Eater names IN THE KUSINA by Woldy Reyes one of the 20 Best Cookbooks of Spring 2025
In the Kusina: My Seasonal Filipino Cooking
By Woldy Reyes
Chronicle, April 8
Filipino food is not often described as light, which you might chalk up to the fact that many of our most famous dishes, especially abroad, are meat-centric celebration foods. The New York City-based chef Woldy Reyes, however, is known for his refreshingly light, vegetable-forward approach to Filipino flavors and cuisine. He employs lots of fresh herbs, crunchy vegetables, and creamy, often coconut-based sauces in the catering that he does for stylish brands and events.
In this, Reyes’s debut cookbook, he offers recipes and tips for bringing his approach into your home kitchen — a perspective that I think will give exciting new insight to both pre-existing fans of Filipino food and people who love fresh, seasonal vegetables and want ways to work with them. I found Reyes’s vegetarian riff on bagoong, the fermented Filipino seafood paste, particularly illuminating: Reyes makes it with slow-cooked garlic, porcini mushroom powder, and coconut jam, and then uses it to fortify a coconut milk-based spaghetti sauce or serve as a dip for crudites. As many cookbooks do, Reyes takes a flexible approach to eating mostly vegetables: There is no meat or seafood here, but he does occasionally call for fish sauce.
Reyes’s book is structured around seasonal produce and he uses it well. Filipino spaghetti — usually a meaty, heavy dish — has the requisite banana ketchup, but burst cherry tomatoes give it levity and natural sweetness. Depending on the time of year, Reyes’s lumpia is made with chickpeas, asparagus, or kabocha squash that’s flavored with spicy miso. And instead of braising green beans to make adobo, he chars them on a grill and finishes them with adobo vinaigrette. Reyes might be taking Filipino food in a lighter direction than what many of us are familiar with, but throughout In the Kusina, he proves that this doesn’t have to come at the expense of big, bold flavors. — BM