• About
  • Contact
  • Testimonials
  • Newsletter
  • More
    • Demographics & Advertising Rates
    • Terms & Conditions
Monday, March 20, 2023
No Result
View All Result
California Business Journal
  • Front Page
  • Business
  • Finance
  • People
  • Featured
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • Law
  • News
  • Food
  • Art & Culture
  • Human Interest
  • Education
  • Insurance
  • Real Estate
  • Health & Fitness
California Business Journal
la-fo-gold-irenia-photos-20170223

RESTAURANT REVIEW: IRENIA

by Rick Weinberg, Editor in Chief, California Business Journal
A A
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Reinterpreting traditional Filipino cuisine

By Jonathan Gold, Food Critic, Los Angeles Times

When you hit Irenia at the right time in the afternoon, maybe late on a Saturday when the lunch rush has faded away, you may run into a couple of old guys who look as if they’ve never left their table in the bar, nursing bottles of San Miguel and idly crunching their way through a bowl of dilis, tiny dried anchovies, toasty and warm from the pan. Sometimes they’ll dip the fish in a bit of chile-infused vinegar; sometimes they’ll pop them into their mouths unadorned.

The protocol apparently is to eat the anchovies one by one instead of tossing them back like popcorn, so that each individual fish can be savored on its own — one particularly salty, the next crunchy, the third fragile as glass. It is a way of celebrating the anchovies as once-living creatures, each with characteristics and a tiny soul of its own.

Dilis is a powerful food, both metaphorically and in its unmistakable pungency, which can water your eyes from across the room. It is by no means a rarity —  dilis is among the most common Filipino snacks — but it takes on a special resonance in this Santa Ana dining room, even when you give up and dump them all onto a bowl of rice. Irenia is a modern restaurant, part of the new Filipino food movement flashing through Southern California, but I suspect that the kitchen cares as much about feeding the appetites of its grandmothers and uncles as it does about making the scene. It is not an accident that Irenia is named for the chef’s grandmother.

Downtown Santa Ana has become one of the most unlikely culinary neighborhoods in the state, dotted with cocktail bars, tapas joints and the sprawling 4th Street Market, which includes spaces for food-business start-ups; Electric City, a butcher shop that draws some of its customers from 50 miles away; and Alta Baja, a store devoted to artisanal Mexican foods. Playground is a mainstay of The Times’ 101 Best Restaurants list. You are rarely more than a few steps away from a taco, a quinceañera dress or shade-grown coffee.

Irenia, tucked next to a Starbucks, is the project of Ryan Garlitos, a young chef who first made his name working alongside Carlos Salgado at the wonderful Taco María. It is Garlitos’ aim, one suspects, to do for Filipino cooking what Salgado did for Mexican food, to take apart the iconic dishes of his childhood, reconstruct them with farmers’ market ingredients and Western technique, and serve them within the context of a New American meal. His food isn’t influenced by the Filipino palate — it is Filipino, reinterpreted and presented in a new way. In this, Garlitos shares the vision of Lasa’s Chad Valencia and Rice Bar’s Charles Olalia. If your knowledge of Filipino cooking comes from only church-carnival adobo and cheap steam-table joints, Irenia will change the way you look at the cuisine.

So sinigang, the tamarind-soured broth usually used to moisten great handfuls of rice, becomes denser and milkier when Garlitos makes it, more about the broth and the seared cubes of daikon in it than about the jolt of pure acidity. Ginataan tends to be a thick coconut-milk stew; Garlitos uses it to accent a dish of romanesco. His pancit, chewy house-made noodles garnished with citrus and snips of fried chicken skin, is served like a plate of Italian pasta, but its sour-savory flavor is straight out of Manila.

