A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

My friend Carolyn, of the Good Ones, invited me to cover a dinner put on by The Salo Project. What? Who? Huh? Yana Gilbuena is the founder of the Salo Project, an amazing Filipino chef. What is Salo? It means “large gathering”. Yana travels across the country, hosting a pop up in every state. This year, she is doing 50 cities in 50 weeks (you can email her if you want to open your home to the Salo Project).

So I signed up for the event (tickets are $50) and the address was released the morning of the event. I trekked out to a private home in Southie. Not sure what to expect when I walked in, I was pleasantly surprised by welcoming strangers.

We sat at long tables covered in banana leaves and we were going to eat only with our hands. Narragansett beer hosted the event, but it was BYOB if you wanted something else with dinner. Yana was in the kitchen, cooking away. She is  a talented chef with a young spirit, a kind smile and an infectious laugh.

We start with rice…

Yana comes around to each table and adds to the rice that runs down the center of the table.

Atchara – Pickled Green Papaya, Carrots and Onions Salad with spiced Cane Vinegar. They had a kick to them!

Matamis Anghang na Dilis – Sweet and spicy anchovies.

Inasal na Manok – lemongrass stuffed chicken, glazed with a soy sugar and marinated with ginger. My fellow table-mates talk about other pop ups they’ve been to, their love of food and travel and their favorite ethnic cuisines. I walked out with 5 new restaurants I want to try.

Lechon Kawali – deep fried pork belly. By the time we get to this course, most of the people at my table are stuffed!

Inasal na Manok – grilled stuffed fish. This was a little tough to maneuver without utensils, but it was so delicious.

For dessert we were supposed to have purple yam ice cream, but Yana couldn’t find purple yams anywhere. So we had sweet yam and coconut ‘ice cream’, which was more like a tapioca consistency.

Check out Yana’s next events on her Facebook page. Next up Maine on June 8th, New Hampshire on June 15th and Vermont on June 22nd.

To learn more, check out her website.

Tags: filipino, pop up