Here in Hollywood: How a Tacloban-born Fil-Am chef highlighted bagoong in his menu and earned a Michelin star

For Chef Patrick Gabon, the road to a Michelin star began thousands of miles from San Francisco, in Tacloban, a coastal city in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. His earliest relationship with food was shaped by the ingredients and flavors around him, although cooking itself would come much later. At 16, he moved to New York, where the city’s extraordinary culinary diversity sparked a curiosity that eventually became a career. Today, that journey has brought him and his partner, Celine Wuu, to an achievement that carries significance well beyond the recognition of a prestigious culinary guide: a Michelin star for Restaurant Naides, their Filipino fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco.

Their story is among those featured in the second season of Apple TV’s acclaimed docuseries “Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars,” which follows 16 restaurants around the world as their chefs and teams navigate the demanding pursuit of Michelin recognition. For Gabon and Wuu, the stakes extend beyond the ambitions of a young restaurant. Their work represents an opportunity to bring Filipino cuisine into a dining conversation where it has historically received limited attention, while demonstrating the extraordinary range of a culinary tradition often reduced to a handful of familiar dishes.

Interestingly, Gabon’s path into professional cooking did not follow the familiar narrative of a chef raised in a family kitchen. Although he grew up in the Philippines, his culinary education began after moving to New York, where he attended culinary school, interned, and worked his way through the restaurant industry. His formative relationship with Filipino food came through everyday exposure to the ingredients and flavors of his hometown rather than formal instruction.

“I grew up in Tacloban, so you’re exposed to what’s in front of you, and then when I moved to New York, that’s pretty much where everything was. The exposure of the city made me curious, and then I went to school and worked around there,” he explains.

That distinction helps illuminate what makes Naides particularly interesting. Gabon’s approach to Filipino cuisine comes from someone who understands its flavors through lived experience and has developed the technical vocabulary to interpret them through years of professional cooking. His culinary perspective has been shaped by international kitchens, while his sense of what makes a dish Filipino remains rooted in the food and culture he grew up around.

The idea of opening a restaurant together had long been part of Gabon and Wuu’s shared ambitions. Both had worked in the restaurant industry and understood the demands of operating at the highest level. The concept, however, took a more personal direction during a period when they were in Slovenia, exploring possibilities for their eventual restaurant. They considered different ideas, including a wine bar and a fried-chicken establishment, before Gabon expressed a desire to cook something more closely connected to his Filipino heritage.

For Wuu, whose mother is from Mindanao and who was born in the United States in a Filipino-Chinese family, the proposal immediately resonated. The couple began discussing how they could preserve the essence of Filipino food while presenting its flavors through a contemporary tasting-menu format. They were particularly interested in ingredients and culinary traditions that remain underrepresented in American dining, as well as those that even some Filipinos might not encounter regularly.

“I think cooking with what you grew up with or your heritage makes it even more special,” Wuu says. “It wasn’t always a plan to be Filipino fine dining, but I think the way it just kind of naturally happened is really exciting. To be able to represent something that’s part of you.”

That sense of personal connection extends to the restaurant’s name. Naides is named after Gabon’s mother, who passed away a few years before the restaurant opened. The decision gives the establishment an emotional foundation that reaches beyond its menu, connecting the couple’s professional achievement to the family history that helped shape their lives.

When people ask about the Naides name, Gabon explains: “It’s not a Filipino word. It’s a Filipino mom.”

The restaurant’s menu translates that familial and cultural connection into an experience built around approximately 11 to 13 servings, with the distinctive flavor profiles of Filipino cooking serving as central themes. Its intimate dining room places the kitchen at the center of the space, allowing guests to experience the preparation and presentation of each course as part of the meal. The format also gives Gabon room to explore familiar Filipino ingredients through techniques developed during his international culinary career.

One ingredient that illustrates this philosophy particularly well is bagoong, the fermented shrimp paste whose powerful aroma and deeply savory character are essential to many Filipino dishes. For those familiar with the condiment, its presence immediately evokes a particular understanding of Filipino food. For diners encountering it for the first time, its intensity can be surprising.

Gabon has chosen to preserve that defining character rather than remove it from the dining experience. His approach involves adjusting the intensity while retaining the funk, umami, and saltiness that make bagoong distinctive. The objective is to introduce the ingredient in a way that allows its identity to remain recognizable within a more refined culinary composition. 

“Our approach is always to highlight actual Filipino flavors and staples and ingredients, and bagoong is one of those,” he says. “And then, for me, personally, to be able to do it right, instead of differing from the funk and the umami and the saltiness of it, we just chose to tone it down a little bit, but still would have that essence of the actual bagoong.”

Interestingly, some of the most revealing reactions come from Filipino diners themselves. People who grew up eating bagoong may associate it with particular home-cooked dishes and traditional preparations, making its appearance in a fine-dining tasting menu an unexpected experience. Others arrive saying they dislike the ingredient, only to discover later that they enjoy Gabon’s interpretation.

