Fiesta Filipina just opened at the mall — one of very few spots to get Filipino food in Tucson

On Monday afternoon, after the usual lunch rush, Thelma Ward sat in the food court of Park Place mall and turned to her right.

She smiled as she looked at her newly opened restaurant Fiesta Filipina.

“When I rented the space, it already had four monitors,” she said, looking at the four TVs hanging above the buffet of food. “I said, ‘I only need three (to display) the menu.’ ”

But Ward didn’t get rid of the fourth monitor. Instead, it plays a video from a tourism department, showcasing all the destinations and festivals around the Philippines.

“It’s a ‘Come on, it’s fun in the Philippines’ kind of video,” she said. She beamed as she watched it play.

Fiesta Filipina officially opened its Park Place spot about three weeks ago, but the venture actually began in 2018 with a food truck.

“I want Fiesta Filipina to be a flagbearer of some kind to the Filipino community — some place where they can come and gather and enjoy the food without having to cook it themselves,” Ward says. “And I would like to introduce the Philippines and the Filipino people to Tucson. That’s really what I would like to accomplish.

“People have to know who we are.”

Sharing her heritage

Beyond Fiesta Filipina, there are very few places in Tucson that offer Filipino food — so few that Ward can count them on one hand and still have fingers leftover.

“I am so jealous of other Asian restaurants — Chinese restaurants are on every corner; Japanese restaurants, of course; Vietnamese, Thai,” Ward said. “Why not Filipino?”

“The Philippines is my country of birth and I have been (in the United States) longer than I lived in the Philippines,” said Ward, who moved to the U.S. at age 29. “I don’t know what it is. Is it an innate sense of patriotism of having been born in the Philippines and knowing I have still have family there? There’s so much in the Philippines to be shared; beautiful beaches, we have wonderful food, we have beautiful, kind, welcoming, hospitable people. There is so much to share.”

Sharing a slice of the Philippines in Tucson is what she decided to do — after a failed attempt at retiring.

Ward previously owned three Baskin-Robbins locations in Tucson, which her son later took over.

“Both my husband and I are golfers,” Ward said. “After a few months of golfing and going to the movies and seeing all the movies, I thought, ‘I have to do something.’ So I said, ‘I’m going to start a food truck.’ ”

She went the food truck route because she wanted to go where the people were — concerts, holiday parties, events where thousands of people gathered.

“I was so pleasantly surprised when I started the food truck,” Ward said. “(The clientele) were mostly non-Filipino and they would come and they would know pancit and lumpia and adobo. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there has to be a niche for this sort of cuisine.’”

Then earlier this year, Ward took her grandkids to the movies at Park Place for the first time since the pandemic started.

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“I was so sad,” she said of the food court’s many vacancies. “I said, ‘What happened to the food court? There’s nothing here.’ ”

Almost on a whim, she decided to see how much a space in the food court would cost.

“That started all this and got the ball rolling,” Ward said.

When the opportunity seemed plausible, Ward looked to her loyal social media fans, asking them what they thought about Fiesta Filipina opening a permanent location.

The consensus was close to unanimous.

“I said, ‘What do you think? Is this something I should consider?’ ” Ward recalled, adding that the response was overwhelming. “It was, ‘Yes, because there’s nothing in Tucson and we have to keep following you around. Can you stay in one spot?’ ”

Ward decided to give it a go, but she didn’t want just a job. She wanted to create business.

Sharing cuisine

Ward became interested in cooking at a very young age. The kitchen was her favorite place.

Her father was the one who first taught her how to prepare chicken and she remembers enjoying trips to market with her mom when she was just 10 years old.

“It would be hard to find a Filipino man or woman who can’t cook,” Ward says. “We love to eat and cook and share our cuisine.”

Fiesta Filipina’s menu is filled with Filipino favorites: lumpia with pork and shrimp in a crispy eggroll-like shell; chicken or pork adobo, flavorful and still on the bone; pancit rice noodles with veggies; beef caldereta, a tomato-based stew with potatoes; halo-halo for dessert with ube-flavored condensed milk, jellies, beans and shaved ice.

Ward’s favorite is dinuguan, a pork blood stew that makes some customers go “eek” when they hear the description, she says. Others are excited to try it. Ward also loves the pork dish lechon, which is only available on Saturdays.

In the future, she hopes to serve lechon kawali, crispy pork belly, too. Same with Ginataang, something Ward says is a soupy dessert or midday snack with coconut milk, jackfruit, yams and sweet potatoes.

Ward also plans to keep the food truck around, bringing it back to life this spring.

“I owe a lot to that food truck,” she says. “I want to keep it around. I got this idea (of opening at the food court) from the food truck. The fact that it’s where people are instead of sitting and waiting for them to come.”

Now less than a month into Fiesta Filipina’s life at the mall, Ward says the spot is smoothing out its kinks and starting to gain popularity.

“A lot of people say, ‘We’re so happy you’re here,” Ward added. “We really need this.’”