{"id":255113,"date":"2026-04-07T03:59:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T03:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/255113\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T03:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T03:59:20","slug":"airtalk-food-ubefest-and-long-beach-lumpia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/255113\/","title":{"rendered":"AirTalk Food: Ubefest and Long Beach Lumpia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been four years since James Oreste started <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/longbeachubefest\/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Ubefest<\/a>, a festival meant to highlight the purple yam that\u2019s become beloved not just in the Filipino diaspora but across the country. In that time, the food festival has grown in the number of vendors and become a broader appreciation of Filipino cuisine. <\/p>\n<p>The restaurant:<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s event is happening Saturday April 11 and Sunday April 12 in Cerritos. One of the festival\u2019s vendors, Emerson Baja, owner of <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/longbeachlumpia\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Long Beach Lumpia<\/a>, has been involved with the event for years, and he came into the studio to talk to host Austin Cross.<\/p>\n<p>The food: <\/p>\n<p>Baja\u2019s pop-up menu was inspired by a variety of things, with the traditional aspects of his menu coming from his family and other aspects by food he experimented with while attending Long Beach State. He became a probation officer after he graduated college, but his heart was always with food, specifically lumpia, which he served at a potluck.<\/p>\n<p>        Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re enjoying this article, you&#8217;ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople were like \u2018you\u2019re in the wrong business,\u2019\u201d Baja said.<\/p>\n<p>For the segment, Baja brought in a variety of lumpias: traditional Shanghai; pork chile verde; veggie pancit pizza; and ube cheesecake turon.<\/p>\n<p>The verdict:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When Emerson mentioned the Shanghai lumpia being a homemade recipe, Cross added, \u201cHome is delicious! You have a home like this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s finger-licking good over here,\u201d Cross said after his first bite of the ube cheesecake turon lumpia. He added: \u201cIt\u2019s really special because it has an aftertaste of a very heartwarming pastry\u2026feels very homey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full conversation here:<\/p>\n<p>Ubefest comes to Cerritos, bringing ube and other Filipino goods to festivalgoers<\/p>\n<p>                                    <script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been four years since James Oreste started Ubefest, a festival meant to highlight the purple yam that\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[37791,113002,131,133,113000,132,113001],"class_list":{"0":"post-255113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-airtalk","9":"tag-food-friday","10":"tag-long-beach","11":"tag-long-beach-headlines","12":"tag-long-beach-lumpia","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-ubefest"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}