We speak with Reina Montenegro of Nick’s Kitchen talks about transitioning her Filipino restaurant to Vegan.
Vegan Filipino food sounds like an oxymoron but Nick’s kitchen in Daly City Ca shows us it doesn’t have to be.
When I think of foods that are rich in animal proteins Filipino food comes to mind. So when I heard that Nick’s kitchen in Daly City California was doing vegan Filipino food, I had to check
it out.
“This Restaurant has been here for six years”, says Reina Montenegro, who owns Nicks Kitchen with her husband Kenny Annis, “I bought this restaurant only two years ago from this man named Nick. It was a Filipino restaurant and they cooked authentic Filipino food here. Comfort food — that’s what I loved about it. I used to come here all the time before I actually bought the place and also I continued it like he was still here until Kenny and I turned vegan. So it was very difficult for me to actually continue it as a meat-serving restaurant. For me anyway”.
“I was scared that no one was going to show up because every single dish that Filipinos have has meat in it. There was no such thing as vegetarian or vegan in the Filipino world. I didn’t really know that there is this really large vegan community out there. I didn’t know that at all”.
“So yeah I was a bold move, but it was something that was aligned with what I believed in and what we really live by. Everybody has been very supportive. The vegan community has been here. The
first week we had line out the door! It was overwhelming for me, I was just shocked really because I wasn’t expecting that. We weren’t ready for it. We ran out of food every single day”.
So what did the existing clients think? Were they upset that Nick’s was no longer serving meat?
“So I’ve only had one one one old man who came and said, ‘this is (baloney) you know, we eat meat! We’re Filipinos’ and walks out, you know. But most people come in are like, ‘Oh vegan? Oh yeah, we’ll try it.’ You know I was very surprised by that. There’s a lot of them that come in and are open to it. And most of them, like 99% of them, love it and they’r like, ‘Oh my gosh, if this is what vegan food is, I will come here and be vegan’.
I’m very proud of that. For a Filipino to actually come in here and say ‘Yeah okay I’ll try it’. I love that. I want to hug him and say yeah you’re doing such a good thing you know”.
I asked Reina how hard it was to come up with vegan versions of Filipino classics.
“For me what I struggle with is the desserts but I finally did it. You know, like the Ube Ice Cream — that took me a long time to actually test and retest it and then the Leche Flan which is
(typically) made out of eight eggs. That took me a while to figure out the texture. The taste I can do pretty spot-on right away, but then it’s a texture that I struggled with. But our menu is growing. We’re constantly testing recipes”.
So how is Nick’s changing the world?
“Every time somebody says to me, ‘man this tastes like the real thing’ or like someone, the other day just told me, ‘you cracked the code on the Leche Flan’, for me that means a lot because that’s what I’m going for. I’m going for that particular thing when somebody comes in here and says, ‘you know I do not miss the meat at all. I mean this is so good that I don’t miss the meat at all’. That is my goal you know? And I can convert people that way. I don’t have to protest and I don’t have to try to convince someone and be like, ‘you know this and that is gonna happen to you if you don’t change your lifestyle’. No, that’s not our goal here. Our goal is, I just want to serve really good food — and convince people that way.
Nick’s Kitchen is just South of San Francisco in Daly City California right across from the Cow
Palace.
They have recently opened a second restaurant: Nick’s On Grand
