Jonathan Gold reviews Irenia in Santa Ana, which is reinterpreting traditional Filipino cuisine - main dishes mexican restaurant

When you hit Irenia at the right time in the afternoon, maybe late on Saturday, the lunch rush hour has disappeared and you may run into a few old people who seem to have never left the bar table, they held the bottle of San Miguel, lazily carrying a bowl of delis, and the dried anchovies were small and warm to bake from the pan.
Sometimes they dip the fish somewhere in Chile. Vinegar;
Sometimes they tuck them into their mouths without any cover.
Obviously, the agreement is to eat anchovies one by one instead of throwing them back like popcorn so that every fish can taste it on its own --
One is particularly salty, the next one is crispy, and the third one is as crisp as glass.
This is a way to celebrate anchovy.
Each creature has its own character and soul.
Dilisis is a powerful food, either in terms of metaphor or in terms of its unmistakable spicy level, it can water your eyes from the other side of the room.
This is by no means a rare thing.
One of the most common Filipino snacks
But, in this Santa Ana restaurant, it struck a special chord, and even if you give up, pour them all over a bowl of rice.
Irenia is a modern restaurant that is part of the new Philippine food movement throughout Southern California, but I suspect that the kitchen is as concerned with how to satisfy the appetite of Grandma and uncle as it is with the manufacturing scene.
Irenia's name after the chef's grandmother is not accidental.
Downtown Santa Ana has become one of the most unlikely culinary neighborhoods in the state, spread across cocktail bars, snack bars and huge 4-street markets, including food spacebusiness start-ups;
Electric City, a butcher's shop that attracts customers from 50 miles away;
There is also a shop specializing in Mexican handmade food, Alta Baja.
The playground is the mainstay of The Times's 101 Best Restaurants list.
You are rarely a few steps away from taco, Kun dress or shade --grown coffee.
Hidden next to Starbucks, Irenia is a project by Ryan Garlitos, a young chef who first worked with Carlos Salgado in the wonderful Taco Maria.
It is suspected that garlitos's goal is to do what Sargado does for Mexican food for Philippine cooking, to take apart the signature dishes of his childhood, rebuild them with farmers' market ingredients and Western technology and serve them in the context of a new American meal.
His food is not affected by the taste of the Philippines.
It is of the Philippines and is re-interpreted and presented in a new way.
Garlitos shares the vision of Charles Oria in Valencia, Chad, and Les bar in Lasha.
If you know anything about Filipino cooking, it's only from churches.
Carnival adobo and cheap steam
Irenia will change the way you look at food.
Sosinigang, Type 24
Sour soup, usually used to moisturize a large amount of rice, becomes more dense and milk when garritos is made, and more is the broth and baked kon cubes, not the pure acidity
A thick coconutmilk stew;
Garlitos uses it to highlight a dish in Romanesque.
A chewy house
Noodles cut with citrus and fried chicken skin, like a plate of pasta, but its sour taste
The delicious taste is direct from Manila.
Kare kare, stewed with peanuts, made of burnt cauliflower instead of meat;
Broccolini with washed egg yolk, caramel reinforced with grilled shrimp sauce and a small amount of shaved dry bon fish;
You might be deep about those big ones.
A sweet chicken leg-
It's kind of like a Filipino liver sauce.
Minced gravy.
You're not far from a drop of the fish Pan, the application of fermented shrimp bathbagon, or the injection of squid lime, but here's a place that's almost unexpected, even if the small gem lettuce's burnt head is coated with a paste made of Philippine fish Bangas, the sweet section of Kara orange, looks like a street, but tastes like a pure anchovy.
Dinuguan, a stew of super pig guts
Spicy sauce made of pig blood and ground liver, usually one of the most terrible dishes in the Philippine arsenal, but garritto has ignited cocoa --dark sauce —
The liver is nothing but a short bitterness.
Replace the intestines with crispy things
Edge slice of roast pig shoulder.
This is the most popular dish on the table.
Is the main course more traditional?
The main dishes are always more traditional: stewed beef with burnt shishito chili; crisp-
Chicken leg skin with ginger juice;
Or the prawns in the coconut.
It's almost Thai milk sauce. (
It is almost impossible to pry the shrimp out of the shell --
I tend to treat them as shrimp I made in okra soup, and the taste is more important than the actual food. )
You will expect to have an adobo in a Filipino restaurant, where it is-
A sweet and soft pork belly stewed with soy, vinegar and a large amount of garlic, in an Indian restaurant, you can call it mung bean.
For coffee, you must go to the nearby Portola or Hopper & Burr.
But you'll want at least a slice of Irenia's lovely Yubu brown sugar pie that tastes a bit like a Southern chess pie after a holiday in the Philippines.
When you are eating, you can also get an elastic rice cake called bibingka, seasoned with coconut and sprinkled with deep roasted peanuts.
Just a few blocks from the coffee shop.
You need to support yourself when walking.
IreniaLOCATION400 N.
St. Anna, Broadway (657)245-3466, www.
Restaurant. com.
$6-$7;
$10-small plate$17; entrees $16-$19; desserts $7-$9.
Details 11. m. to 2 p. m. Tues. -Sat. ;
Dinner from 5: 30 to 10: 00 in the eveningm. Tues. -Thurs. ;
5:30 to 10:30m. Fri. -Sat.
Accept credit cards. Full bar.
Street and parking nearby.
Recommended tableware;
A scorched little gem saladdinuguan; chicken inasal;
Yubu brown sugar piejonathan. gold@latimes.
Com @ thejgoldMORE from Jonathan gold71, L point of viewA.
More beautiful than the first impression of food: Chinese taste, perhaps the first Anhui-