You’re invited to dinner, so try the mac and cheese lumpia or the Filipino spaghetti

Every day after school, when Spencer Hunter got to his Filipino grandma’s house, food was always ready and waiting. When he would visit his Black grandma’s house, the smells of sweet potato pie, collard greens, and mac and cheese filled the house. At home, his mom was always cooking, including recipes from both sides of the family, along with experimenting with foods from different cultures and encouraging her kids to try something different at least once.

“That’s where food started really being instilled into my lifestyle,” he says. “During college, I studied abroad in Australia, Panama, Guatemala; everywhere I went, I was always drawn to food to experience the cultures. That is the best way you can experience cultures, by eating the food because you’re literally seeing their technology, the local produce, the local protein they have.”

He’s hoping people will take the opportunity to learn more about each other and both of his cultures at the Afro-Filipino Kamayan Dinner at the San Diego History Center from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday. A kamayan is a traditional, communal Filipino meal in which food is served on banana leaves and eaten by hand. Hunter’s menu fuses his family’s Black and Filipino traditions with dishes like macaroni and cheese lumpia, adobo fried chicken, barbecue pulled pork, Filipino spaghetti, jasmine rice, coll...