Romulo welcomes Kasa and Kin into its Filipino restaurant family

The Filipino restaurant, bakery and pâtisserie is the second opening from Rowena Romulo and Chris Joseph. It joins Romulo Café & Restaurant, which the pair opened in Kensington in 2016 as the first international outpost of the Romulo group, which is run by Rowena's sister and brother-in-law in Manila. Family lies at the heart of both restaurants. Kasa means home and Kin means family, while the Romulo family history has inspired the menu of Filipino comfort food, the inviting interiors and a brand of hospitality that stems from the question that Chris says is asked whenever you enter a home in the Philippines: "Have you eaten?"

"Chris and I were born in the Philippines. It's about those memories and the nostalgia of our childhood," Rowena says. "The Romulo restaurants are dedicated to my grandmother and my grandfather. We all lived together in a compound with one kitchen and one dining room. My grandfather was a diplomat – he had a multifaceted career and entertained a lot at home."

The first Romulo site opened in Manila after Rowena's sister discovered their grandmother's recipe book containing details of dishes she would prepare to entertain visiting diplomats.

"My grandmother was already ahead of her time in terms of Filipino cuisine because she had to make sure certain dishes were palatable to foreigners," Rowena says. "She created twists on very traditional family recipes, and even in the 1940s and 1950s she was very conscious that food had to look presentable, because people eat with their eyes.

"When you go to our restaurants you see all these pictures of the history of the Philippines and the family. We've always believed that food bridges cultures and when we opened our little spot in Kensington we wanted to showcase Filipino culture and most of all our hospitality."

A taste of home

Before opening the London outpost of Romulo, Rowena had a 32-year career in banking, which took her from Manila to Milan and latterly London. In 2015 she decided it was time to leave the industry and do something for herself. Inspiration struck while at a fund­raiser following Typhoon Kabayan, which had brought widespread flooding to the Philippines.

Chris, who had spent 25 years in fast-food franchising, says: "We were at this event, and people kept coming up to Rowena and saying ‘oh you're a Romulo, why don't you open a Romulo restaurant in London?' This continued all night, with people from the embassy wanting somewhere to entertain people and saying ‘we want a place to bring our non-Filipino friends to'."

At the time Chris says there were just three Filipino restaurants in the entire country, all of which limited themselves to no more than a café-style service. It was, in fact, more of a crater than a gap in the market, given that there were then 300,000 Filipinos in the UK. By comparison the UK Thai population numbered just 75,000, yet Thai cuisine was served in more than 2,000 restaurants in the UK.

Back in the Philippines, the Romulo restaurant had opened in a house rather than a commercial property, with the bedrooms turned into dining areas, reinforcing the familial brand of hospitality. The Kensington site would continue this ethos, despite its high street location, borrowing design touches in the shape of the wallpaper, the lime green detailing and, of course, the family pictures.

Chris says: "When we opened the Kensington restaurant we imagined the space to be as if the Romulo family were going to invite you to our dining room. It couldn't look exactly like the restaurants in the Philippines because they are influenced by the tropical weather, whereas over here it had to be more homely and suitable for Kensington."

Family style

When it came to the menu, Rowena's grandmother had laid the groundwork 70-odd years ago. Rowena's sister shares developments in food at the Manila restaurants as well as emerging trends and tastes in the Philippines, but for the London outpost it is essential to retain the traditional Filipino flavours that satiated many guests' desire for a taste of home. Adaptations have been made for the Kensington market, though. For example, the pork has been swapped out for other proteins in certain dishes, and the team has worked to an absolute minimum to reduce the amount of produce that needs to be imported.

Traditional dishes include a sinigang soup, which is a tamarind-flavoured sour broth served with salmon or vegetables rather than the conventional pork or milkfish. A sizzling chicken inasal sisig is one of Romulo's most popular starters. It sees chicken thighs marinated in annatto, ginger, green chilli and lemongrass, but would traditionally have been made with diced pork cheek and ears.

The signature Filipino dish of adobo is served as both a chicken and pork dish ‘Romulo-style', with the addition of truffle. Adobo comes from the Spanish word to stew (the Philippines were a Spanish colony for more than three centuries until 1898, when they became a US colony). Meat, seafood or vegetables are marinated in soy and vinegar, although Chris say there are many variations across the 7,000-plus islands of the Philippines. For example, in some areas soy will be replaced with annatto, in coconut regions a coconut vinegar will be used, while in rice regions a rice vinegar takes its place.

