The King of Filipino Food in Los Angeles is Spoon & Pork

There is so much flavor off of the beef. This is fantastic. Thank you. I mean this is finger licking good. I wanted to challenge myself this week to step outside of my comfort zone. Luckily for me in Silver Lake in Sawtelle of Los Angeles, Filipino-owned Spoon and Pork provided me with not just that opportunity, but a new appreciation for our culture that just so happens to be the second largest Asian-American group in the U.S. More importantly, the food goes crazy. Both me and Raymond, we grew up in the Philippines. Being a young guy that just moved here from the Philippines, we were both scared of just jumping into the industry. Me and Raymond, we've never been chefs. We didn't go to culinary school. We didn't know what the business is. And then 2016, that's when we kind of got serious already. We were like at a point of our lives that we were kind of thinking, okay, I think we should really go with our passion at this point. So we were like, all right, why don't we just, we were thinking, why don't we just do Filipino food since we grew up in the Philippines. I mean, this is, you know, reminds us of home. Like the flavors we grew up with. You know, we planned actually selling Filipino food in a farmer's market first. And then that didn't work because the farmer's market didn't have space for us. So whatever we had saved up, we put it on the food truck. So we're like, all right, let's just do this. Worst case, it doesn't work out. We can, you know, get rid of the food truck. It sounded like a big investment, you know. So three months in, what was pretty awesome, LA Weekly at that time voted us best food truck in Los Angeles. We were having lunch at 2 p.m. after the food truck trip to West LA. We went back to the commissary. And then we went to this restaurant. We met this lady who actually owned this building. She just went up to us and asked us, hey, what are you two young guys doing in this restaurant at 2 p.m.? And we were like, we own a food truck actually. And she was like, oh, that's crazy. I'm in the food industry as well. I was like, oh, what do you do? I own a bunch of buildings in Silver Lake. And the funny thing is, me and Raymond, we were having that conversation in that restaurant. What location should we look for? And there you go. I mean, someone from heaven just dropped this girl in front of us. And then she told us, if you're really interested, you know, then actually you can check out the restaurant. Come November, LA Times, you know, for the restaurant, Tejal, the writer of The New York Times, voted our vegan dish to be one of the best dishes here. And they named it as LA's Top 15 Dishes for 2019. And then LA Times named the Petita Top 15 Dishes of LA 2019. It's funny, because when we were in the food truck, we would always joke around, like, when is Jonathan Gold coming? Or are we going to get the Michelin? And then it all just got here. It's just weird. I'm like, it's so surreal. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in on watching our story here on Spoon and Fork. The whole point of this is to show food culture in LA, but to also show the most authentic stories we can serving the best food. If you could take a second to like and subscribe, it would really help out the channel. It really helps out with the algorithm. And it just really helps share it to your friends, family, anybody that's interested in some food. So thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And we look forward to bringing you the next video. I've only had takeout from here, so I didn't get a chance to actually dine in. So I'd love for you to walk us through this Filipino food. What do you have for us here? So Adobo is the perfect way to start things because Adobo actually is our national dish. Adobo essentially is like soy, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorn. It varies from like each household. It's crazy. Like everybody has their own version of Adobo. We have over 7,000 islands in the Philippines. Oh, my God. This is so nice and tender. And what is this just for me to know? On top, it's like our own blend of like furikake, fried garlic, chives in there, and then we even do our own sriracha, which we call sriracha. Sriracha? Sriracha in the Philippines is delicious. This is fantastic. Thank you. I'm not a big pork guy, so for me, it has to really be exceptional. You know, I do love pork belly, but this is really, really good. Really, really good. Is there like a tip on how you make great pork belly? Because sometimes when I have it, there's not like a nice crispy edge. It's just like all in the preparation. With any pop cut of meat, you actually want to like just cook it very slow, so you want to put that back to render out. The best way to do it is just slow and slow. Oh, nice. So right here now, this is called the shroom salpicao. The origin of this, basically, the Philippines was run under Spain. They were colonized for like over 400 years. So this is kind of like a mismatch of Spain and Asia, you know, the Philippines. So what we have here is soy sauce, some garlic, butter, essentially. Normally, this dish is cooked with beans from the Philippines and Spain, so we wanted to add some mushrooms to it, so you know, I take on it. It goes really well with rice. A lot of customers actually save the sauce, and then when they get their main, they put that all over the rice. What I'm noticing, it's a little, it's rich. It's a little sweet, right? That's another thing that I struggle to cook at home is how to make delicious mushrooms. One