When Kasama, a Filipino all-day café, opened in July 2020, diners lost their minds over Genie Kwon’s sweet-savory ham and cheese Danish topped with melted raclette, Serrano ham, and black-pepper-infused caramel. Snagging one earned you bragging rights on Instagram. The next dish to take off was Tim Flores’s brilliant breakfast sandwich: a griddled longanisa sausage patty, crispy hash brown, and fluffy square of egg soufflé topped with melted American cheese. Now managing to score a reservation for Kasama’s 13-course dinner tasting menu, which launched in November, is what’s worthy of social media gloating. 

That menu reimagines classic Filipino dishes, from kinilaw (vinegar-based ceviche) to halo-halo, through a fine-dining lens. Flores and Kwon both worked at the two-Michelin-starred Oriole, where he was chef de cuisine and she was pastry chef, and they bring that refined sensibility to dishes like siomai, a pleated dumpling stuffed with duck and foie gras, and pancit, squid ink noodles capped with Serrano ham and dots of scallop conserva. The bridge from savory courses to sweet, Kwon’s truffle croissant — stuffed with creamy, funky Délice de Bourgogne cheese and truffle paste and topped with rock sugar, honey, and black truffles shaved at the table — is a mic drop.

If the $185 tasting menu is out of reach, you can also stop by during the day to try that truffle croissant for just $13. Because that’s the thing about Kasama — while it’s offering an insightful take on Filipino cuisine and serving some of the best pastries in the city, at heart it’s a neighborhood joint.