Chef Chai Chaowasaree is offering a family-style dinner for Filipino Food Week, to include whole fried tilapia with garlic-patis dipping sauce.
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CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Stage Restaurant chef Ron de Guzman works on tacos filled with pork tocino, a Filipino dish similar to Chinese char siu.
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COURTESY STAR NOODLE
A kamayan spread served on banana leaves at Star Noodle on Maui includes shrimp, eggplant, lumpia, barbecued pork, grilled chicken and deep-fried fish.
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Stage Restaurant Chef Ron de Guzman, who has loved Filipino food since his childhood, has the chance to elevate the homestyle cooking of his heritage for upscale diners unfamiliar with the cuisine.
Starting Sunday, the stylish restaurant, attached to the chic Honolulu Design Center store on Kapiolani Boulevard, will be among 20 eateries celebrating Filipino Food Week Hawaii, running through June 15.
The Philippine Consulate General in Honolulu is spearheading the event, inviting restaurants to hold pop-up events and kamayans (communal meals served without utensils), or to create Filipino appetizers, main courses, desserts or drinks. At least one of the items should incorporate coconut, one of the Philippines’ most popular ingredients.
“Filipino cuisine is all about fusion and various influences of different countries,” said Andrea Christina Caymo, vice consul and economic officer. Spanish and Chinese cuisines are particular influences, she said. “It’s just great to feature how our cuisine is being adopted to suit the tastes of non- Filipino diners.”
Participating restaurants include Roy Yamaguchi’s Eating House 1849, Merriman’s Honolulu and Sheldon Simeon’s two Maui restaurants, Lineage and Tin Roof.
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Many, like Stage, don’t normally feature Filipino dishes but were enthusiastic about participating because a majority of their cooks and servers are of Filipino heritage, Caymo said. “They wanted to share the cuisine of their people with other diners. And it’s also a good way to experiment and try new things, and see what would work for their existing clients.”
At Stage, de Guzman has been working on refining Filipino food for his upscale customers for the past two years. He has seen the cuisine catching on in certain mainland cities, riding the trend of what he terms, “craft comfort food.”
His deep-fried adobo arancini with balsamic reduction — a fusion of pork adobo with the Italian classic appetizer of fried rice balls — became such a favorite in Stage’s Amuse Wine Bar last year that it crossed over onto the dinner menu, he said. For Filipino Food Week, de Guzman is making the arancini (adobo encased in a ball of risotto and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese) and four other appetizers for the wine bar, including tacos filled with pork tocino (similar to Chinese char siu) and a tender, richly braised pork adobo slider with crispy onions on pandesal bread.
The chef will make other Filipino dishes for a five-course dinner tasting menu for $60, featuring Kona kampachi with coconut milk and ogo, one of the dishes he made at a 2017 James Beard House event in New York. The second course will be kare-kare style braised beef short rib, based on the traditional stew made with peanut sauce, served with coconut-braised taro leaf, based on the Filipino taro dish liang.
De Guzman grew up watching his grandmother cook for the family, “always with a spoon, tasting and tasting. It’s comfort cooking; she didn’t have a recipe.” He remembers her adjusting to the ingredients she had on hand.
To refine the homestyle stews and fried dishes of Filipino cuisine, he often leans on other cuisines, including classic French, swapping out certain ingredients. Balasami vinegar instead of white, for example, gives a dish a sweeter flavor, de Guzman said. He has also deconstructed dishes, or used different cuts of meat and garnishes, to present them in a more stylized way.
“I’ve borrowed from all the different cuisines I learned to cook.”
AMONG TRADITIONAL Filipino restaurants, Dana’s is offering a kamayan set menu for $65, enough to feed four or five people. It includes dinuguan, pork braised in pig’s blood; and crispy pata, deep-fried pig knuckles. Star Noodle, an Asian restaurant on Maui, will also offer a kamayan, as its Filipino chef usually makes it as a special once a month.
Caymo said kamayan dining entails heaping the food in an appetizing arrangement in the middle of the table on banana leaves.
There are no plates or the usual utensils — diners just help themselves. “You just use your hands, Caymo said. “Normally it’s dried food, so it’s like eating finger foods. It’s OK to touch (your piece) without having to touch the other food.”
Things get a little sticky with rice, she acknowledged, but it’s usually casual eating with family members.
CHEF CHAI, known for its Thai and Hawaii Regional Cuisine menu, is assembling a family-style Filipino dinner for the week.
The menu — appetizers to dessert for a minimum of two diners for $50 — includes whole crispy tilapia with garlic-patis dipping sauce; chicken curry with coconut milk, potatoes and bell pepper; and stir-fried lechon (roast pig) with crispy basil.
“We have a lot of Filipino employees, and I wanted to do something involving them,” chef Chai Chaowasaree said.
One chef he’s worked with for 18 years often makes Filipino dishes for the kitchen staff, just to serve something different. Chaowasaree takes his turn making the same meals .“But for all chefs, the key is how to balance the sweet and spicy, etc.; no matter what kind of food it is, you have to have the palate.”
His own native Thai cuisine shares much with Filipino food, he said, citing as examples the use of tamarind and patis, or fermented fish sauce, called nam pla in Thai. Curries are similar, he added, although Thai versions are a little stronger. “Thai and Fillipino foods are very similar in so many ways in flavor profile.”
He welcomed the food week challenge to elevate Filipino dishes with their exciting colors and flavors. With so many regular customers who are Filipino, he and his staff wanted “to try and show them we understand their culture, we appreciate who they are, and we want to do something different for them.”
FILIPINO FOOD WEEK HAWAII
>> When: Sunday through June 15
>> Info: 429-4458, andrea.caymo@dfa.gov.ph
>> Note: The top-selling restaurant will be awarded two round-trip tickets to the Philippines from Philippine Airlines and a culinary tour of the country
