At 5 years old, Eric Cabrera stood on a chair in the kitchen helping his mother make her treasured lumpia. By the time he was a little older, he didn’t need a recipe or his mom’s help to make the “most popular dish at parties.”
“All my friends would beg me to cook them lumpia whenever we would have a get-together,” he said.
Now, decades later, he and his wife, Diane Cabrera, are bringing that beloved Filipino family recipe to the Central Coast at their new restaurant, Lumpia Bros Cafe, in Grover Beach. With his brother and cousin also involved, the Cabreras created a family-run spot that aims to fill a long-standing gap in the local food scene by offering “Filipino comfort food” to the community.
“There are so many amazing restaurants here,” Eric said. “They’re all amazing, but there’s no Filipino food. Everybody loves Filipino food, and so we were like, ‘Hey, why don’t we just try our hand at seeing how the community might feel about this?'”
While Santa Maria has a couple of Filipino restaurants, Lumpia Bros is the first in San Luis Obispo County. To test the waters before diving in, the couple started by selling lumpia—fried spring rolls—on the side at their Pacific Coast Hawaiian Shave Ice and Boba shop in Pismo Beach. The dish quickly became a fan favorite, encouraging them to pursue the next steps in opening the Filipino-focused restaurant.
“We’re just so blessed to be able to have had our boba shop help us get warmed up to having a business that’s a little bit even bigger than the original business,” Eric said. “It helped propel us into being a little bit more knowledgeable when opening our second business.”
They opened Lumpia Bros Cafe in October 2024, and in March, Eric and Diane sold their boba business so they could put more time and energy into running the new place. According to Eric, opening the restaurant led to an “overwhelmingly amazing response from the community.”
“We apparently filled a void that we didn’t even realize was there,” he explained. “We felt that there was a demand for it and that it was time for it, but we had no idea this amazing, huge response we’d get from the community. They’ve been craving Filipino food for a long time.”
In addition to lumpia, the cafe also serves açai bowls, pancit (a traditional noodle dish), adobo (meat in a sweet-savory sauce), longganisa (sausages), and more. The couple recently started opening their restaurant at 7 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday to catch the morning crowd, offering their original ube matcha latte and a variety of coffee options from their full espresso bar.
“We wanted to open up early to offer coffee because we love coffee, and we also wanted people to have a space to hang out and do work,” Diane said. “We have some regulars right now who come in and do their work and have a coffee.”
Many of the dishes at Lumpia Bros Cafe, including the Spam musubi and lumpia fries, feature the restaurant’s very own Mabuhay Sauce, created by Eric, who explained that the word “mabuhay” means “long live” in Tagalog.
“We wanted to call it the Mabuhay Sauce to give it a cool Filipino name, and everybody likes it,” he said. “Everybody’s been asking for it. Everybody’s been asking if they can buy a bottle.”
Eric created the sauce by accident one day, he said, adding that he didn’t make any measurements or take any notes. After some experimentation, he perfected the sauce recipe, and now, they are working to bottle it to sell to interested customers.
Diane said that when new people come into the restaurant, they sometimes share their connection to Filipino food in what she and the team have dubbed a “Filipino story.”
“They say, ‘Oh, my son-in-law is Filipino,’ or ‘my neighbor was Filipino, and they brought me food,’ or ‘my co-worker is Filipino, and they always bring pancit or lumpia,'” she recounted. “We get those stories literally every day.”
Both Eric and Diane emphasized their desire to foster a welcoming environment at Lumpia Bros Cafe, where people feel seen and valued. To do this, they have ensured that every employee is trained on what they call “customer care” instead of customer service.
“We really want people to feel comfortable when they come into our shop,” Diane said. “We want them to feel like family, like friends, because that’s how we want to feel when we go into a business. I want to feel welcomed. I want to feel comfortable, not judged. I don’t want to feel invisible.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Emma Montalbano at emontalbano@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in May 8-18, 2025.