Irenia

When you hit Irenia at the right time in the afternoon, maybe late on a Saturday when the lunch rush has faded away, you may run into a couple of old guys who look as if they’ve never left their table in the bar, nursing bottles of San Miguel and

common Filipino snacks — but it takes on a special resonance in this Santa Ana dining room, even when you give up and dump them all onto a bowl of rice. Irenia is a modern restaurant, part of the new Filipino food movement flashing through Southern

Irenia   

Anaheim, there are websites and apps dedicated to uncovering restaurants’ secret menus. (Photo by Cindy Yamanaka, Orange County Register/SCNG) 11. Irenia (2018 ranking: 11) Chef Ryan Garlitos put Filipino food in the spotlight when he opened his scrappy

milk, black-eyed peas and bitter greens. 400 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, 657-245-3466, ireniarestaurant.com Don’t leave Irenia in Santa Ana without ordering a slice of ube brown sugar pie with oat cookie crust. (Photo by Brad A. Johnson, Orange County

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can dive into a sausage pizza or a plate of chicken parm. It is the best of all possible worlds. 2100 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 908-5211, www.cosabuona.com. Dinuguan The dinuguan at Irenia in Santa Ana, Calif. Courtnee Jean Martinez We have

pie at the moment may lean more towards buko and pili nut than toward coconut cream and pecan. Still, until I started going to Irenia, Ryan Garlitos’ Filipino bistro in Santa Ana, I never thought it would be possible to rehabilitate dinuguan, a stew of

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Ryan Garlitos of Irenia Restaurant dreamed of opening his own place someday. He just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. He and his girlfriend, Sarah Mosqueda, had been doing itinerant supper clubs, starting on a whim. “I was making dinner for some

after the buzz died down. More important, they wanted to set the standard. “We wanted to be the one that everybody who came after would be compared to.” When Irenia opened in May of last year, it was to instant and critical acclaim. Jonathan Gold wrote

Garlitos—a young chef inspired by his grandmother’s Filipino cooking and mentored by Taco Maria’s Carlos Salgado—who is putting himself and his food out there for the widest possible audience. Last year he started Irenia, an itinerant pop-up he named in

honor of his lola. Its success led him to this newest project: Irenia as a brick-and-mortar in the space vacated by the North Left in Downtown Santa Ana. At his new restaurant, Garlitos doesn’t waste any time throwing the non-Pinoy into the deep end of

and delivered an electrical shock of Sichuan peppercorns. No restaurant since has ever done it better. Pork adobo over rice with a fried egg at Irenia, now closed, in Santa Ana. (Photo by Brad A. Johnson, Orange County Register/SCNG) 4. Irenia (2016

departure of important restaurants that served similarly personal Filipino cooking. We lost genre-pushing Irenia in Santa Ana in 2019 and Charles Olalia’s frequently brilliant Ma’am Sir in Silver Lake during the summer of 2020. Ria Dolly Barbosa’s tiny

-7380, calokitchen.com Chato’s Bar & Grill Chef Sergio Ortega, the chef who launched Descanso in Costa Mesa, has taken over the space in downtown Santa Ana that was previously occupied by Irenia, flipping into a casual Mexican bar and grill. The vibe: A

Spoon & Pork in Silver Lake and the warming rice bowls from downtown’s Petite Peso. There have been disheartening fluctuations as well: the closing of genre-pushing Irenia in Santa Ana in 2019 and the hard loss last year of Charles Olalia’s beachy, often

This is the Filipino food moment — I think we can all agree on that. Restaurants such as Lasa, Irenia and Washington, D.C.’s Bad Saint have become media stars in a way that no Filipino restaurants in America have before, and The Times has been

line in my first experiences of Filipino cuisine. Kare kare at Irenia in Santa Ana. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The combination of pork fat and liver was bland yet complex, powerful yet without spice. I didn’t quite understand it then; I’m