Abacá Puts a California Spin On Traditional Filipino Cuisine

Just a block away from Fisherman’s Wharf, chef Francis Ang is creating modern Filipino food in San Francisco’s Kimpton Alton Hotel. He hopes to pay homage to traditional recipes while using California ingredients — plus plenty of pork.

“Pork in the Philippines is a very big protein, there’s a lot of different variations of pork,” Ang explains. “We have our lumpia, we have our sisig.”

A day of prep starts with Ang grilling and breaking down softly cooked pig’s heads, braising the bones for broth. He uses every part of the head, even putting aside the brain for the sisig fried rice. He preps the fried rice for service by stir-frying pork, chicken livers, distilled vinegar from the Philippines, calamansi juice, and soy sauce, which is cooked with rice right before being served.

Ang looks for specific marbling in pork shoulder that is chopped up and ground into filling for lumpia. Handmade, round wrappers are filled with piped filling, inspired by Ang’s background as a pastry chef. The frozen prepped lumpia is double-fried and served in a lettuce wrap for each order. Fertilized duck eggs are prepped for a balut dish from Abacá‘s secret menu, with fried duck fetus served with a duck bone broth and crispy duck skin.

The central mission of the Bay Area restaurant is making Filipino food more approachable and introducing diners to the food Ang grew up with. “A lot of times people say ‘I love coming here, now I’m going to visit the Philippines,’” he says. “I think that makes us proud.”

Watch the latest episode of Experts to see Ang expertly breaking down different cuts of pork to assemble modern Filipino dishes.