Rice Bar came online at a moment when Filipino cuisine was being singled out nationwide as one of the emergent cuisines in America this decade. But Filipino culture is no novelty in Los Angeles, of course. The city houses the largest Filipino population outside the Philippines. Restaurants across the metro map prepare the standards that express the cuisine’s unique Indonesian, Chinese, Arabic and Spanish influences — dishes like crackling lumpia, vinegar-thwacked adobo, peanut-laced kare kare, lechon with shatteringly crisp skin, cornbread bibingka glossy from rice flour and coconut milk. More recently, restaurants such as Rice Bar and Lasa in Chinatown have reframed traditional Filipino cooking in modern, personalized ways.
Source: latimes.com – Los Angeles Times