CHICAGO — Those who didn't get to eat chef Chrissy Camba's Filipino cooking at the now-closed Laughing Bird restaurant will have three chances to do so this week.
On Monday, Camba will cook a family-style dinner at Ampersand, the pop-up concept inside Kinmont, 419 W. Superior St., to give people a taste of her restaurant in the works, Maddy's Dumpling House.
Her next stop is Tuesday at Emporium Arcade, 2363 N. Milwaukee Ave., for the second installment of the indoor night market Sauced — where Hapa, another Asian-American restaurant concept, will test the waters for the first time.
Janet Fuller says there is a surprising shortage of Filipino food options in Chicago:
And on Wednesday, Camba will do a guest chef stint at The Garage, the food truck co-op at 119 N. Aberdeen St. That's also where she plans to hold her next pop-up dinner in January.
Since Laughing Bird closed in September, Camba has been looking for a location to open Maddy's Dumpling House and doing monthly pop-ups to drum up buzz. (Maddy was her pet rabbit that recently died.)
"I'm interested in Avondale and Logan Square, but who knows where the right space will pop up!," Camba said via email.
Monday's dinner will have a Filipino Christmas theme with a pork-heavy menu that includes six types of dumplings, traditional Filipino dishes such as pancit palabok (noodles), arroz caldo (rice porridge) and caldereta (pork stew) and desserts including bibingka, a sweet rice cake.
The dinner is $65 and includes beverage pairings. Space is limited to 32. Tickets can be purchased here.
At Sauced on Tuesday, Camba will serve fried chicken dumplings, pig's head steamed buns, spicy tofu and chestnut dumplings and lemon tarts.
The market also is where Hapa will debut its American comfort food with Asian twists: Thai-spiced fried chicken and waffle sandwiches topped with sriracha butter, char siu barbecued pork tacos and caramelized kimchi and shiitake mushroom mac 'n' cheese.
The food is a riff on what Hapa's founders, JR Runez, Gil Paule and Kevin O'Connor, cooked together for elaborate backyard barbecues they threw for friends one particularly food-intensive summer a few years back. The three are childhood friends. Runez and Paule are Filipino, and O'Connor is Irish.
"We were grilling consistently, like every other day, not just the normal hot dogs," said Runez, 28. "People were like, 'Dude, you could sell this.'"
But Hapa isn't their day job yet. Runez is a financial analyst, while Paule, 27, works for a company that installs living walls and green spaces and O'Connor, 27, handles catering for a restaurant.
There isn't even a website or Facebook page for Hapa, though Runez said the long-term goal is to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. Until then, they'll keep at it with incubators like Sauced and other pop-ups.
"We're having a good time while we're doing this," Runez said. "I don't really consider it work."
Sauced runs from 6-11 p.m. Tuesday. There is no admission fee.
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