Tim Flores and Genie Kwon, chefs at Kasama* (Chicago, USA), were in charge of the first presentation this Wednesday at the Auditorium. Kasama, together in Tagalog' was a presentation about the business model of a very unusual restaurant, but it also brought Filipino cuisine to San Sebastian and, above all, a very curious ingredient: sausage.

Flores and Kwon want to "expand the voice of Filipino cuisine in the United States," and "Kasama is a name that reflects our relationship and our roles, because in Filipino dialect it means 'together.' They met while working at another restaurant, and started their own project in 2018. In 2020 we had our first service, but we always differentiated between lunch and dinner. With the pandemic, we changed our business model, with a more expensive tasting menu, but for fewer diners,' said Genie Kwon.

One of the curiosities of Kasama is that there are two very different concepts in the same space. In the morning, it is a very casual cafe and bakery, and in the evening, it transforms into a restaurant offering a 13-course tasting menu, a set menu inspired by Filipino cuisine, which has earned them their first Michelin star with this philosophy based on Filipino cuisine.

The 'casual' concept during the day is a 'counter' service, which couldn't work better because the queues are huge, up to three hours long 'to come to us. We serve 1,500 people during the day and at three o'clock in the afternoon we transform the restaurant'. The special thing about our menu is that it is very efficient. We don't have the most beautiful premises, nor the most spacious, but we looked for a restaurant that made sense, with a small staff and small spaces, where everything has an impact on each dish. We make the most of all our resources," explains Flores.

The most authentic flavours

The recognition hasn't been long in coming and "now it's something much bigger than we dreamed. We started with take-away, without chairs or tables, later we offered services and in 2021 we became what we are today. 'The project has evolved,' Tim Flores explained. 'We started with Filipino food to differentiate ourselves. It was not easy in the beginning because I had never been to a Filipino restaurant like this, I had never cooked professionally with this concept, and it is not easy to turn those typical products into a tasting menu. We respected the most authentic flavours, those of childhood,' the chef sums up.

We want to show that Filipino food is not so different and that these flavours can even be familiar', admitted Genie Kwon, who finds Filipino cuisine very interesting, with Spanish, Mexican, Chinese influences... 'It's quite unique. It's more like Mexican than Thai," he explained.

And one of the star ingredients, which can be found in many dishes, is longaniza. 'It's a little sweeter than Spanish longaniza because in the Philippines they produce a lot of sugar, and each region has a different type of longaniza', Flores explained.

The chefs prepared three recipes representative of Philippine cuisine with Longaniza as the main ingredient. Attendees were able to taste a longaniza burger with cheese, and the chefs also made a sandwich with this sausage with pork marinade, pickled peppers, fennel, olives... "These are flavours of typical dishes from our childhood, but also classics from Chicago, a formula that works very well," they summarised.

The third dish was a garlic fried rice, pickled green papaya and fried egg.