new tab) meets a Japanese sense of restraint. Lumpia (opens in a new tab), rolled by my own hands, comes fresh out of the fryer next to a basket of fries (opens in a new tab). It’s a Filipino-American family cooking like a Filipino-American family actually eats … from everywhere we’ve been.
Purists sometimes blink at it. I get it. I just ask them for one bite first so they get it too.
The part I think about at the window
Ask me what I love about this and I won’t talk about money. I’ll talk about faces.
The first bite, the pause, the look up. The kid who came for fries and leaves knowing what sisig is. The regular who turns up the next week with three coworkers and stands there grinning like he built the place himself. The message somebody sends days later to say they’re still thinking about it. The smiles that come back on a hot day when somebody has been waiting and is still happy to see us. That warmth coming back across the counter is what I’m in it for. The money is how I keep doing it, and how I take care of my children.
And this is where the truck stops being a business decision and becomes a family one.
Two jobs, one life
I would happily cook every day of the week. I don’t because I have children, and they come first.
A dining room does not negotiate. The doors open at 11 whether or not somebody has practice, a game, a recital, or a rough week that needs mom’s comfort. A truck negotiates. I pick the stops and I pick the nights, so I can be at the window on Friday with a line building and cheering from the stands on Saturday. It’s the only arrangement I’ve found that lets me be both of the things I am, all the way, without shortchanging either.
Sean (my son) is on the line with me now (opens in a new tab), learning the recipes the way I did: mid-service, at the flat-top, with people waiting. If you’ve been handed your food by a handsome young Filipino man leaning out of the window with that Flynn Rider-style hair, then you’ve met my succession plan.
They voted. Twice.
I still don’t quite know how to talk about this part without getting emotional. After many years of training and countless hours experimenting, Fil Up! took Platinum (first place in the Food Trucks category of the Everett Community Votes (opens in a new tab)) in both 2025 and again in 2026. No panel decided that. The people who eat here did, which is the only jury I ever cared about. FOX 13 Seattle brought a camera to the window (opens in a new tab) one Friday and left with lumpia.
No marketing budget. One truck, a lot of showing up, and a heck of a lot of love!
So come find me
Here’s my ask…
Every truck on the road is somebody’s whole livelihood parked in a lot, hoping the line forms. This one is mine. I built it so I wouldn’t have to miss the important moments with my kids, and I still cook every service like I have something to prove.
You can spend $20 on a lot of things. Spend it with me and it goes straight back to a family, a recipe, and a neighborhood at once.
Check the schedule (opens in a new tab). Find my next stop. Bring somebody who’s never had lumpia. Give me the chance to prove it to you.
I’ll take it from there.
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