Don’t go to Mama Guava for pancit or adobo—you won’t find them on the one-page menu. Go for the lumpia, a crunchy wonder rolled in silken look fun and touched with tangy chile oil. Or the utog burger, whose twin beef patties are smashed with longanisa sausage and dolloped with a sauce of banana ketchup and pickled onions. In the old Pig & the Lady space on King Street, Mama Guava is the modern Filipino American diner we’ve been waiting for.
There’s much to say about it, because I’ve eaten here five times since it opened in October. Here are the main bullet points:
- In the same way Pig & the Lady is Viet-inspired but not a Vietnamese restaurant, Mama Guava is Filipino-inspired. Plates are sometimes modern American, sometimes global, sometimes close to chef-proprietor Monique Cadavona’s Kalihi girl heart, and nearly all show Filipino inflection.
- It won’t be there much longer: The five-day-a-week lunchtime pop-up will close when the lease expires at the end of February. After that, Cadavona—who cooked at Zippy’s, Pig & the Lady and MW Restaurant before sharpening her skills at Michelin-starred New York eateries—says she’ll likely turn to private catering.
So go now for the lumpia look fun ($15) and equally memorable bowls of crackly, wispy fried chicken skin ($7).
Go for the utog burger ($18), which lives up to its name (look it up) but is nearly overshadowed by the umami-rich garlic fries it comes with. And if eating blood isn’t your thing, the dinuguan sausage with threads of pickled green papaya ($19) may be your gateway dish. Cadavona’s version opens with soft notes of lemongrass and closes with a gentle earthiness that makes me ache for red wine.
Skewers are newer and feature barbecue pork, fish balls, quail eggs or tender grilled chicken glazed with kalbi sauce ($5 to $14 a skewer). Also notable is the surprisingly light salt and vinegar boneless fried chicken with rice and soy-calamansi tomatoes ($20).
Plant-forward dishes include stir-fried ong choy ($13) and tortang talong ($18) of charred eggplant with egg and garlic fried rice. Desserts are grilled butter mochi and chocolate chip cookies; and drinks include a matcha latte with a banana turon purée and a leche flan house cold brew.
If three chicken dishes seems a lot for one lunch, this was my brain overcompensating for the speed of Cadavona’s perpetual creativity. Her menu does switch up. Favorite top sellers get swept away to make room for new ideas, so I missed earlier chicken iterations, including salt-and-pepper karaage chicken and a crispy chicken burger. The crunchy, anato-red banh xeo I ordered every time is gone, as is a popular fish curry with roti. So is the homey hotpot of shaved pork belly, mushrooms and fish balls that was my first hint of a heart and skill set combo you don’t often see here…