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Newsletter: Gardens and fields and Filipino food

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We’re more than halfway through May, as crazy as it sounds, and thus well into Food Bowl, our month-long food festival. Hope you’ve been enjoying it! It’s been a good month to celebrate this town’s dining scene, which we’ve continued to do this past week, particularly the farmers and the gardeners and the folks at the forefront of the new wave of Filipino restaurants.

Thus Jonathan Gold considers not just one restaurant but a handful of them, run by the young Filipino chefs who are rediscovering and reinventing the vibrant food of their culture. We check out a farm in Fresno where an immigrant family has been putting down roots, and pretty terrific produce. We also head to South L.A. to visit Ron Finley’s own garden, which has been steadily growing, along with Finley’s global mission. And lastly, there’s Thomas Keller’s spectacular fried chicken, an unlikely mission in its own right.

Amy Scattergood

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Celebrating Filipino cuisine

Alvin Cailan is the chef and co-owner of Eggslut at Grand Central Market.
Alvin Cailan is the chef and co-owner of Eggslut at Grand Central Market.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

This week, Jonathan considers the new wave of Filipino cooking in Los Angeles and beyond, a trend that’s showing, thankfully, no signs of abating. From Lasa to Rice Bar to Irenia and more, he writes, “what we’re seeing is a flowering of second-generation cuisine, not dissimilar from what Bryant Ng is doing with Vietnamese flavors at Cassia or Carlos Salgado is doing at Taco Maria.”

A year of adobo

Rice Bar chef Charles Olalia is making different versions of adobo all year long.
(Amy Scattergood / Los Angeles Times)

Chef Charles Olalia has been having his own Filipino food moment, for the almost two years his tiny counter restaurant Rice Bar has been open. A few months ago he decided to focus on adobo — and to make a different version of the celebrated dish every week for the rest of the year. As there may be as many variations on adobo as there are islands in the Philippines, he could probably keep going for a very long time.

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In the dirt with Ron Finley

Ron Finley, in the garden that became a global mission.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

I check in on what’s been happening in the Gangsta Gardener’s South L.A. garden, which began life as a parkway vegetable patch and grew into the Ron Finley Project. After recently avoiding eviction, Finley talks about the current state of his garden, his project and his global mission to bring urban gardening — and with it real, accessible, healthful food — to the people who most need it.

Know your farmer

Food writer Noah Galuten heads to Thao Family Farm in Fresno, where he talks to Kong Thao and his parents, who immigrated from Laos and now supply L.A. farmers markets — and many of this town’s best restaurants — with spectacular produce. The farm grows close to 300 different fruits or vegetables, all farmed by hand on about 34 acres.

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Beverly Hills fried chicken

There are many places in this town with spectacular fried chicken. You might not think that chef Thomas Keller’s French bistro in Beverly Hills would be among them — and you’d be wrong. Deputy Food Editor Jenn Harris goes behind the kitchen doors to document how the folks in Keller’s meticulous kitchen make the stuff. And yes, it comes in buckets.

The Los Angeles Times Food Bowl: Want to spend the last 12 days of May exploring the food of this city through forums, dinners, films, pop-ups and more dining and drinking? Our month-long food festival runs through May 31. What’s coming up next: a night celebrating Filipino cuisine, with a movie, screening and lots of food; dinner at Providence with chef Dan Hunter; Beast Feast, with Fergus Henderson, Dario Cecchini, Nancy Silverton and more.

Goldbot: you can now talk to Jonathan Gold any time you want — or at least the robot version of him that now lives on Facebook Messenger. You can ask Goldbot for a personal restaurant recommendation based on location, type of food or price. The bot will also deliver Jonathan Gold’s latest reviews straight to your device.

The Daily Meal, the food and drink website under the editorial direction of Colman Andrews, is now one of our partners. Check out their 101 best pizzas in America and other stories, recipes and videos.

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Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers and now features his 2016 Best Restaurants. If you didn’t get a copy of the booklet, you can order one online here.

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Feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at food@latimes.com.

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