The Filipino favorite lumpia is now a certified food craze in Wichita, Kansas – thanks to the enterprising couple of Parsnipity Café.
The fried spring roll that is present on every Philippine fiesta table and just about any Filipino gathering has been making the rounds of Kansas via the LumpiaPalooza food truck – in high demand and booked solid until October in events just 3 months since it started operations.
The LumpiaPalooza food truck just wrapped up its appearance as the first food truck at the Sedgwick County Fair, and is now on its way to be set up in music festivals, business openings, fairs and breweries, reports Kansas’ Wichita Eagle.
Writer Denise Neil in her article affirms the local craving for the Pinoy lumpia and describes how the fried roll went from a featured dish at the Parsnipity Café inside the Epic Center at 301 N. Main, to a dish of 40 variants rolled to events on a food truck.
The Parsnipity Café signature item, the “long and skinny fried spring roll stuffed with ground beef, carrots, onions, celery, salt and pepper and served with a side of homemade sweet and sour sauce” has become a designer item stuffed with ingredients such as mac and cheese, chocolate chip cookie dough, blueberry lemon, taco-flavored, vegan, pepperoni pizza, and a whole lot more.
Neil says the lumpia is in such an unexpected high demand that owners Chef Cynthia Wilson and General Manager Craig Bjork have solicited help from customers in rolling the lumpia, citing the hiring of half of the Maize High competitive cheerleading squad, clients from Goodwill Industries, youth group members from their church, some of their close friends to roll, and even their close friends’ mothers.
Parsnipity has even closed off a fine dining area in the café and turned in into a lumpia-rolling factory to meet the demand.
Wilson recounts how she decided to add lumpia to the Parsnipity Café menu remembering how she savored it when she was growing up in Hawaii, and continuing to serve it on her family dinner table.
In Halloween 2016, Wilson decided to feature the lumpia in LumpiaPalooza, an event that had people feast on 20 varieties of lumpia stuffed with apple pie, banana Nutella, feta, spinach and other savory ingredients. The rolls sold for $1.50 each.
“We sold 1,000 lumpia that day,” Wilson shared. “It was both the best day and the worst day of my life. We had only been in business two months and weren’t even quite on our feet, and the lines were down the street.”
Wilson made good on her promise to make LumpiaPalooza a regular event if it was successful, went beyond just an event, and made it a food truck.
The rest, as they say, is history.
LumpiaPalooza food truck offers 10 lumpia varieties at a time, and can be booked through Parsnipity Café.
