With Lasa, has LA’s Filipino food movement finally arrived?

Named after the Tagalog word for “taste” or “flavor”, Lasa is the brainchild of Filipino-American brothers Chad and Chase Valencia. Located at Unit 120, a culinary incubator in the belly of Chinatown’s Far East Plaza, LASA offers a set four-course dinner menu that changes seasonally based on the produce the siblings source from local farmers’ markets.

Paired with traditional Filipino ingredients, Lasa’s food can be best described as Filipino- Californian – the brothers’ second generation response to the food they grew up eating.

“I’d look around LA and the only Filipino sit-down restaurants I’d see were Jollibee [fast food] chains,” Chase, the elder brother and general manager, says of the inspiration that pushed them to open Lasa. “That’s the stuff our parents cooked. No one from our generation was offering their two cents, so we decided to fill that void.”

Born in LA to immigrant parents from Pampanga, known as the culinary capital of the Philippines, the Valencias have always been surrounded by their motherland’s food.

In true Filipino fashion, their childhood memories consist of countless family gatherings, which often took place around the kitchen table and involved consuming healthy amounts of adobo, kaldereta (goat meat stew) and Filipino spaghetti – a concoction in which the rich sauce consists of banana ketchup, sugar and chopped hot dogs.

Their upbringing inspired them to pursue careers in the restaurant industry, with Chase exploring management and hospitality and Chad delving into cooking.

In August 2013, Chad and Chase began hosting dinners for their family and friends in their own backyard.

They put their skills to the test with a series of pop-up dinners at popular spots like The Highland Cafe in Highland Park and Elysian in the Frogtown neighborhood, where they made an impressive impact on the local dining scene. At one point they sold out 120 seats in one night, just minutes after opening reservations.

In July 2016, only months after starting their residency at Unit 120, Lasa earned a rave review in the Los Angeles Times from Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold, who cited the restaurant’s food as possessing “a lightness that I have never seen in Filipino cooking before.”

“We were speechless,” Chase says of the glowing praise. “It felt like we were being validated for what we were doing for our city, and for our Filipino community. It felt like we mattered.”

Though Filipino food has long been heralded as the next “it” cuisine, there exists only a smattering of notable modern Filipino dining experiences across the US, like New York’s Maharlika and LA’s Belly & Snout.

And while the Valencias are honored to be considered among the pioneers of next-generation Pinoy cooking, they don’t think the movement has reached its stride.

“Filipino cooking has been this language that a lot of us have been trying to learn for years,” Chad says of his fellow Filipino-American chefs in the area, most of whom know one another and have formed a tight-knit community. “We’re just learning to speak that language. Once we see different types of Filipino food experiences, then we can say it’s happening,” Chase adds. “But for now, we’ll say the tide is turning. I mean, we don’t even have our own brick and mortar yet!” lasa-la.com

This story first appeared on Mabuhay’s September 2016 issue. While Lasa has temporarily closed because of Covid-19 restrictions, the Valencia brothers promise a comeback when the time is ideal.