Growing up in the kitchen: When I was very little, I lived with my extended family in the Philippines for a couple years while my parents worked in Australia.
In the Philippines it’s common to have maids, and I’d be in the kitchen with the maids most of the time because everybody else was so busy. There was always something cooking—breakfast, lunch, merienda (afternoon snack), and dinner. Something was always going on in the kitchen, from sorting through rice to cleaning and cutting vegetables.
Ever since then I’ve loved cooking. I was always in the kitchen while my brothers were off doing other things. The first thing I remember making was fried rice, but I didn’t realize you had to cook the rice first. So it was like crunchy rice. I also remember making profiteroles. I was seven years old at the time and kept making them over and over and over, just trying to perfect them. I’d go over to my best friend’s house, and while he and my other friends were off playing video games and basketball, I’d be in the kitchen. I’ve always been the friend that cooks.
A family affair: I loved being in the kitchen with my mom. She cooked every day for our family. At one point she had three jobs, and then she’d come home and cook. She was a great cook. One of her specialties was a Filipino dish called afritada. It’s basically a tomato-based stew that has soft potatoes, bell peppers, and braised chicken. She was never very articulate about the way she cooked—I’d ask her, “How do you make this?” And she’d say: “It’s really simple. You just start with garlic and onions.” It wasn’t until later when that made sense to me. Keep it simple, and that makes it feel homey. That’s kind of what my style of cooking is now at the restaurant.
My dad cooked on occasion, and when he did, it was always something special. He made dishes I had never seen before. He’s from the northern part of the Philippines, Ilocos Norte, and he would tell me stories of old cooking techniques from his province, like, “If you’re going to cook goat, you have to take a blowtorch and torch the fur onto the skin.”
From a hobby to a career: The turning point for me was when I was 19. My family and I had relocated to Tampa, Florida, and I had moved out with a girl, which my parents thought was the worst idea. So they said: “Hey, there’s this cooking school in New York, the Culinary Institute of America, and one of your uncles is a professor there. If you want, we could set you up.” I knew this was a desperate move to get me away from this girl. But it worked.
One of the other students in my class asked me to be his roommate, and we became good friends. One day he invited me to go with him to his dad’s restaurant and help out. Being young and naive, I didn’t realize until later that his dad was Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the famous French chef. I spent my culinary school years visiting Jean-Georges’s restaurants each weekend. These ultra–fine dining, hip new restaurants became my new standard. That really solidified what the rest of my life was going to be. My first job after culinary school was working for Jean-Georges at one of his New York restaurants, Spice Market.
Joining Getty: After four years in New York, I moved to Las Vegas and worked at restaurants like Tableau at Wynn Las Vegas and Botero at the Encore at Wynn. After a few years I came to L.A. to open Drai’s Hollywood at the W Hotel and then Rare by Drai’s on Sunset Boulevard. Last year I was working on opening a restaurant on the rooftop of the Montage Beverly Hills, but the project never came to fruition. Over the summer I learned that Getty needed a chef. I remembered coming to the Getty Center when I first moved to the States as a young teenager, so I was really excited about the opportunity.
I came into the restaurant for the interview and saw the huge windows in the beautiful dining room, perfectly polished glassware, and tablecloths that draped to the floor. It reminded me of how restaurants used to be in the 1990s—in my opinion, the golden era of high-end restaurants. And now every day I get to drive in and see the sunrise and that dining room, and it just makes me excited to come to work and see what I can make today.
Creating an experience: I’m thinking about the entire experience, from when you enter the restaurant to when you exit. I want our restaurant experience to feel like you’ve stumbled across a beautiful glass-encased restaurant on top of Los Angeles, away from the noise of the city, with panoramic views, warm and thoughtful old-school service, and food prepared to feel like your grandma is making each dish, but with the refinement of Getty.
Getting the creative juices flowing: I get inspiration all the time. Sometimes I’ll get lost in thought about food, whether it’s about a new dish, technique, or a recipe that needs to be adjusted. Every day I’ll pick up my phone and type something down in the notes app. One morning I suddenly woke up and grabbed my phone to write a whole menu. At home, if the TV’s on, chances are it’s a cooking show. And one of my favorite things to do is sit at a restaurant and try a few dishes. I’m not only thinking about the food itself but also the feel of the space, from the music to the lighting to the service.
Before considering a new menu item, I think, will this be really delicious? And how do we refine it so it fits in the setting? I wouldn’t consider a dish just because it’s a trend or a fad. And it doesn’t have to be super complicated. In fact, the simpler the better. It gives us more time to focus on the product.
I like to teach more on “feel and instinctual” and less “technical.” If your grandma is in the kitchen cooking every day, every dish is not going to turn out the same every time, because she’s not using recipes. She’s actually doing more by tasting it as she goes. That’s what I encourage here. We keep a menu, but everything’s also super seasonal. If you get arugula from a farm, it’s not going to taste the same as it did last week, and you can’t expect it to. That’s the beauty in it, I think.
Plating 101: When we’re plating a dish, I tell the cooks, “Let it fall naturally.” So if you’re making a tomato salad, just kind of let it naturally fall on the plate and don’t mess around too much, because you can feel when it’s been overmanipulated. Sometimes there’s beauty in just letting it fall. And most times it falls in the right place.
Favorite meal to cook at home: I love cooking breakfast. Tableau at the Wynn Las Vegas offered breakfast, and there I learned that everybody’s breakfast is very specific.
You probably like your eggs a certain way. And that’s just the eggs. Now think about toast and juice and fruit. Everybody has their preference. Food doesn’t have to be complicated, as long as there’s thought put into each dish and it’s made special for each person.
Spring menu offerings: Springtime is fun because you get to work with so many new products. Everything’s “baby.” Baby fennel, baby carrots, and everything’s mini.
We’ve been playing around with some fun ideas, but sometimes the hardest thing is narrowing down what will actually make it to our menu. We’ll definitely be offering highly seasonal produce from our local farmers. But I definitely won’t be plating it with tweezers, or putting some artwork on a plate that people have to interpret.
