Five Diamond Pork Adobo and Halo Halo!
A Letter from Chef Mavro
Celebrating Filipino Flavors


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Filipino foods blow me away!

French chefs in France cook French...We don't cook Italian, Spanish, German...we just cook French...Also French chefs most of the time cook the cuisine from their own regions...Provence, Burgundy, Alsace, Périgord...

Try to imagine my surprise when I first arrived in Honolulu to be confronted with Asian cooking... I was like a kid in a toy store. This was when I stopped featuring French recipes on my menu, and started adapting my French techniques to local favorites & local fresh ingredients.

LECHON
crispy pork belly, tomato, maui onion, fiddlehead ferns, pickled ogo

One of the ethnic cuisines that blew me away from my first days was Filipino food.  Especially during my early time at the Halekulani...the food from Uncle Joe who was in charge of the employee cafeteria!  Uncle Joe was one of the best cooks I have met in my life. Whatever he was cooking every day for about 600 employees was delicious & especially Filipino dishes.

I remember when he was cooking his pork guisantes there was a line in front of the cafeteria. We were serving more food than we were supposed to...when we realized that some employees were coming to eat even though they were not scheduled that day!

Our menus have always shown inspiration from Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiian etc. And now I'm excited to feature four new dishes based on Filipino flavors.

I want to render homage to Uncle Joe and Mellissa Cedillo from Elena's Filipino restaurant. I discovered Mellissa when she catered for all of us filming a "Cooking Hawaiian Style" segment - thank you Lanai!  
I dedicate this menu to them.

Pastry Chef Jose Calpito
Together with our Pastry Chef Jose Calpito and our Chef de Cuisine Jonathan Mizukami, who is from Maui and knows a lot about Filipino cuisine, we put together our French-Filipino fusion! We call our menu "Haute Filipino" to make sure that the flavors of the Philippines get the credit and the place they deserve in the haute cuisine category of any Five Diamond restaurant in the world!

Don't expect any stews or family style dishes in our menu but I promise that you are going to recognize with the familiar Filipino flavors even if you don't recognize them in the photos. 


Lechon  
We use Niman pork

When you cook Filipino you want to use pork in each dish.  We know that the best part to roasted pork is the crispy skin.  We use Niman pork, the best quality of pork I know, bred of Duroc & Berkshire.  The belly is roasted crispy on the skin & served in a salad of tomato, Maui onion, fiddlehead ferns with a final touch of pickled ogo.

Sinigang, (tamarind soup)
This fish dish can compete with any bouillabaisse


With my bouillabaisse background, I'm quite comfortable to poach fish in a broth. We flavored the vegetable broth with tamarind & kalamungay leaves. 

Kalamungay

We use my favorite fish in the close waters, the onaga.  The skin is removed, crisp & served on top of the fish, this is our personal touch on the Filipino recipe.  The dish is garnished with long beans, cabbage, Sumida watercress & taro.  The tamarind gives to the broth a subtle acidity which has no equivalent. This fish dish can compete with any bouillabaisse in Marseilles & any cioppino in San Francisco...

Adobo 
Might be the most popular Filipino dish

Adobo
Niman pork wrapped in bacon
bean vermicelli, onion, carrot, celery
bell pepper, calamansi. adobo jus

This m ight be the most popular Filipino dish!  Don't expect adobo stew...  We concentrated on the specific adobo flavors: vinegar-salt & black pepper-bay leaves.
 
The pork loin is wrapped in bacon & roasted.  Served with pancit (bean vermicelli) garnished with onion, carrot, celery, bell pepper... The adobo sauce is made from pork jus.
 
Halo Halo
Mix everything together before savoring

Halo Halo
coconut shaved ice , tropical gelées, azuki beans
corn custard and much more!

If you are allergic to coconut you must pass this one.  Jose is having a lot of fun...This wonderful dessert has a ton of ingredients...shave ice, ice cream, custard, gelées, corn custard, azuki beans & of course coconut: fresh pulp, coconut water, coconut gelée  etc...
 
Looks gorgeous when placed in front of you.  Don't look at it too long & take your picture very fast...it is melting. Then be sure to mix the ingredients together before savoring.  The dessert is divine & would be comfortable on any 3 Michelin star menu!   
 
This is a limited time menu and we look forward to cooking it for you. Of course we also have our 6-course menu and our Grand Tasting.

Bon Appetit and see you soon!
Aloha, 
George Mavro/Chef Mavro

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Chef Mavro | (808) 944-4714 | chef@chefmavro.com | www.chefmavro.com