Check out Roland Floro Calupe's menu of Filipino Hawaiian drinking food at the Reader's weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary's Tavern.
One little known modern Hawaiian legend holds that spam katsu musubi was forged in the roiling molten caldera of Kīlauea and retrieved from the inferno by a nimble and daring Chicago chef.
It's so modern, in fact, that it happened just a few weeks ago when Roland Floro Calupe summited the erupting crater in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. Like a kitchen Prometheus he absconded with the nori-bound coupling of rice and panko-breaded, deep-fried pork, and now brings it to you when the Hawaiian Filipino alloy known as Panlasa plays the next Monday Night Foodball, the Reader's weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary's Tavern.
"First of all, there're a lot of Filipinos in Hawai'i," says Calupe, who opened Panlasa in October in the French Market. But "there is this melting pot of Asian cuisines in general. So you have influences from Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and obviously the Native populations."
Calupe, who's cooked all over the city and beyond over the last two decades -- from Spiaggia to Eataly to Marcus Samulesson's late C-House -- flipped to private chefing about six years ago. Much of the last two were spent flying between home and the Islands for a steady series of lucrative and prominent gigs.
He's gotten to know the food of Hawai'i intimately, along with the people who produce it. His cousins, for example, grow native grass for their livestock, as well as bananas, mangoes, lychees, māmaki tea, and kalo, aka taro, on the Hilo side of the Big Island.
His travels led to the birth of Panlasa, modeled on the okazuya rice-and-side-dish delis omnipresent in the archipelago. But he has a broad vision beyond the Filipino-influenced rice bowls he offers in the market. For one, he wants to highlight lesser-known varieties of Hawaiian-grown products like chocolate, coffee, and honey.
"I want to showcase the producers, the farmers and ingredients. Not just provide people with Hawaiian comfort food, but also to share some of these experiences I was able to have with these amazing ingredients."
Therefore, his Foodball menu looks nothing like his food hall menu. It's an ambitious collection of pulutan and pū-pū, aka drinking food, in Tagalog and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, respectively.
It starts with that volcanic spam katsu musubi, and sinigang-seasoned shrimp chips, tasting of the iconic sour tamarind-spiked soup of the Philippines.
There's vinegar-kissed mushroom adobo arancini; a chilled furikake-seasoned soba noodle salad; and the special chubby, noodle-stuffed chicken, pork, or veggie lumpia that his dad rolls by the hundreds for the restaurant.
A porky duo forms the bedrock of the menu: a kalua pork sandwich in the style of Philly roast pork, with Chinese broccoli, melted sharp provolone, and Dijonnaise with Japanese pickles, served au jus of the pork braising liquid. And there's a jaw-dropping porchetta-style roast pork lechon, its crispy exterior jacketing the belly and loin wrapped around a paste of lemongrass, scallions, and garlic, just as one does in Cebu Province.
To finish, he's subbing brown sugar-dusted pineapple for banana in the fried lumpia wrapper-stuffed turon, served with a coconut milk-fish sauce caramel; and a creamy, vanilla-scented, Barney-purple ube crème caramel.
This historic union of complementary tropical island cuisines erupts this Monday, January 20, beginning at 5 PM until sellout at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale.
Meantime, gaze upon the full Foodball schedule below.