20 Questions with Kultura’s Nikko Cagalanan
In the Resy Questionnaire, we play a game of 20 questions with the industry folks behind some of our favorite restaurants. What’s your most memorable restaurant experience? Your favorite cookbook? What restaurant would you want to time-travel for?
In this edition, we spoke to Nikko Cagalanan, the chef and co-owner behind Kultura, a brilliant ode to Filipino cuisine in Cannonborough Elliotborough.
The Resy Questionnaire
1. Favorite thing you’ve ever cooked?
Sweet pork. It’s the first thing my dad taught me how to make, and it’s very simple: pork belly, onion and garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, and scallion. Every time I make it, I feel like I’m home.
2. Kitchen tool or equipment you couldn’t live without?
Resting racks are essential. I love fried food, like lumpia and lechon kawali (fried pork belly), and you need resting racks to properly cool fried dishes, or else the bottom of those dishes won’t stay crispy.
3. What pantry items would you bring on a desert island?
Coconut milk, fish sauce, lime juice, rice, and eggs.
4. What’s your favorite place to get fried seafood in Charleston?
Bowens Island restaurant has the best fried seafood plates in the Lowcountry. Not to mention it’s a fun experience with a great view.
5. Favorite cookbook?
“Memories of Philippine Kitchens,” by Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan is one of my favorite cookbooks. The food, the people, and stories about running a Filipino restaurant in New York City, where that food is still very underrepresented … it’s all super inspirational.
6. Your drink of choice?
Nescafé 3-in-1 is the only thing I drink in the morning — it makes me feel like I’m still back home in the Philippines. It’s coffee, creamer, and sugar all in one. I just boil water in the microwave for one minute, then boom: I’m transported home.
7. Favorite food movie?
“The Hundred-Foot Journey.” It’s a familiar narrative to me and to a lot of chefs nowadays, I think, where you work in a fine-dining or Michelin-starred restaurant to get experience but get burned out. But then, you turn everything around, go back to your roots, and represent the heck out of your cultural food and thrive.
8. Your ideal dinner party guests, dead or alive?
This is easy: Anthony Bourdain.
9. What restaurant industry person do you admire the most?
I can’t name just one. It’s all the Filipino chefs that started the Filipino food movement, and all the chefs still representing our food, like chef Lordfer Lalicon from Kaya in Orlando and chef Paolo Dungca from Hiraya in Washington, D.C.
10. The greatest restaurant experience of your life so far?
It’s in my city of Talisay in the Philippines, and I don’t even think the restaurant has a name. It’s a carinderia, which is basically an eatery that serves affordable, home-cooked meals. They’re focused on grilled dishes, chicken, chicken gizzards, chicken head, chicken feet, pigs ears, and if you’re nice enough, they might give you free soup. Also, there’s unlimited rice!
11. Your greatest professional achievement?
This one is simple: having the best staff, both front and back of house. Without them, I’m lost. Also, I have the best partner in business and in life, Paula Kramer.
12. What single dish best describes your personality?
Arroz caldo (aka Lola’s rice porridge). It’s simple yet so complex and delicious.
13. If you could go back in time, which restaurant would you dine at?
Jollibee. This is the only restaurant that makes me the happiest. Just stepping inside a Jollibee brings out my inner child — just watch Anthony Bourdain’s episode of dining there. You’ll see what I mean.
14. Your favorite meal from childhood?
Longsilog, it’s an abbreviation for longganisa (sweet breakfast sausage) sinangag (garlic fried rice) itlog (sunny side-up egg). The best way to wake up in the morning was when my Lola (grandma) made this for us before going to school.
15. What is your wish for the restaurant industry?
Higher wages with benefits and work-life balance.
16. What do you wish you did better? What do you do well?
I could do less procrastinating. I pride myself on connecting with my staff and making them the priority.
17. If you could eat through a city for a day, where would you go?
Bacolod City in the Philippines, no doubt!
18. The one thing you can’t resist splurging on when you go out?
A good dessert.
19. What do you value most in restaurants?
The individuals that make your food and the memorable hospitality.
20. It’s your last meal on earth, what are you eating?
Jollibee spaghetti with fried chicken.
