When Little Kitchen chef Marvin Quisido starts cooking, the whole area surrounding his family’s food truck on O’Neal Lane is filled with the smell of spices and barbecue. In the compact setup, Quisido deftly toggles between dishes on different burners, making sure each is cooked to perfection.
Little Kitchen is a family business. His wife, Gloria Quisido, immigrated to Louisiana from the Philippines in 2008 to be a teacher, and Marvin Quisido followed her the next year. After arriving in Louisiana, he worked at a variety of restaurants and hotels, including the Little Village and the Belle of Baton Rouge.
He learned the ins and outs of running a kitchen, and according to his son, Michael Quisido, became a really good Italian chef, too. Outside of work, though, their family’s passion was cooking Filipino food. For the last year, the three of them have juggled their day jobs with their food truck, choosing to sacrifice leisure time to bring their family’s recipes to the city.
Little Kitchen started as a catering side hustle under the name Marvin’s Kitchen. The Quisidos cooked and served food for prayer meetings and other Filipino events, just to spread love in the community. They weren’t making any money. But then people started requesting catering…