Kasama - Filipino restaurant earns a Michelin star

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Tim Flores and Genie Kwon celebrate the Michelin star for their restaurant Kasama

A Filipino-themed restaurant in Chicago has been awarded a Michelin star, a coveted accolade in the culinary community. 

Kasama - owned by husband-and-wife couple of Filipino American Tim Flores and Korean American Genie Kwon - is now a one-Michelin star establishment, the Michelin Guide announced on April 7. Apparently, the only Filipino American restaurant to earn that distinction.

The 2022 Michelin Guide raved about how it “emphatically displays the talented team’s training, experience, and heritage for an experience that is ambitious, clever, and distinct.”

Michelin evaluators were impressed by Kasama’s contemporary fusion dishes, such as the maitake mushroom adobo sauced with mussel emulsion; pancit with thin squid ink noodles, scallop conserva, and shaved Serrano ham; and Chef Kwon’s sophisticated version of the halo-halo with Asian pear granita and pandan ice cream.

Flores and Kwon did not anticipate opening a fine dining restaurant when they debuted Kasama in July 2020. Their original idea was for a cafe with morning pastries baked by Kwon and a casual menu with sandwiches and lumpia from Flores in the afternoons.

Kasama, a Tagalog word translates to "companion," or "date." It opened almost two years ago just as the pandemic was starting in the East Ukranian Village neighborhood of Chicago as a bakery and a restaurant serving modern Filipino cuisine located in the East Ukranian Village neighborhood of Chicago.

Nearly two years later, Kasama features a 13-course tasting menu — one that includes lumpia — has brought joy to diners, especially within the Filipino American community. That may not have been Flores’s intention, but he's proud his creations and interpretations of traditional Filipino dishes have been accepted and promoted by Filipino American diners.

“So many people have teared up at dinner,” Flores tells Eater. “It was never my goal, The goal was just to make good food (that) I grew up eating, not to help Filipino Americans get in touch with their roots.”

Philippine cuisine, a blend of Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, American and indigenous influences, has been gaining in popularity in recent years as the more adventurous Gen X and Gen Z are willing to expand their palates.

According to the culinary magazine Chef's Pencil, it’s “an awful shame” that Filipino cuisine had been excluded from the list of fantastic food experiences often dominated by European countries and the more familiar East Asian cuisines.

A 2020 survey conducted among 250 chefs by Chef’s Pencil which ranked the top three South-Asian countries, namely the Philippines (1), Thailand (2), and Vietnam (3), among the world’s five most underrated foodie destinations.

The chefs that were interviewed in November last year ranked the Philippines in first place among the three cuisines in the list which is dedicated to “incredible destinations” that “don’t get the exposure they truly deserve” as well as higher recognition in the culinary world.

"It is still hard to believe what this industry has been through since the beginning of 2020," the Kasama team wrote on Instagram. "To make it here and to be recognized by the @michelinguide is truly beyond anything we could have ever imagined."

It’s one of Eater’s Best New Restaurants in America. Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Louisa Chu reviewed Kasama in December and she hailed it as one of the best restaurants in the world.

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