Kaya

Kaya (https://www.kayaorlando.com/) is an upscale Filipino restaurant in Mills 50, Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood.  It is owned and operated by Chef Lordfer Lalicon and General Manager Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, who first made names for themselves with Kappo in Orlando’s East End Market food hall, then launched their award-winning omakase sushi restaurant Kadence.  I have not been lucky enough to go to either yet, but I’ve been aware of them for the longest time, and they seem like incredibly nice, hard-working, talented people who deserve all their accolades and local love.  Kaya first opened in 2022, and while I’ve been wanting to try it ever since, I finally made it there for the first time a few weeks ago.  Better late than never, because I had an unforgettable experience that I’ve been replaying in my head ever since.

I was actually meeting a friend for dinner on a rare weeknight I was off work: someone I also consider a mentor and a role model, Amy Drew Thompson, the food writer for the Orlando Sentinel.  This was my second time meeting Amy Drew in real life, and she is a delightful person who is so nice, so knowledgeable, and an amazing writer.  Kaya is one of her favorite local restaurants, and I was thrilled she was willing and able to meet me there.  Of course everyone at Kaya knew her, because she does so much for Orlando’s local food scene.  Jami came by to check on us a few times, and even Chef Lalicon (who everyone calls “Chef Lo”) popped out of the kitchen.  We sat at the bar, and the two bartenders, Daniel and a nice lady whose name I’m blanking on, took wonderful care of us.

They started us out with a mocktail called Hiraya, with white peony and marigold tea, pineapple juice, and lime juice, sprinkled with Sichuan peppercorns.  It was so refreshing!  It started with the unmistakable sweet taste of pineapple, but that quickly faded to something more botanical.  I’ve never tasted anything like those tea flavors, but it tasted like my wife’s shampoo smells (in a good way). 

The first dish to come out was Lumpiang Shanghai, an order of three very long, very crispy spring rolls, stuffed with seasoned pork and chicken and served with hibiscus sweet chili sauce.  I knew these as lumpia, and I’ve had them before (including when a very sweet student made them and brought me some, years ago), but with all due respect to her, I’ve never had anything close to these.  They set the tone for a multi-course meal where each dish was the most interesting thing I had ever tasted, until the next one came along and supplanted it.   

Kinilaw is a raw fish-based dish somewhat reminiscent of ceviche in Latin American countries, except where ceviche uses citrus juices to “cook” the fish, kinilaw utilizes vinegar for a similar purpose.  This gorgeous kinilaw incorporated madai, the Japanese word for red sea bream, a whole new fish I had never tasted before (although some of my research tells me the term is used interchangeably with red snapper, usually when it’s served as sushi).  Delicate raw slices of the madai were served with peaches, paper-thin slices of crunchy radish, coconut, and chili flakes, all arranged artfully on separate little crispy islands of puffed rice.  You can see five little radish slices, each one topping a piece of the madai, and there’s puffed rice under each one.  You would scoop up the whole little stack, and it is a perfect bite of food with so many textures and flavors.  Chef Lo used pinakurat, which is a spiced coconut vinegar (made from coconut sap).  I’ve bought the Suka Pinakurat brand before, at Orlando’s many Asian markets, since I love experimenting with different vinegars almost as much as I love mustards, but I never dreamed anyone could use it to create a dish on this level of complexity and beauty. 

This beautiful dish was Bicol Express mussels, served in a broth of coconut cream, Thai chilis, shallot, garlic, and bagoong, served with thick slices of pandesal toast for dipping in the rich broth.  I love mussels in any form, and this dish was the most unique way I’ve ever eaten them.  Bicol Express is a Filipino dish traditionally made with cubes of pork, rather than one of the best bivalves.

Bagoong, by the way, is a Filipino condiment made of fermented shrimp or krill cured in salt, which makes a  salty, savory, umami flavor.  It sounds intense and funky, but I didn’t notice anything intense or funky standing out to distract from the mussels or their creamy, spicy, coconutty broth.  But I like intense and funky!  (I’ve been told that I AM intense and funky!)

I wrote about pandesal, literally “bread of salt,” when I reviewed the Filipino-American fusion bakery-cafe The Baker’s Son in Kissimmee, this past December.  It is some of the most delicious bread I’ve ever tasted, similar to buttery brioche, Japanese milk bread, and French pain de mie, sharing their subtle sweetness.   As I’ve gotten older, and especially as I’ve cut way back on carbs, sometimes I just really appreciate good toast, and this pandesal toast was no joke, especially when used to sop up the broth and flex a couple of mussels.   

