Food culture researchers have collected a wide range of ethnographic data on what and how people eat in every corner of the world. One of the problems that has not yet been solved is how we can discuss two quite different food experiences in a ritual setting and a daily setting as integral parts of single food culture. This is especially true in the contact zone, which is characterized by reflexivity. In this essay, the author ethnographically describes the “everyday food” of the diasporic or in-between Chinese, who migrated from Fujian to the Philippines based on a survey conducted in Manila in 2020, and discusses what and how they experience their “minor food,” which could be discovered not in the unique attributes, but in the middle of majority’s food habits and the absence. In the diasporic Chinese food experiences, we can find two major food clusters: congee and noodles. Both are characterized by thick and sticky texture that comes from various starches. These foods are taken as “nothing” rather than foods without any ritual metaphors and meanings. It is through these foods before named that the diasporic Chinese nullified and neutralized the political powers either to bind them to their hometown, or to exclude them from the destination. For the diasporic Chinese, casual foods should neither be too traditional nor too modern, neither too Chinese nor too Filipino, neither too local nor too universal. The everyday foods of the diasporic Chinese are invented by neutralizing excessive symbolic meanings on both sides of the contact zone.

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