tip with mushrooms, though, is, you know, for you not to get like this slimy texture, like that kind of mouthfeel, is you have to really cook it high heat. You want to like really brown the mushroom. Mmm. This is really, really good. Well, it's easily the best mushrooms I've ever had. I am not a vegan, but if I was, I would definitely order these mushrooms every day. This is sensational. Really, really, I'm trying not to cuss anymore. Really, really, really good, man. Really good. Jay, I saw you get a little excited when I wanted to try the beef tapas. Can you please walk us through this one? The beef tapa. Okay, so the beef tapa, one of the most favorite, I would say, breakfast dishes in the Philippines. This beef tapa that we're serving is pretty much homage to one of our favorite beef tapa restaurants in the Philippines, and it's called Rufa. Okay. And this is exactly how they serve it. There's two fried eggs, of course your garlic rice, the beef tapa, which is marinated in soy vinegar, garlic and pepper, and the achara. So the achara, this is a green papaya slaw. So it's a green papaya pickle that is common in the Philippines. This is called tap silog. So tap silog is three components in the plate. Tapa, meaning the beef, silog, meaning the rice, and log, meaning the egg. Okay. So that's the combination. And then, of course, it comes with the vinegar. This is our spicy vinegar that you can dab. It's for the beef. Okay. So traditionally, all Filipino, we love vinegar with our breakfast dishes. Oh, shoot. Okay. There is so much flavor off of the beef. This is so juicy and flavorful. This is exceptional. Thank you. I wonder why you guys are winning all these reviews and all this other stuff. Thank you. I'm not going to tell you. I'm trying not to tell you. Please tell us. But, man, this is unbelievable. Damn. This is the dish that made us. That's a good appetite, man. Bro. This is what we're known for. Oh, bro. You love to work out a lot. That's why you eat tapas. Yeah, yeah, I do. I'm on a bulk anyway, so this is working out for me. You just dropped off something here that is very impressive. It's called a patita, which literally translates to little foot. Yeah. So this is a dish that actually put us on the map, so this is what we're really known for. In the Philippines, we have this dish called crispy pata. So it's basically a pork shank that we slow cook, air dry, and then deep fry. So we wanted to do a version of ours that's a little bit smaller, hence the name patita. And normally, there's a dipping sauce that's served on the side, but with us, we actually wanted to do a blade. So this is inspired with Thai barbecue chicken and Korean fried chicken, like what we've had here. This is amazing. This is our comfort food. Here we go. All right. You're not playing fair. This... I mean, look at this. The skin is so crispy, and it's literally tender on the inside. Just like you said, I am strongly a beef and chicken guy. This goes great. So, thank you so much for introducing me to this. What else is next? What? I mean, this is finger-licking good. So essentially, karikari is a peanut-based stew. It's got short rib, green bean, eggplant, bok choy, king oyster mushroom, some peanut butter, just for like crunch. And what is the bagong itself? So bagong exo is essentially a fermented shrimp paste that we saute. There's some fried scallops in there, pork, tomato, garlic. Add a little bit of that. Put some on the meat. Add some sauce and then rice. And maybe some of this. And we'll have a little bit of rice, too. You know, my favorite, too. This is the first thing I have. We are really proud of this one. The thing is, this isn't a peanut butter sauce. You know, what I'm noticing is, all the great restaurants are not afraid to explore their menu. I mean, authenticity means so many things, but what could be authentic for you is just for me. So, let's say I grew up with this dish that's made with ox tail. And then, you know, I go next door and he grew up with a dish that's made with short rib. And what is it? Who am I to say, like, hey, yours is inauthentic? It's what we grew up with. You know, so, yeah, I mean, we still get, oh, your food's not authentic. But, yeah, but this is authentic to us. This is what we grew up on. These are the flavors that we know. So, to us, this is authentic food. Yeah. Raymond, I cannot thank you enough for letting us come in here and getting a chance to see what you guys do so, so well. Just know you're truly appreciated by foodies such as myself. Love the opportunity. I'm sure there's going to be people in here that have never heard, never tried Filipino food. So, I'm hoping that this is a great way of spotlighting how incredible the cuisine is. It's very, very, to be honest, unexpected because, you know, I don't know that much about the Philippines. So, to have you here, I know I've said it a few times, but just thank you. Thank you to Jay. This has been some of the best food I've ever had in Los Angeles. It's easy to throw around the word best these days, but we're talking about top-notch. You guys are right there with any place, you know, anything that they would consider fine dining, they need to come over here and have what you guys are serving. So, yeah, dude. Thank you. Fantastic, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you. The sauce is going in. Yeah. So, usually, yeah, that hits like super right. So, usually, like, when we try to clear corn on top, we're actually going to come up with, honestly, this is so much better. Really? This, rice, that was our, like. Oh, dude. Yeah.