It’s not often that twentysomethings choose to spend their Saturday night at a grocery store, but on the first Saturday of December, Stacey Dulay and Joy Tejada wanted nothing more than to go to Seafood City Supermarket in Scarborough.
Leading up to the event, the 26- and 27-year-old friends had been sending each other videos of Late Night Madness, a series transforming the Filipino market into an energetic after-hours party.
Taking place over two nights – Dec. 12 and 13 – from 8 p.m. to midnight, the series blends Filipino cuisine and culture through dance, song and street food.
Across the GTA, the Filipino community has been anticipating the parties since they first gained traction on social media after Seafood City’s U.S. events in October for Filipino American History Month. One of the videos from the market’s location in Daly City, Calif., amassed over 65,000 likes on TikTok, while other videos on Instagram have reached 792,000 views.
“Our families are Filipino, so this event feels like it brings our culture together,” says Dulay, who drove from Markham to attend with three friends.
The party is scheduled to take place at all five Seafood City locations across Canada – Calgary, Edmonton, Mississauga, Scarborough and Winnipeg – simultaneously.
At the Scarborough location, the energy inside is loud and, at times, frenzied, as people dance, sing and shout to an eclectic mix of Top 40, country, Spanish and Filipino hits. Filipino street foods – kwek-kwek (battered quail eggs), inihaw na baboy (barbecue pork skewers) and lumpia Shanghai (fried spring rolls) – draw their own crowd, with the vendor line snaking past the checkout counters. At one of the grocery store’s live-in restaurants, Grill City, workers cook up hearty Filipino favourites such as fragrant sinigang (sour tamarind soup), chicken adobo (vinegar and soy sauce stew) and lechon (roast pig).
Julian Trinidad, a Scarborough resident and regular Seafood City shopper, admits the food is what brought him to the event, but says passing on his culture to his preschool-aged daughter is important.
“I was born here and I’m not very good at the language,” he said about his mother tongue, Tagalog. “But whatever I know and can retain, I’m trying to at least pass on to her.”
The event is especially meaningful for Kris Pangilinan, the Filipino-Canadian founder of clothing brand Kalamansi Collective, which partnered with Seafood City for the events.
Kris Pangilinan, Filipino-Canadian founder of clothing brand Kalamansi Collective partnered with Seafood City for the events. Late Night Madness has grown into a viral late-night celebration blending music, food and community. The Scarborough edition, created with Kalamansi Collective, highlights the energy and cultural presence of Toronto’s Filipino community.
He recalls the time before the chain first came to Canada in 2017. “I think a lot of Filipinos had the same experience: We shopped for groceries from back home at Chinese supermarkets, but this finally felt like we had our own grocery store.”
On the dance floor, attendees hold signs made by the Kalamansi Collective, reading “Not today, tita” – a playful nod to nosy Filipino aunts. At the front of the store, T-shirts printed with “Brought together by good food and line dancing” hang on display.
“It’s a nod to everything that’s going to be happening at Late Night Madness,” says Pangilinan.
77-year-old Lornita Ricketts spent most of the night on the dance floor.
And he’s right. On the dance floor, the crowd forms lines as Filipino-Canadian DJs Pamela Ann and Dolf The DJ spin Daniela Romo’s Spanish track Todo, Todo, Todo.
One of the titas line dancing is Lornita Ricketts, a 77-year-old Philippines native who immigrated to Toronto in 1976 from Magalang in the province of Pampanga. She spends most of the night on the dance floor with her daughter, Laura Ricketts. They came out with more than three generations of family to celebrate their niece’s birthday.
“I love to dance. I love the cha-cha, the boogie-woogie and line dancing,” she says.
The biggest cheers erupt when Bayani Agbayani’s Otso-Otso booms over the speakers.
“This is the Filipino anthem,” the emcee announces as organizers toss free packages of pandesal – a sweet bread roll – toward the dance floor and the crowd chants along.
“It’s great to look around and see so many people who look like me,” says Karen Maniacup, a 26-year-old Torontonian who attended with her boyfriend, parents, and titas and titos. For her, it was important to share her culture with her boyfriend, who is not Filipino.
“I didn’t grow up around a lot of Filipino people in school, so now I absolutely love being Filipino and I love showing how much I love the culture,” she says.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the dates for upcoming Late Night Madness events. They will take place Dec. 12 and 13.
