queering the KITCHEN

The Filipino-American chef WOLDY REYES is bringing his vegetable-forward take on Filipino food to a wider audience with the new cookbook IN THE KUSINA

- RAYMOND ANG

On a March afternoon so balmy you can see spring right around the corner, I meet the Filipino-American chef Woldy Reyes in Grill 21, a cheerfully dive-y Filipino eatery in Manhattan's East Village.

The leaves are still brown outside but in Grill 21, the flowers are in full bloom; at least the hand-painted ones on the walls, found in charmingly upbeat murals depicting tropical life. For lunch, Reyes and I order a feast of tocilog, sotanghon, fried lumpia and buko juice; appropriately festive perhaps, since we're meeting to talk about In the Kusina: My Seasonal Filipino Cooking, his soon-to-be-released cookbook featuring his vegetable-forward take on Filipino (and Filipino-ish) food.

In less than a decade, the 38-year-old Reyes has become one of the leading names in New York’s Filipino food scene, a caterer of choice for brands like Alaïa and Celine, as well as the city’s burgeoning creative class, who've found in Reyes a kindred spirit. The evening before our lunch, for example, Reyes catered a dinner for Christine Sun Kim, the Berlin-based artist with a major exhibit currently running at the Whitney Museum, at the home of Scott Rothkopf, the museum's director.

It’s rarefied company for sure and his presence in those rooms; as a queer, deaf, Filipino-American chef, is in itself a remarkable act of representation. “The dessert that I made [for last night’s dinner] was my version of bibingka,” he says. “And obviously, the folks that were there may or may not have known Filipino food or even a Filipino chef. So to be in these spaces to perhaps create an awareness [about our cuisine]... I'm there to educate them. And when they do try [the food], they're like, Oh, what is this? Oh my God!”