This was Ningang’s rigatoni, a take on the Filipino style of spaghetti, which is traditionally served with cut-up hot dogs and Spam in a sweet tomato sauce.  On my one trip to the Filipino fried chicken chain Jollibee, I was most excited to try a side order of that spaghetti, but I didn’t think it was anything special.  Kaya’s menu describes their version of the dish as “Filipino beef Bolognese, Spam, aged gouda, a touch of sweetness, a lot of love.”  You can taste the love in it, along with in everything else Chef Lo makes.  I love a good pasta dish, especially a meat sauce, and I really loved this rigatoni.  I would have a hard time returning to Kaya and not ordering this every time (among other things, natch).

I’ve written often about how one of my favorite meats is oxtail, whether it’s in Jamaican or Trinidadian cuisine, American soul food, or even in a steaming bowl of Vietnamese pho.  I was curious about trying Kaya’s oxtail kare kare, served in a rich peanut sauce with eggplant, bok choy, and a little dipping bowl of bagoong (in the top right, so you can see it by itself), but I’ve never tried or even seen oxtail like this.  Usually eating it is a messy affair, as you’re holding the irregularly shaped bone segments and chewing the tender meat and unctuous fat off them, and the bones are slippery enough that they can slip right out of your hands and go flying.  If my dad ever dared to eat oxtail, he would probably add it to his list of foods to not eat on a date, including most other hand-held meat with bones, and anything you have to “fight with” too much — crab legs that need to be cracked, shrimp that need to be shelled, and so forth.  But Chef Lo deboned all that rich meat and pressed it into a brick, then seared the outside to crispy perfection.  It was not only delicious and not only gorgeous, like everything else we were experiencing at Kaya, but he made it EASY.The oxtail kare kare was served with a side of buttery garlic rice called sinangag, which you must order separately (for $5) if your entree doesn’t come with it.

Because I was dining with a culinary luminary, Jami and Chef Lo sent us out these gambas: huge Cape Canaveral white shrimp, served with the heads on as well as the tails, in rich garlic butter, kalamansi verde, and preserved lemon.  Now these were messy, but what a festival of flavors and textures and colors! 
Kalamansi (sometimes called calamansi or calamondin) is a small, round citrus fruit, a hybrid of a kumquat and a Mandarin orange, and their juice is used in a lot of Filipino recipes.  Ripe ones are orange, but because the ones used in this recipe were kalamansi verde (green), they added sour notes because they weren’t ripe yet, perfectly balancing the richness of the garlic butter.  My wife says I love sour and tangy flavors more than anyone she’s ever met, which is one big reason I’m so crazy about Filipino cuisine.  (I also jokingly call myself the “acidic Jew” because of this.)  I have enjoyed kalamansi juice in cool, refreshing beverages before, including from the aforementioned The Baker’s Son (not that different from lemonade or limeade), and after a dear friend with a green thumb hooked me up with kalamansi from her own garden, I squeezed enough juice out of them to make my favorite dessert ever, a variation of Atlantic Beach pie.  (If you’re curious, drop me a line, sweet-toothed Saboscrivnerinos!)

Speaking of dessert, we were about to be blown away by the creativity of Kaya’s talented pastry chef, Chef Clarice Lam.  This was her Silvana Alaska, based on beloved Filipino cookies called Silvanas: two cashew-meringue wafers with a layer of buttercream between them, coated with cookie crumbs.  Chef Lam’s show-stopper was a gluten-free dessert with cashew meringue, ube French buttercream, blueberry compote, a dome-like layer of toasted Swiss meringue (hence the “Alaska” part, like the classic old-timey dessert baked Alaska), tiny cubes of blueberry jellies, and surrounded by a sweet, creamy moat of ube crème anglaise.By the way, ube is a purple yam that is definitely having a moment, being used in all kinds of desserts.  My wife loves the ube soft serve ice cream at Sampaguita Filipino Ice Cream, mere moments away from Kaya, but I’ve never had a dessert of this level of complexity, with or without ube.

