58 JULY/AUGUST 2019 SUNSET
leaves are the original aluminum foil,” says
Charles Olalia, placing leaf-wrapped, pyramid-
shaped bundles of sticky rice onto the grill in
front of him. “Only they taste much better.”
Smoke curls around Olalia’s face, perfuming the
air with the heady aroma of flowers and tea. It’s a
rare day off for the Filipino-born chef behind hit
Los Angeles restaurants Ma’am Sir and the re-
cently closed Ricebar. While Olalia’s background
is in fine dining (he’s worked at The French Laun-
dry, Guy Savoy in Las Vegas, and Patina in Walt
Disney Concert Hall) it was the food at Ma’am Sir
that brought him national recognition: traditional
Filipino dishes like braised-chicken adobo served
alongside lumpia spring rolls untraditionally en-
riched with lardo and draped with fat tongues of
Santa Barbara uni.
Today Olalia applies the same high-wire levels
of acidity and pronounced heat that he’s become
known for at his restaurants to an open-fire mod-
ern Filipino feast. On the menu: whole-roasted
fish stuffed with lemongrass and ginger and
served with hot-tart lashings of chili vinegar,
bright red pork longganisa sausage, and rib-eye
steaks brushed with a soy-and-vinegar glaze.
Sometimes the flavors lean toward home, some-
times not. “Cooking should ebb and flow and re-
flect your experiences,” says Olalia. “If it doesn’t,
there’s a danger of a menu becoming like a muse-
um.” To be sure, the kale salad places us squarely
in California, while the inclusion of papaya tips it
toward the tropics. The menu is as practical as it
is beautiful, designed to work as easily at a camp-
site as it would in a backyard. The fish can be
wrapped with banana leaves in advance and re-
frigerated until meal time, or, for that matter,
packed at the bottom of an ice-filled cooler on the
way to a campground.
As the steaks achieve a burnished lacquer and
the sausages drip annatto-tinged pork fat onto the
coals, Olalia opens up a jar of memories: He un-
caps a mason jar filled with a dressing made with
calamansi vinegar. “When I first opened Ricebar, I
couldn’t get consistently good product,” Olalia
says, referring to his first solo effort, a seven-seat
restaurant in Downtown L.A. that became famous
for its inventive versions of adobo (think pork
chicharron adobo). “I had to resort to asking my
dad to smuggle calamansi in from the Philippines
when he was in town for medical conferences.”
The only non-medical professional in a family of
nine, Olalia says his attempts to re-create the
dishes of his childhood at Ricebar finally helped
his father, a doctor, begin to understand his ca-
reer. Another jar holds salpi-
cao sauce inspired by the
simple Filipino beef dish of
the same name. Olalia’s ver-
sion skips the traditional pan
sauce loaded with garlic and
is more like a nuanced Japa-
nese tare sauce.
“This is how we cooked in
our country house after the
volcano,” Olalia says, brush-
ing salpicao sauce on the
steaks with a makeshift mop
fashioned from strands of ba-
nana leaf. Olalia is referring
to the catastrophic 1991 erup-
tion of Mount Pinatubo in
the Pampanga province,
where his family kept a house
and visited from Manila. “It
was like Vesuvius and Pom-
peii,” Olalia says. In the years
that followed, his family re-
built their country house and
would cook outside. “This
takes me back to the coun-
try,” says Olalia, taking the
now-charred packets of ba-
nana leaves off the grill. It’s
not clear if he means the
country house or the country
that inspired the feast here
today. Perhaps he means
both. Either way, Olalia is
cooking up a very personal
version of Filipino cuisine,
fueled by memories, vinegar,
chiles, and smoke.
“
FIN IS IN!
From Hawaii to Idaho, sustain-
able western fish cooks up fast
and should be your go-to grilling
protein this summer.
IDAHO FARMED TROUT
Tender and sweet trout is sustain-
ably farmed in freshwater tanks
in and around Idaho’s Snake Riv-
er Canyon. The fragile flesh can
fall apart easily on a grill, so use
a grill basket, a cast-iron pan on
the grate, or do as Olalia does
and wrap the fish in banana
leaves.
CALIFORNIA WHITE SEA BASS
White sea bass from California is
technically croaker, but when
hook-and-line caught it’s a good
alternative to international variet-
ies of sea bass, which in some
places are not fished sustainably.
PACIFIC SARDINES
Abundant, mild-tasting albacore
does best in dishes when just
cooked through. Punch it up with
big flavors like rosemary, olives,
and garlicky salsa verdes.
HAWAIIAN PINK SNAPPER
Also called opakapaka, this siz-
able, firm- and sweet-fleshed fish
is perfect on the grill. Cook small-
er ones whole, or break large
ones down into thick fillets and
load them into your grill basket.
