:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/59616367/unnamed.1525364318.jpg)
Beloved local Minh Phan has found a standalone restaurant home. The longtime chef is set to open up her next project as an outright owner, landing in Historic Filipinotown sometime in the future.
The official address for the brick and mortar location of Phan’s restaurant has not been announced yet, and Phan is keeping the information rather close to the vest. “We’re going to take time to get to know the neighborhood and community,” says Phan over email, adding: “Being in HiFi is something I don’t take lightly. I want to keep building the legacy of immigrant workers and activists of the area.”
As for the project, Phan says this will in fact be a full-on Porridge + Puffs, her massively popular former pop-up that worked out of the now-shuttered Field Trip restaurant in Hollywood, where Phan also cooked. Those meals, though ultimately brief, helped propel Phan to new heights in the Los Angeles culinary landscape, particularly after an effusive review from Jonathan Gold that praised her porridge as a delicacy, noting with a smile that it was “prepared with obsessive care.”
Given the new space and the lengthy timeframe she has to work within before opening, Phan says she’ll also be adding on additional menu items that work with the seasons, the neighborhood, and her own evolving sensibilities as a chef. She tells Eater:
The menu will continue to be an exploration of grains, seasonal and local produce, wild herbs and flowers, utilizing waste, using sustainable sea life. Whimsical and soulful we’ll still be.
To that end, Phan is hosting a dinner on Saturday, May 19 at her actual restaurant in Historic Filipinotown. It’s part of the ongoing LA Times Food Bowl, and 100% of proceeds will go towards the food waste and recapture program Food Forward.
The dinner costs $225, and will feature a number of incredible chefs like Diep Tran of Good Girl Dinette, Ria Dolly Barbosa of Paramount Coffee Project, and names like Robin Koda of Koda Farms, among others. Rather than act as a preview from the restaurant’s menu, the evening will highlight wasted and foraged ingredients across 12 or so different dishes from all the chefs and farmers involved. Tickets are available now for the cause.
