New Restaurant Opening in North Shreveport

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As restaurants across our area are closing we have some good news, especially for those that live and work in North Shreveport.

Boka has announced on Facebook they are opening a brand new restaurant in North Shreveport at 1727 North Market Street. Boka will feature Chamorro and Filipino cuisine.  Now, if you're like me and not familiar with what Chamorro is, according to Britannica.com:

Chamorro, indigenous people of Guam. The ancestors of the Chamorro are thought to have come to the Mariana Islands from insular Southeast Asia (Indonesia and the Philippines) about 1600 BCE. It is estimated that in the early 17th century there were between 50,000 and 100,000 Chamorro in the Marianas, but the disease and violence wrought by the Spanish reduced the Chamorro population to about 1,000 by 1820. During this period the Spanish eliminated the Chamorro on Saipan and relocated the Chamorro from across the Marianas to Guam. By the late 20th century there were about 50,600 Chamorro descendents on Guam whose ethnic background included a considerable admixture of Spanish, Filipino (based on Tagalog), and other strains. Their vernacular, called the Chamorro language, is not a Micronesian dialect but a distinct language with its own vocabulary and grammar. The Chamorro language is still used in many homes on Guam, though English is the island’s official language. The Chamorro are predominately Roman Catholic.

A quick search on Filipino cuisine yielded this from Wikipedia:

Dishes range from the very simple, like a meal of fried salted fish and rice, to curries, to complex paellas and cozidos of Iberian origin made for fiestas. Popular dishes include lechón (whole roasted pig), longganisa (Philippine sausage), tapa (cured beef), torta (omelette), adobo (vinegar and soy sauce-based stew ), kaldereta (meat stewed in tomato sauce and liver paste), mechado (larded beef in soy and tomato sauce), pochero (beef and bananas in tomato sauce), afritada (chicken or beef and vegetables simmered in tomato sauce), kare-kare (oxtail and vegetables cooked in peanut sauce), pinakbet (kabocha squash, eggplant, beans, okra, bitter melon, and tomato stew flavored with shrimp paste), sinigang (meat or seafood with vegetables in sour broth), pancit (noodles), and lumpia (fresh or fried spring rolls).

According to their post, Boka is opening Monday, May 1st. Checking Google Maps shows the location between Dixie Floors and the Burger King, in the strip mall location on North Market.