Meet Chef Charleen:
Making her mark throughout the Bay Area, Chef Caabay satisfies appetites with her creative culinary skills. Her love of cooking Filipino food and inventive personal specialties has satisfied taste buds wherever she does. Having cooked and served her deliciously inspired food at many famous, local area venues such as The Oasis, The Den inside the Fox Theater, Somar, Oakland Art Murmur, Terra SF, SomArts Cultural Center, to name a few, Chef Caabay is excited to find a permanent home in Oakland. You can be sure that her motto follows, "Where there is good food, there is always good company!
I want you to feel at home in my home, to walk in and feel instantly
at ease and ready for tasty Filipino food that makes you feel good from
the inside out. Whether you are well versed in Filipino cuisine or a
newbie to Filipino food, I guarantee you will love every bite you take.
So… let’s eat, my friends."
Current Location: Oakland, California
Current Gig: Chef and Owner at Kainbigan
Restaurant Website: Kainbigan
What do you want patrons to experience at your establishment?
I want patrons to feel at home, enjoy some good food, good company and leave with an experience of what Philippine culture is about.
What has been the hardest part of opening a Filipino restaurant?
I'll say this now, it's not easy, but time has definitely been a challenge, money and finances, and patience, being tested on a daily whether this is the right way of doing it or not.
What are your favorite restaurants?
Manila Garden because of the many variety of dishes they have available. New Gold Medal, their soups and roast duck is sooo fresh and tasty. Kansai, great happy hour prices, that's my late night go-to.
What inspires you to make adobo or Filipino food?
It's
the people, everyone loves food, and the lack there of Filipino food,
makes for a great combo. Everyone loves new food, and everyone loves
some good ol'home cooking.
Special memory about adobo?
My grandmother was the cook of the house while my parents worked. I use to beg my grandmother to make fried chicken skins, or chicken adobo. We had a big household, so when she would prep the chicken she would cut the whole chicken into so many pieces. I would tell her that there's no meat and it's all bones. She would laugh and would set aside drumsticks for me!
If you can share your adobo or any Filipino food with anyone passed on or alive, who would it be?
I would love to share my food with Emeril Legassi. His cooking
personality is similar to mine, and I think we would have a great
conversation about it.
Aside from adobo, name a Filipino food that everyone should try at least once: I think everyone should try dinuguan. It's really delicious and tasty! Before telling them what it is...haha.
The Name of Your Adobo:
Crispy Adobo on Garlic Noodles
What makes your adobo special?
The fried crispy adobo, so tasty when mixed with the pan fried noodles.
It's fairly easy, your house made adobo, slow cook until chicken shreds apart. Fry the adobo shreds as if you are about to fry chicken. Using more than a cup of oil. After you fry the chicken, set aside to cool. Pan fry egg noodles, any type will do.
Mix in a garlic sauce (that recipe is a SECRET! :) ) Set aside your noodles. Top with crispy adobo, then top with garlic sauce. Garnish with crispy garlic, and green onions (highly recommended!)
Where do you think Filipino food will go in the next few years?
I believe that Filipino food will be more exposed, appreciated, and represented in a way that it will be a mainstream food culture. I opened Kainbigan restaurant for that reason, we need more present generation to keep our food culture alive.
Try out Chef Charleen's Adobo Garlic Noodles at her restaurants in Oakland, California:
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Would you like to be a part of Project:Adobo?
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