Kare kare, oxtail stewed with peanuts, is made with charred bits of cauliflower instead of the meat; broccolini is served with a squirt of puréed egg yolk, a dribble of caramel enhanced with toasted shrimp paste and a sprinkling of shaved dried bonito; and you’re probably going to swish bits of the big, deep-fried turkey leg through a sweetish chicken-liver sauce that tastes a little like Filipino-style giblet gravy.

You are never far from a drop of the fish sauce patis, a smear of the fermented shrimp paste bagoong, or a squirt of calamansi lime, but there is an almost unexpected suavity here, even when charred heads of little gem lettuce are smeared with a paste made with bangus, Filipino milkfish, sweet segments of Cara Cara orange and what looks like a streusel but tastes like pure anchovy.

Dinuguan, a stew of pig innards in a super-pungent sauce made with pork blood and ground liver, is usually one of the most fearsome dishes in the Filipino arsenal, but Garlitos lightens the cocoa-dark sauce — the liver becomes no more than a fleeting hint of bitterness — and replaces the intestines and such with crisp-edged slices of roast pork shoulder. It was the most popular dish at the table.

Are the main dishes more conventional? The main dishes are always more conventional: braised beef shank with charred shishito peppers; crisp-skinned chicken thighs in a gingery sauce; or ridgeback prawns in a coconut-milk sauce that tastes almost Thai. (It is nearly impossible to pry the little prawns out of their shells — I tend to regard them as I do the shrimp in a gumbo, there more for flavor than for actual sustenance.) You would expect an adobo at a Filipino restaurant, and there it is —sweet, soft pork belly braised with soy, vinegar and lots of garlic, served over what in an Indian restaurant you would call a mung bean daal.

For coffee, you’re going to have to go to nearby Portola or Hopper & Burr. But you are going to want at least a slice of Irenia’s lovely ube brown sugar pie, which tastes a little like a Southern chess pie after a long Filipino vacation. And while you’re at it, you may as well get the bouncy rice cake called bibingka, sweetened with coconut and sprinkled with deeply roasted peanuts. The coffee shops are a couple of blocks away. You need to sustain yourself for the stroll.

ADVERTISEMENT

​Irenia

LOCATION: 400 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, (657) 245-3466, www.ireniarestaurant.com.

PRICES: Snacks $6-$7; small plates $10-$17; entrees $16-$19; desserts $7-$9.

DETAILS: Lunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tues.-Sat.; dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m. Tues.-Thurs.;  5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Credit cards accepted. Full bar. Street and nearby city lot parking.

RECOMMENDED DISHES: Dilis; charred little gem salad; dinuguan; chicken inasal; ube brown sugar pie.

http://www.latimes.com/food/jonathan-gold/la-fo-gold-irenia-review-20170124-story.html

Tags: AmericanCaliforniaChefConventionalcookingCuisineFilipino cuisinefoodgoldireniaitalianLos AngelesLos Angeles TimesnursingpigPoprestaurant reviewrestaurantssaladSanta AnaSliceSouthern California
ADVERTISEMENT
Rick Weinberg, Editor in Chief, California Business Journal

Rick Weinberg, Editor in Chief, California Business Journal

Rick Weinberg is Editor-in-Chief at California Business Journal. He is a well-known writer, reporter and on-air talent who has worked for the New York Times, FOX and ESPN. He launched California Business Journal to focus on California businesses and business professionals as well as California business news and information. Contact: Rick@CalBizJournal.com / 949-648-3815

advertisement
ADVERTISEMENT

CBJ Newsletter

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram LinkedIn

Advertise With CBJ

Contact Rick@CalBizJournal.com

CBJ Rates and Demographics

Job Postings

CEO Wanted


Requirements: BS/BA + 2yrs of Business Managing Experience

Mail Resume: Grand Life, Inc. 14647 Northam St. La Mirada, CA 90638.

