La Provincia is my mother’s dream restaurant. It would be a community kitchen that would center its focus on creating a space where immigrants could feel comfortable and find their community in a new area.

Juried Senior Showcase SCAD, 2023
Port City Review, Juried Gallery & Literary Arts Journal, 2023

When my mother moved to the USA, there were little resources for Filipino-Americans and she always felt a homesickness that was only lessened with home-cooked foods. This story is mirrored in many immigrants, and even those who are second, third, fourth generation Americans. This soon became the driving factor when conceptualizing La Provincia’s identity and community outreach. 

Since food is fundamentally tied with culture, this 18-page cookbook excerpt and 5-part menu system is used to visualize the Filipino hospitality and is filled with only the best Fuentes recipes. Hearing her immigration story and connecting with her on feeling an absence of community is something I never expected to come from this work, but it influenced the complete visual identity of this cookbook and me personally. It’s rewarding and honoring how my mom’s dream became a dream project for me.

Since the recipes would be foreign to its audience, the illustrations are playful to show the ease that comes in cooking each dish. The colors are derived from the Filipino flag but are dulled to represent the strain that is created from moving to the United States. They are narrative and stylized to show the familial tie between food and people. Anyone can make food but it’s the feelings food evoke that is most important; this is best shown through illustrations that showcase the same emotion.

Photography by Snigdha Gopidi