A Filipino Feast to Eat with Your Hands

Eric Valdez, the executive chef and co-owner of Naks, was born in the Filipino city of Makati. Before opening Naks, he spent two years as the chef de cuisine at the marvellous Dhamaka, on the Lower East Side, where he oversaw the creation of some of New York’s most thrilling Indian dishes. Unapologetic Foods, the restaurant group behind Dhamaka (and the similarly blockbuster restaurants Adda and Semma), is Valdez’s partner in Naks, and the team has made clear that its goal is to provide the same sort of exuberant corrective to New York’s understanding of the food of the Philippines which its other establishments have done for South Asian cooking. The city is not short on Filipino restaurants; Naks, in fact, took over the former address of Jeepney, a pioneer of hip Filipino dining that closed in 2021. But most New Yorkers’ familiarity with the cuisine tends to be limited to dishes such as lumpia (fresh or fried spring rolls), adobo (meat cooked in a vinegary marinade), and the fast-food fried chicken served at Jollibee. Many of the city’s best Filipino restaurants offer kamayan, which is generally something like a barbecue sampler platter. At Naks, it’s a coursed-out tasting menu that aims to offer a tour of Filipino regional cooking, reflecting the melding of native foodways with centuries of Spanish, Chinese, Indian, and American influences, and linking the cuisine to Valdez’s own biography and memories.