Lordfer Lalicon, Marie Mercado, Jamilyn Bailey and Julius Mayo Jr., renowned voices in the Filipino culinary community of Central Florida, gather at Nipa Hut in Kissimmee. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

“I’ve been here for years and I never met any Filipinos,” Lordfer Lalicon’s contractor, himself a Filipino, told him one day amid construction at Kaya (exploretock.com/kaya). “Now, all of a sudden I see them everywhere!”

Lalicon, co-owner of Kaya, says he hears it all the time.

“I think it’s because we assimilate very well. We’re taught to, actually.”

It could be said this culture, which is so prevalent in California, Hawaii, Texas — and in bigger cities like Chicago and New York — has flown a little under the radar close to home, but Filipino food has been around in Orlando for quite some time.

Grocery stores, gas stations, (turo-turo mom-and-pops where customers “point-point” — the Tagalog translation — at food behind cafeteria-style glass) and sit-down restaurants not widely known outside Filipino circles have gained visibility in recent years due to boosts — by next-gen members of its own community and chefs bridging the culture gap.

The city is ready to move beyond lumpia, say prominent Filipinos in Orlando’s culinary scene. Their food, and with it their culture, is stepping into the light.

Adobo is widely touted as the National Dish of the Philippines, but sinigang, says Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, is a better contender. This sour soup, shown here with pompano, "is made everywhere and always changing based on whatever is in your backyard. That's the most Filipino thing you can do." (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

When Kaya opens later this year — Lalicon and co-owner Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, two of the team behind Kadence, Orlando’s eight-seat OG of omakase — are targeting late July/early August, it will be Orlando’s first Filipino fine-dining restaurant. One that will hop amid this vast, 7,000-island nation to showcase its varied ingredients, cooking techniques and stories in a poshly renovated Mills 50 bungalow.

It’s a passion project, to be sure, one that represents a new generation of Filipinos reclaiming their heritage with pride and a desire to share their unique and varied culinary offerings — their way.

Bicol express is Filipino comfort food personified with pork, ginger, garlic, coconut milk and chilies. "What's cool about Filipino food, though," says chef Lordfer Lalicon, "is that there are no rules. You do what makes you feel good." (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

“Kaya is going to be a departure, something we’ve never seen before,” says food blogger and photographer Julius Mayo Jr., known in foodie circles as Droolius (droolius.com).

A first generation Filipino American, Mayo was born in Los Angeles and raised in Southwest Florida before moving to Orlando in 1996 to attend the University of Central Florida.

“That’s when I realized I’d been taking my mother’s cooking for granted because I always had good Filipino food at home,” he says. Mayo joined the Filipino Student Association and began experimenting in the kitchen.

“We would go to DeGuzman to get our ingredients. Back then it was just groceries.”

Today, the long-standing “Oriental Food Mart” on Orlando’s Colonial Drive is a local favorite for turo-turo, generously packing Styrofoam to-go boxes with dishes from adobo to mechado.

A spread at Inay's Kitchen in Ocoee. From top right: sisig, bbq chicken sticks, dinuguan, lechon kawali and lumpia. (Amy Drew Thompson / Orlando Sentinel)

Today, we are lunching at Inay’s Kitchen in Ocoee, an informal, family-run restaurant run where the lumpia comes fresh-fried. They’re called spring rolls on the menu.

“You have to cater to the neighborhood,” says Mayo, who recalls another place in a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood he’d sometimes visit years ago. “They served lechon kawali (a marvelous Filipino dish of fried pork belly), but they called it pernil ... Filipinos are very accommodating, so I think they don’t want you to eat something that’s off-putting.”

This, before we tuck into dinuguan, an offal-inclusive pork stew, its gravy redolent of garlic and chili with a hint of vinegar sour. Its foundational ingredient? Blood.

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It’s sometimes called “chocolate meat.”

In part, that’s due to the dark rich color of a gravy that can be thinner or thicker — “more coagulated,” says Mayo, and we laugh, but it’s also a name that sanitizes the potential “otherness” of something new immigrants often sought to hide.

Sometimes from even their children, says Bailey. This during a meet up at Kissimmee’s Nipa Hut.

“‘You’re an American kid now,’ was the sentiment,” she explains. “You’re not going to like dinuguan and so I’m only going to serve pancit, lumpia and barbecue on a stick.”

Noodles. Spring rolls. Skewers. Things Americans recognized, related to.

“They didn’t want to stand out. They wanted to assimilate,” she explains. “But now everyone knows Filipino food as those three things — and maybe adobo.”

Instead of simplifying Filipino food as their parents did, this new generation is looking to expand it.

Jamilyn Bailey, Marie Mercado and Lordfer Lalicon sample featured dishes served at Nipa Hut during a gathering of Central Florida Filipino culinary experts at the Kissimmee restaurant. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

From the beginning, says chef/owner Michael Collantes, Taglish has been a connecting point, a next-generation perspective.

