After nearly a decade as a probation officer, Emerson Baja needed a change.
He switched gears to social work and poured more attention into hobbies, and a year ago began bringing in lumpia for his coworkers to try.
Now, he sells out nearly every event he does around Long Beach, and says “lumpia may be helping me reach my full potential.”
“I know when I make lumpia and fry it, somebody is going to eat it and somebody’s going to taste the love and it’s going to make a lot of people, groups of people happy,” Baja said.
Lumpia is essentially a Filipino egg roll. The most well-known version is lumpia Shanghai, which typically features ground beef and ground pork with mixed veggies rolled inside of a pastry sheet, then deep fried.
The slogan on the Long Beach Lumpia banner – Made with Hella Love – is a shout out to Baja’s Bay Area roots and also a philosophy his mom passed down to him about preparing food.
Baja moved from Richmond to Long Beach for college.
“As soon as I stepped in the city, something about it felt like home,” he said.
After moving back to Long Beach from Santa Barbara, where Baja spent a stretch working as a probation officer, the pair met up at a bar and Baja laid out his plan to launch a business selling creative varieties of lumpia.
Baja met his friend and fellow lumpia roller Victor Rodriguez in a fraternity at Cal State Long Beach.
Rodriguez has been nothing but supportive since then, Baja said, helping to craft new recipes and even lend a hand making lumpia for events after he gets off work.