The meal is over. Eric Valdez is sitting across from me. The chef at Naks restaurant, a Filipino dazzler in the East Village, has just served a preview for his premiere expansion. I am the first outsider to try it.
“How do you think the city will react?” I ask.
Valdez offers a shrug. “I dunno,” he says. “It’s never been done before.”
To understand the impact of that answer requires going back to the sandugo, a blood oath of alliance between an indigenous chieftain and a Spanish conquistador in 1565, founding the city of Cebu in the Philippines, a territory of New Spain (the colonial name for Mexico).
Centuries before the United States was founded and decades before the first English settlement in the purported “New World,” these 7,400-plus Asian islands became the colonial era’s first global melting pot. In fact, the first Asian communities in the nascent United States were Filipinos who immigrated to New Orleans over the four decades Louisiana was under Spanish rule.
The words for mother and father in Tagalog, the most-prominent of the Philippines’ 175 indigenous languages, are Nahuatl inheritances from the Tlaxcalan warriors who allied with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztecs. Japanese wokou pirates added narezushi (fermented fish) to Filipino dishes like burong isda. Hokkien Chinese merchants brought noodles, spring rolls, and buns, which were adapted into Filipino pancit, lumpia, and siopao, respectively.
From the west, India’s Mughal Empire brought puttu, a steamed rice-and-coconut treat adapted into Filipino puto, a national dessert. From the south, Malay Muslims contributed satti (grilled meat skewers) and velvety rendang curry to the mix. And from the east, Spanish imports (tomatoes!) from its American holdings, including modern-day California, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.
Jollibee, a global burger chain, is Filipino McDonald’s. So it’s not like meat between bread is Martian to Filipinos. That said, “the Philippines never developed a sandwich culture,” says Valdez. He is changing that with Sanwits, a new sandwich shop on First Avenue named after the Tagalog loanword for sandwiches. His recipes are 461 years in the making—including the 48 years (1898 to 1946) that the Philippines was a US territory.
Consider his calderata: braised beef cheeks in a toasted ciabatta bathing in a spicy roasted tomato sauce, sweet peppers, and subtle gooey goodness from Filipino Eden cheese, a Kraft Foods brand launched in 1981—12 years before Valdez, now 33, was born. Its sumptuousness reduced me to long, eyes-closed licks of the ciabatta crevice, so much so that a neighboring table asked me where they could get one.
And the lechón kawali with adobo sauce stir-fried bok choy, and pork-and-chicken-liver mayo—is packed into a toasted brioche so that each bite offers a palimpsest of textures. And there’s the fresh, juicy tang of the tin can fish, inspired by Valdez’s sardine-filled childhood: a bun filled with crispy fried mackerel layered with an onion salad and tomato gremolata. He’s also making pandesal (an airy bread roll) and his own Spam (haché, egg-washed, and seared).
To amend an old Calvin Trillin quip: the bánh mì is no longer the only good argument for colonialism. Valdez creates a worthy roster of sandwiches that have minored in comparative anthropology with distinction. They offer a flavor not just of history, but empathy too. Sanwits is what post-colonial healing can taste like.
At Naks, Valdez scrapped his original backroom kamayan tasting menu for adventurous expansions into cocktails and brunch (kamayan, a Filipino dining style, refers to “hands” because that is how it’s eaten, like a crab boil). Dinner traffic is now equaled by brunch—a rare feat.
He is bothered that Naks is often called “modern” Filipino despite many dishes replicating his family’s recipes. “It’s not modern,” he says. “It’s proper.”
For proper sandwiches, he is flanked by restaurant royalty: Chef Chintan Pandya and entrepreneur Roni Mazumdar, whose empire of Indian sanctuaries—Adda, Dhamaka, Kebabwala, Rahi, Rowdy Rooster, and Semma—absolutely transformed New York’s Indian palate. They call their approach “Unapologetic” and see no reason why Valdez, who worked for years as chef de cuisine in their restaurants, should have to apologize for who he is, what he eats, or where he was born.
“I’ve worked with Eric since 2016, since before Adda, and I felt guilty he wasn’t getting the attention he should at our restaurants because he’s not Indian,” says Pandya. “People trust Indian chefs more at Indian restaurants. So the trust in him had to come from us. And our trust is insane.”
Mazumdar agrees. “If Eric were Egyptian, Naks would’ve been Egyptian. It’s not like we had market research suggesting a Filipino restaurant. We believed in Eric. He got us here,” he says. “This is how food evolves. To create the future, that creativity requires risk. The one thing we’ve always done is never stop trying—never stop beginning.”
Upon Sanwits’ beginning, I ask Valdez if he’s excited. Another shrug. “Bahala na,” he says. Come what may. “Bahala na po,” I reply, jokingly making the sentiment formal. His shrug melts. In its place, he offers a smile.
SANWITS
(coming soon)
First Ave | @naks.nyc