Once we split into the meringue dome, this is what the Silvana Alaska looked like inside.  (I think my photo looks like a big fish opening its mouth, with the blueberry jelly cube as its eye, but that was not my intention.)

I am so proud of my wife, who has been trying all kinds of new foods lately.  Even though she wasn’t with us at this dinner (arguably having even more fun than we were, seeing her beloved Tori Amos in concert), I selected another tempting dish to bring home for her to enjoy later.  We both love squid ink pasta (I call it “Goth pasta”), and this was Kaya’s squid ink pancit: house-made spaghetti noodles topped with calamari rings, adobo sauce, black garlic aioli, and pandesal bread crumble.  It was magnificent.  We both sampled it later that night, after I picked her up from the concert, and she got two more whole portions out of it the next day.

Folks, I cannot stress how awe-inspiring this meal was.  I rarely go out to dinner because of my odd work schedule, but if Kaya was open for lunch (it isn’t), I’m sure I would have tried it years ago.  Instead, I’m late to the party, but this was, without a doubt, the absolute #1 best meal I’ve ever eaten in my 22 years in Orlando, and in the Top Five meals of my entire life.

I can tell you three of the others right now:

• • Babbo in NYC for our honeymoon in 2009, before we knew what a shit Mario Batali was,
  • Chef Michael Solomonov’s elevated Ashkenazi Jewish restaurant Abe Fisher in Philadelphia in 2023, which closed not long after our visit up there to see Le Tigre, so I never got around to writing about it, and
  • Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster Overtown in Miami, before seeing De La Soul in 2025.

But I was wowed by every part of the Kaya experience: not just the once-in-a-lifetime dishes my friend/mentor and I shared, but the professionalism of our bartender-servers, Jami’s warmth and kindness, the decor, the unbridled creativity of Chef Lo and Chef Lam, and the way the whole place — the whole experience — feels like a labor of love and a way of sharing a cuisine and a culture that too many Americans have yet to experience.  The website lists Kaya’s values with their names in Tagalog, and I really needed to share these, because you don’t see restaurants with a mission statement all that often, and they really exemplify all these beautiful, noble, lofty ideals:

• • Pamilya: We treat our team and guests like family. We practice radical hospitality so that our guests feel a sense of belonging and ease. We create space to be present for our families.
  • Kapwa + Bayanihan: We care deeply about community. We treat one another with love, look out for each other, and lift one another up. We build a model that allows us to be full, whole humans in right relationship with one another.
  • Utang Na Loob: We respect and honor our community, elders, and ancestors, as well as the land and its resources. We take a no/low-waste, sustainable approach, and we celebrate the beauty and richness of our heritage.
  • Mapanlikha: We move from a place of possibility, learning from the past and our experiences while actively creating our vision for the future. We pay close attention to how we can constantly improve while shaping the narrative of what’s possible.

Nothing about this epic experience was “mid” or forgettable, nor was it snooty or snobby or inaccessible.  Nobody was going through the motions.  Even with my own hang-ups about fine dining (that it isn’t meant for people like me), I never felt like an impostor or a sellout or a disappointment to my parents.  It was a close to perfect as a meal could be, and I had a blast!  Kaya has clearly earned its Michelin Green star for sustainability, and deserves to be in that rarified pantheon of top restaurants in Orlando, if not all of Florida, but I feel like it deserves a regular star as well, if not two.  By the way, according to the website, “kaya” means capable in Tagalog, and “kaya natin” means we can.   They are beyond capable, and not only can they, but they do.

And as much as I hoped to return to Kaya sooner rather than later, I surprised myself by returning just a few weeks later — yesterday, in fact!  But it wasn’t for another dinner, not this time.  Instead, Executive Pastry Chef Clarice Lam hosts an event called Kapé Kaya, a daytime bakery concept featuring her awe-inspiring pastries, every Saturday, from 9:30 AM until 12 PM.  I’ve seen pictures of her past creations, but this was a rare treat: the second of three Kapé Kaya events where she teams up with another local restaurant hero: Chef Tyler Brunache of SmokeMade Meats + Eats, my favorite barbecue restaurant in Orlando that won Michelin Bib Gourmand awards for “good quality, good value cooking” in 2025 and 2026.