$114,754/year

ADVERTISEMENT
1REALTOUR-SAN DIEGO-WEB DESIGN
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn LinkedIn Instagram
C B J   LOGO  SVG-01
  • About
  • Contact California Business Journal
  • Testimonials
  • Demographics & Advertising Rates
  • Terms & Conditions

Categories

  • Art & Culture
  • Business
  • California Hotel Listings
  • Daily Updates
  • Editor's Choice
  • Education
  • Featured
  • Finance
  • Food & Dining
  • Health & Fitness
  • Human Interest
  • Insurance
  • Law
  • Lawyers
  • Marketing
  • Medical
  • News
  • Newsletter
  • Opinion
  • People
  • Popular
  • Real Estate
  • Social Media
  • Technology
  • Uncategorized

CBJ Partner Firebrand Media

Laguna Beach Independent Newspaper
 Laguna Beach City Guide
 Newport Beach Independent Newspaper
Newport Beach Country Club Magazine
  Montage Magazine
 Omni Escapes Hotel Magazine
 Bespoke Concierge New York
 Evans Hotels
 Laguna Beach Magazine
 On The Menu Laguna Beach
 Newport Beach Magazine
Coastal Real Estate Guide (NB,LB, CDM)
Monarch Beach Resort Magazine
 Pacific Coast Magazine (SoCal)
Sea Island Life Magazine
Salamander Hotel & Resorts Magazine
 View our entire portfolio

 

Most Viewed

  • Gavel, scales of justice and law books

    Lawsuit Basics: How Much Does It Cost to Sue Someone?

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Investigation: Can TriumphFX Take Your Money?

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Impact of Covid: Racing to Buy Second Citizenships

    3 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • What to Do When an Online Casino Refuses to Pay Out Your Winnings

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Truth About Temu: Where Is It From?

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Top 5 Flavors On Elf Bar BC5000 Review

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • NFL Paychecks: How Do NFL Players Get Paid?

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Temu’s New Shipping Policy Is A Smashing Hit For Shoppers All Over the Country

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Five Reasons Why The Government Does Not Like Bitcoin

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • How to Start a Telecommunication Business: A Step-By-Step Guide

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Latest Articles

What Can Help Raise the Level of the Game in World of Warcraft if You are a Beginner

What Can Help Raise the Level of the Game in World of Warcraft if You are a Beginner

Benefits of Editing PDF Online

Benefits of Editing PDF Online

7 FAQs About Home Solar Energy Systems

7 FAQs About Home Solar Energy Systems

Benefits of Using Electric Bikes for Camping and Traveling

Benefits of Using Electric Bikes for Camping and Traveling

How to Sign Up for the Best Casino is Listed Below

How to Sign Up for the Best Casino is Listed Below

Does Personal Auto Insurance Cover Rentals?

Does Personal Auto Insurance Cover Rentals?

The Best M4A4 Restricted Skin

The Best M4A4 Restricted Skin

The Top Signs You Need HVAC Repair: Don't Ignore These Warning Signs

The Top Signs You Need HVAC Repair: Don’t Ignore These Warning Signs

The Benefits of Renewable Energy

The Benefits of Renewable Energy

Injured by a Drunk Driver? Seek Justice with the Help of a Skilled Attorney

Injured by a Drunk Driver? Seek Justice with the Help of a Skilled Attorney

California Business Journal | California Business News, California News Media, California business articles | Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Inland Empire, Northern California, San Francisco | Huntington Beach CA 92649 | (949) 648-3815
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY CALIFORNIA BUSINESS JOURNAL.
Site Design by 1REALTOUR

No Result
View All Result
  • Front Page
  • Business
  • Finance
  • People
  • Featured
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • Law
  • News
  • Food
  • Art & Culture
  • Human Interest
  • Education
  • Insurance
  • Real Estate
  • Health & Fitness

California Business Journal | California Business News, California News Media, California business articles | Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Inland Empire, Northern California, San Francisco | Huntington Beach CA 92649 | (949) 648-3815
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY CALIFORNIA BUSINESS JOURNAL.
Site Design by 1REALTOUR