Pop ups are “popping up” more and more in Stockton and surrounding areas.
This week, I am meeting up with Benny Peneyra and his team, who started a Filipino pop up, Rice Queen Social Club.
Born in the Philippines and coming to the states at a young age, Benny started cooking at the age of 12.
He majored in pastry before he “dove into savory” in 2013.
Benny worked with Chef Ravi Kapur, who he described as “the king of pop ups, he started Hawaiian fusion pop ups” in San Francisco, where he was inspired to start a pop up of his own.
Starting from not knowing what a pop up consisted of, Rice Queen Social Club is going on four years and getting a food truck in December.
“Planning to be based in Stockton, make our way to Sacramento and eventually, in the future, go back to San Francisco,” said Benny.
Rice Queen Social Club has big plans ahead.
Benny and his team have received a lot of support from the Stockton community.
“I’m actually very surprised. The community has always showed up and showed out here. They come to every event,” said Benny.
“Being from San Francisco, a lot of Filipino-American businesses aren’t represented as much as they should be,” he said, and the “way to get noticed was to pop up.”
Rice Queen Social Club has a menu that varies per event. The main dishes that you can find at almost all of the events are “The O.G. (chicken vegetable lumpia with sweet chile sauce), Garlic Fried Rice (topped with a fried egg) and Dumplings (pan fried chicken dumplings, fishcake, crispy garlic, chili oil and sweet chile glaze).”
Whether you’ve tried Rice Queen Social Club’s O.G. lumpia or not, you can definitely tell they are homemade and there’s love put into them.
Make sure to follow Benny and his team on Instagram @ricequeensocial for upcoming events.
This issue, I will be starting a food column in The Collegian looking at local restaurants, pop ups and other food related business in and around Stockton.
I graduated in 2017 with my Associates in Science for Culinary Arts here at Delta College.
From the Culinary Program, I was able to open up my palate and try different cuisines, as well as travel to Italy to study abroad for 17 days.
Since then, I like to travel as much as I can to see, read and write about all the different types of foods in the world.
Checking out multiple locations, with a focus on the locally-owned and the variety of different cultures of food in the area.
Follow me along on this food adventure to find some cool new spots to go out and eat.
PHOTO BY: MARIA ABUGARADE RAYO