This was like when Jack White teamed up with Norah Jones… or when Jack White teamed up with Alison Mosshart from The Kills… or when Jack White teamed up with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest!  Or maybe like the too-rare team-ups between Daredevil and Captain America, a pairing that makes all the sense in the world even though you don’t automatically think of them as obvious partners.  I had to be there, so I arrived around 8:45 AM, and there were already about 30 people ahead of me, waiting in line outside Kaya.  The heat and humidity didn’t get too bad until around 9:30, but they moved things along pretty well inside.  In the meantime, we studied the menu:

Jami came outside to announce when they were finally opening up, and I couldn’t believe she recognized me after meeting me once, a few weeks ago.  (I was also somewhat incognito, wearing sunglasses and my “I Love Research” bucket hat under the baking morning sun, looking like the nerdiest rapper ever, and she still recognized me and gave me a hug.)  When I finally got in, they had all the gorgeous pastries on display on the bar, with labels and prices.  You order and pay up front, then wait for the staff to assemble your order in large pink bakery boxes. 

I thanked Chef Lam on the way out the door, and even though I had considered doing it, I refrained from doing my Anthony Hopkins-as-Hannibal Lecter impression, greeting her with “Hello, Clarice.”  She’s probably heard it before, and Mads Mikkelsen was the better Hannibal Lecter anyway, by far.  (I said what I said.)  I was on my way by 10:15, leaving me enough time to make it to donate blood in Altamonte Springs by my 11 AM appointment time.  As usual, I brought a cooler with me to keep my Kapé Kaya treats safe and cool in this awful summer heat.

Back at home, this is a close-up of my brisket bear claw, which had buttery, flaky layers like the best croissant you’ve ever had.

This was the longganisa sausage bun, and keep in mind this was all one interconnected thing!  I’ve been lucky enough to catch Chef Tyler’s longganisa sausage as a weekend special at SmokeMade, and I love how sweet and savory it is.  All his house-made sausages have a perfect crispy natural casing, and Chef Lam’s dough was kind of like a savory danish pastry, not flaky and layered like the bear claw.

I love macaroni salad and always enjoy the slightly sweet taste of surimi (imitation “krab”) in sushi and poke, so I couldn’t resist the krab macaroni salad puff pastry tart.  It was so refreshing, especially compared to the other two heavier pastries, and the tart shell was flaky and light.

Here they are on a plate, so you can see a cross-section of the brisket bear claw with all those laminated dough layers and smoked brisket, gouda cheese, pickles, and barbecue sauce inside.  Upon tearing into it, it reminded me of a cross between a croissant and the Cuban pastelitos I grew up eating in Miami, sometimes stuffed with seasoned ground beef called picadillo.

And here are my sweet choices.  One the left, I got the mango coconut croissant bibingka, because I thought it was something my wife and I would both like, whereas I figured the savory pastries above would be all mine.  This thing was so dense and rich, we’re both slowly working our way through it over 36 hours later, a bite or two at a time.  Like so many other Filipino dishes, bibingka is new to me, so I looked it up.  Serious Eats never lets me down: it is a “coconut-flavored, banana-leaf scented rice cake topped with caramelized coconut strips.”  However, not having had prior bibingka experience, I would have guessed it was more like a bread pudding, since that’s what the texture and consistency felt like to me.  I loved the mango puree on top.  It was so good, but a little goes a long way.The same could be said for Chef Lam’s “thick’em cookie,” the one thing my wife actually requested.  This is a huge cookie, even bigger than the ones from Gideon’s Bakehouse.  The edges were crispy, but the rest was soft and yielding, which I always prefer in my cookies.  There were chocolate chunks, corn flakes, and some fancy salt crystals sprinkled on top.  My wife was in heaven, and she has also been nibbling away at the cookie because you can’t just devour it.  This plate was surprisingly heavy with both of these on it.

So that was my amazing Kapé Kaya experience, just weeks after my first dinner at Kaya.  I am posting this NOW because there is one more scheduled Kapé Kaya crossover with SmokeMade Meats and Eats, and that is next Saturday morning, August 1st.  I’ll probably be seeing the next Spider-Man movie before the Internet can spoil it all for me, but all my dozens of readers should do whatever it takes to be at Kaya before the line gets too long and the heat gets too unbearable.  Spider-Man is supposed to team up with the Hulk and the Punisher, but the best team-up in Orlando is going to be happening right at Kaya, and you don’t want to miss it!