Barya Kitchen<\/a> founder Rod Reyes and his mother\u2019s memory. Reyes began cooking during a home economics class in middle school, moving on to cooking for close friends and family. As good as his experiments were, he says, \u201cnone of that food actually represented me as a person and as a cook.\u201d It wasn\u2019t until Reyes lost his mother that he began to cook the food he grew up with.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cMy mom was always cooking,\u201d he says. Birthdays, graduations, moments of grief \u2013 there she was, bringing the large family comfort. \u201cWhen my mom passed, that realization kicked in almost immediately. It felt almost existential: I\u2019m not gonna have my mom\u2019s food ever again.\u201d That\u2019s when Reyes realized he needed to act quickly. \u201cI started cooking my mom\u2019s food simply because I missed it, immediately missed it.\u201d Within a week of her passing, Reyes was trying to replicate her chicken adobo for just one more bite of his favorite dish, one that once soothed his hunger and eased his mind as a child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He pauses, skeptical of himself. \u201cI hate to say chicken adobo only because it\u2019s such a cliche dish,\u201d he explains. Every family makes it differently, even if they\u2019re using the same ingredients, because of the methods and ratios and regional variations. \u201cBut, man, my mom\u2019s ratio, when it came to chicken adobo, was like the most perfect balance of acidity, saltiness, and the pepperiness and the aromatic flavor from the bay leaf.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As time went on, Reyes not only replicated his mom\u2019s cooking. He made it so well his aunts and uncles tell him it\u2019s just like his mom\u2019s. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure this was partially a coping strategy,\u201d he reflects. \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to grieve the loss, but I was trying to [share] my mom\u2019s cooking legacy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barya also carries inspiration from other San Jos\u00e9 cuisines that Reyes grew up with. He\u2019s taken the familiar Mexican, Vietnamese, and American styles and created his own version of traditional Filipino dishes. And he found a business partner and girlfriend, co-owner Selina Wong, through the business too. \u201cShe played a big role in keeping my dreams alive,\u201d Reyes says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Filipino x American Food Truck & Catering Banana lumpia. Tangy atchara. Rich sisig tacos that bring comfort from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[180495,180496,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-457413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bites","tag-in-collaboration","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}