With the rising popularity of contemporary and fusion Filipino food, why not also a return to one’s roots? The question that the company sought to answer was: How do you take something traditional and give it a younger, more diverse appeal? As I observed during that lunch, their answer is to innovate on classic recipes without succumbing to what is merely trendy, and to create excitement through social media, particularly Instagram, with its thriving foodie culture. This is the milieu in which Goldilocks finds itself, and in which, as a 50-year-old Filipino cultural icon, it undergoes a renaissance. The assertion is that second generation Filipino immigrants, without the struggles of adapting to a new country, and with an awakened sense of pride in their culinary heritage, are the ones who have taken on the task of bringing it to the limelight. These essays credit a new generation of Filipino-American chefs with the current emergence of Filipino restaurants in the country. The following month, Eddie Lin of Los Angeles Magazine declares that 2015 may very well be “the year of Filipino food in Los Angeles.” Most recently, in July 2016, Saveur published a piece on how Philippine cuisine continues to break through LA’s food scene. What took it so long?” writes Tim Carman on The Washington Post in April of last year. Even then, our cuisine has only recently come to the awareness of the larger American dining public. Here in the United States, Filipinos constitute one of the largest groups of immigrants. Perhaps it is this growing global presence that is slowly but surely pushing Filipino food into the culinary mainstream. Goldilocks products are also sold by retailers around the world to meet the demands of a growing Filipino diaspora. Additionally, there are eleven locations in the United States (ten in California, and one in Las Vegas, Nevada), and two in Canada. It has since grown to become the largest family-owned bakeshop in the Philippines, with hundreds of stores all over the country.

Goldilocks Bakeshop first opened in Makati City, Philippines as a small family-run bakery in 1966, and later debuted in the United States in 1976. The management team hopes that these simple gatherings will bring the traditional Filipino cuisine offered by Goldilocks to the attention of a younger generation of Filipino-Americans and non-Filipinos alike. We gathered for lunch in the Cerritos branch the night before, dinner was held for another group of social media savvy guests at the store in Carson. While the company specializes in baked goods, it has recently transformed its Cerritos and Carson stores into full-service restaurants where families and friends can sit down and enjoy an authentic Filipino meal.

I sat at a table with other bloggers/Instagrammers, and we were served a satisfying assortment of Filipino food. My most recent revisiting of the baking institution of my childhood (for, truly, it wasn’t just about birthday cakes, but all sorts of pasalubong goodness in the form of mamon, ensaymada, polvoron, sansrival…) was a few days ago, when I attended a lunch hosted and organized by owner Rob Yee and marketing director Agnes Francisco in celebration of Goldilocks’ 50th anniversary.

Goldilocks cerritos