“There are amazing restaurants here doing traditional food, but I really wanted to rep what I felt Filipino food is in America and hopefully create a connection with the older generation and allow for an emergence of the new.”

Collantes, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, moved to Orlando from New Jersey in his early teens.

“New Jersey had a very large, strong community. Here, there was none. I didn’t seek it out. And so I really lost that connection in my formative years.”

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As a young chef, Collantes traveled the country and amid Hawaii’s strong Filipino presence rediscovered that sense of family. Upon returning home, his first child on the way, he felt a tug.

“There was a strong yearning to connect with my heritage.”

Taglish, which merged fine-dining techniques with Filipino fare, garnered lots of attention when it opened at Lotte Market on West Colonial.

“The most obvious thing would have been to do sushi, something I know, but instead, we thought ‘let’s do Filipino.’”

Lalicon draws the food-court parallel with Chinese food.

“It started with General Tso’s, but now we’ve got real Sichuan around town,” he notes. “Taglish was introducing Filipino food in a way that was comfortable to Americans. Approachable. Cost conscious. You can’t just open a restaurant and start charging people $50 for a plate. You need a gateway.”

Jamilyn Salonga Bailey tucks into the halo halo at Nipa Hut in Kissimmee. A quintessential Filipino dessert of crushed ice and sweet milk with various toppings. "Every tita has her own way of making it," says Marie Mercado, who will offer up her own versions when Sampaguita opens in Mills 50 later this year. (Amy Drew Thompson / Orlando Sentinel)

And you can’t go wrong if it’s cool.

“Ice cream is a great medium for people unfamiliar with Filipino foods or culture to learn about our flavors,” says Marie Mercado, founder of Orlando’s funky Greenery Creamery ice cream shops.

With successful outposts both downtown and at Henry’s Depot in Sanford, Mercado says the brand has been a steppingstone for Sampaguita, an ice cream shop and bakery with plans to open in Mills 50 later this year.

“Ice cream is a big part of Philippine culture. Street hawkers sell treats from ‘dirty ice cream’ carts. It’s not necessarily made in a very technical way … but instead crafted at home with common ingredients from the grocery store,” said Mercado. ” ‘Dirty’ refers to how dirt-cheap it is.”

Sampaguita’s operation will feature dishes that meld Mercado’s funky sensibilities with her Filipina heritage. Flavors like queso and calamansi — and the city’s first vegan halo halo — plus a little next-gen influence from her own childhood in South Florida, like ube cafecito.

“I don’t have to live up to the expectations of other people,” she says. “I’m excited to put our spin on everything — like sugar cone crumbles on pandesal — and do it in a really fun, really unique way.”

Collantes, whose Taglish has since morphed into something even more American — a Filipino-influenced burger joint — recently spun up the Kamayan Supper Club, an intimate dinner where guests eat more traditional offerings with their hands.

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Kamayan is something the Kadence gang began doing as backyard pop-up events several years back, a gentle entry into the chill culture they intend to bring to Kaya, though Lalicon shies away from words like “elevated” when speaking of the casual fine-dining concept.

“It makes it sound like we think it’s better. It’s just representing our culture the way we feel it, the way we want it to be represented,” Lalicon said. ”We want to speak our Filipino soul.”

Bailey says it’s more like an evolution.

“We don’t have to be stuck in time. It doesn’t have to be like the traditional food we only ate at home. It doesn’t have to only be cheap,” Bailey said. “And it can incorporate that intersection of our own experiences, bring that to the table and add another layer of being Filipino to Filipino food.”

Featured dishes from the Nipa Hut are served during a gathering of Central Florida Filipino culinary experts at the Kissimmee restaurant. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

Lalicon is the first of his family to be born stateside. His brothers, older by nine and 11 years, lived in the Philippines for roughly a decade before the family emigrated. He says it’s given him a unique perspective.

“Our parents were fighters when they got here. They had to fight to take care of their kids, not to create community. I grew up very differently from my brothers, in a space of equality and freedom.”

“It’s a hierarchy of needs,” says Mercado. “Once you’re comfortable, you can grow and explore.” She says watching “Spider-man: No Way Home” in the theater, which features a scene spoken entirely in Tagalog, was her signal that the tipping point was here.

“There were no subtitles!” she says. “And all the Filipinos were laughing. And I thought, ‘Orlando is ready.’”

Joel and Mayra Paoner of the OverRice food truck. "We're the hidden gem of South Asian food," he says of Filipino fare. Paoner has been introducing Central Floridians to both Filipino and Hawaiian food for a decade. Their brick-and-mortar eatery will open at 1084 Lee Road in Orlando in late summer. (Julius Mayo Jr. / Courtesy photo)

Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group or follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.