Wuu recalls those moments with amusement. “They eat it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, maybe I like it in that way.’”

These encounters speak to one of the restaurant’s larger ambitions: expanding the ways Filipino food can be understood and appreciated without losing the characteristics that make it Filipino. For Gabon and Wuu, authenticity involves understanding the culinary logic behind traditional flavors, then finding ways to express them through a different format.

Wuu points to the importance of acidity and umami in Filipino cooking, characteristics that developed partly in response to the country’s tropical climate and the practical requirements of preserving food. Vinegars, fermentation, and storing ingredients in fat have long been part of the culinary tradition. These methods have helped shape a cuisine with a distinctive relationship to sourness, saltiness, and depth of flavor.

“I think it’s very important that we stay true to how Filipino food can be somewhat driven in a lot of umami and a lot of acidity,” she says. “Historically, that’s how food was preserved in such hot climate, through making vinegars or storing in fat. I think it’s really important for us to stay true to that character.”

This understanding also informs how the couple develops the tasting menu. Each dish must work as an individual expression while contributing to the progression of the entire meal. Gabon considers how ingredients and flavors relate to one another, ensuring that the experience has a coherent direction. They bring the cultural perspective, asking whether a dish communicates something recognizable about Filipino food, even when its presentation or technique is unfamiliar.

“The biggest thing, though, before a dish goes on the menu, is we’re always asking ourselves, ‘Is this Filipino enough? Is this something someone would recognize as either a Filipino flavor or essence?’” she says.

That question becomes especially important when working within the expectations of Michelin-level dining. Both Gabon and Wuu have professional backgrounds in Michelin-recognized restaurants, giving them an understanding of the consistency, precision, and attention to detail required to compete at that level. Their experience prepared them for the demands of the industry, although opening their own restaurant presented an entirely different challenge: establishing a distinct culinary identity while building a team and maintaining the standards they had spent years learning.

For Wuu, receiving Michelin recognition carried particular meaning because the inspectors acknowledged the Filipino flavors at the heart of their concept. The achievement validated their belief that a cuisine with such a strong identity could find a place within the international fine-dining landscape. 

“Since it’s our first restaurant, so, we were working with different teams and different concepts. But for them to also recognize the Filipino flavors, that we really tried to be strong in, as something that is still to that standard of global cuisine, it was really exciting and very rewarding,” she says.

Their appearance in “Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars” adds another dimension to that accomplishment. The series follows restaurants at pivotal moments, capturing the uncertainty and pressure surrounding the Michelin process. Among its featured establishments, Naides offers a particularly compelling perspective: a young couple attempting to establish Filipino cuisine at the center of one of America’s most competitive restaurant cities.

The work behind that ambition is demanding, and Gabon is candid about what sustains him through difficult periods. Running a restaurant requires a commitment that extends beyond the kitchen, particularly when financial pressures and the uncertainties of the restaurant industry weigh heavily on a young business. He approaches those challenges by thinking about the people who have invested their time, trust, and support in the restaurant.

“Of course, you do it for yourself, but I always try to think something bigger. I do it for other people. The people that work with us, have followed us, family, friends. People that believe in us, and then those things, it’s just really the discipline of keep on going and getting better,” he says. 

The personal connection to food remains evident in his own preferences at home. Asked which Filipino dish he eats most often, Gabon immediately mentions sinigang, the sour soup whose appeal comes from its comforting balance of acidity and savory depth. His preferences vary between pork and shrimp, although he recently ordered a version made with milkfish, known in the Philippines as bangus.

Sinigang is a dish deeply associated with Filipino home cooking, and its characteristic sourness represents precisely the flavor profile Gabon and Wuu want diners to understand. Its presence in his everyday life also offers a reminder that the culinary ideas being explored at Naides originate in a food culture that continues to shape how he eats and cooks.

For Wuu, representing Filipino identity at the U.S. Michelin gala offered a different kind of affirmation. She and Gabon wore Filipiniana, the traditional formal attire associated with Filipino culture, and immediately noticed another Filipino attendee wearing the same dress. The encounter created a moment of recognition within an international gathering of chefs and restaurateurs, a reminder that Filipino representation in these spaces is growing.

“It was just nice to feel like there was a community there already and that it’s still growing,” she says. “Maybe next year we’ll see a few more Filipinianas, not just one or two.”

She is particularly excited about the growing international attention surrounding Filipino food, including the development of the Michelin Guide in the Philippines itself. For Wuu, the opportunity to see more restaurants recognized creates momentum for a cuisine that deserves greater exploration and understanding.

The Michelin star marks an important milestone in their journey, and their inclusion in “Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars” brings their work to an international audience. For both Gabon and Wuu, the journey has come full circle. The recognition brings out the most compelling story behind Naides: a Michelin-starred restaurant named after a Filipino mother, built by two people whose shared journey has brought them back to their roots, with a taste of bagoong helping introduce the world to a deeper understanding of Filipino cuisine.