Influences from other Asian countries have also shaped Filipino cuisine, such as kare-kare, an annatto and peanut sauce, which has influences from India and is served at Romulo with beef and oxtail.

Desserts cannot be overlooked. Rowena says: "A Filipino, even if they are so, so, so full, will never leave the table without having dessert." Unsurprisingly, halo-halo – which has a base of ice with evaporated milk – is the most popular dessert on the menu, although purple yam cheesecake topped with sweet young coconut and served with ube ice-cream has become a signature dish.

Triple threat

The plan was always to become a multisite operation. When the pandemic hit, Chris and Rowena were searching for a second site, but lockdown gave them time to reflect, and Kasa and Kin came to fruition alongside a nationwide delivery service and a lot of meals for NHS workers, some 25,000 of whom are Filipino.

Rowena explains: "We stayed home for about two months. That gave us the opportunity to take a step back, look at the business and think about where we wanted to be in five years. The concept changed with the new living conditions at the time – we thought maybe we should have a grab-and-go element or be more fast-casual. We went through several iterations and the feeling was that we needed to have a multi-concept business to be more resilient to the new realities of the market.

"That's where Kasa and Kin was born. It is really three in one in the sense that we have the restaurant, bakery and pâtisserie. At lunch it's more fast-casual, and at dinner we dim the lights, have the robata grill and cocktail bar, change the uniforms and change the music."

The menu at Kasa and Kin has gone through several refinements, with a substantial grab-and-go offering reduced as it became apparent that customers preferred to sit and order from the grill menu. The most popular lunch option has become the trademarked £20 Imbento box, developed by Rowena to offer guests the chance to try several items from the menu. It includes a lumpia roll, a hot broth and a base of rice, noodles or salad topped with a choice of main meals including beef kare-kare, barbecue pork belly, lemongrass chicken inasaal or smoked aubergine.

The boxes – similar to a Japanese bento box – were specially made to allow the items to be served together at the table, with the wow factor delivered as the lid is removed.

The bakery offers a variety of pandesal (a Filipino bread roll), Spanish bread as well as ensaymada (a sweet pastry) and a range of pâtisserie, such as sans rival (layers of meringue and buttercream coated in roasted cashew nuts) and signature tsunami cheesecakes.

Kasa and Kin is divided so that guests walk past the bakery and pâtisserie on their way in and out of the restaurant, making it easy to pick up a quick breakfast or afternoon snack or, as has proved very popular, to grab some sweet treats on the way home.

The format offers multiple opportunities for expansion and franchise, which will be the couple's focus for 2023. Chris says: "If you just wanted the bakery element you could just take that and we could transfer the knowledge or supply the product. If you wanted the grill element, that's very replicable. As long as you use the marinade and follow the steps, you can replicate the Filipino flavours."

Rowena adds: "We've had parties who wanted to invest in the franchise model outside the country – in Spain and the Middle East – and my sister is looking to see if this is something we should bring back home."

Since Kasa and Kin opened its doors, Soho has once again become a vibrant, bustling neighbourhood, and a site that at one point appeared to be a gamble is paying off. The mural that begins at one of the restaurant with the healing powers of the Ibong Adarna becomes a colourful riot of fiesta and feasting as it winds its way across the space. The party is certainly in full swing now.

Sustainability and sourcing

Since they launched Romulo in 2016 Chris and Rowena have been focused on reducing its carbon footprint and working with suppliers who share their ethos.

The team work with Dingley Dell Pork and Trenchmore Farm, which supplies wagyu, while using salmon sourced from Scotland and chicken from Norfolk.

Wherever possible they have sought out locally grown or locally produced alternatives that can still provide classic Filipino flavours. Some dried ingredients, such as taro leaf tops and desiccated ube (purple yam), as well as Filipino soy sauce and vinegar, do have to be imported, but the group has reduced these items as much as possible.

Rowena says: "We have a classic Filipino fish we call milkfish, but we use sea bass or sea bream. When people ask why we don't use milkfish, I mean, it would be frozen and have to come all that way – who wants frozen milkfish when we can give you fresh sea bass?

"We made the mistake at first of trying to replicate our Filipino pumpkin, and then we realised that the pumpkins were being flown in. How can we talk about being sustainable and allow our carbon footprint to be that high? So we worked with our chefs and asked them what local pumpkin could replicate the texture and flavour of a Filipino pumpkin, and sure enough we changed it.

"After the pandemic it was very unreliable to import, and now after Brexit it has become even worse. We had a ratatouille of vegetables dish and we deconstructed it and said ‘this comes from Spain, this is from the Netherlands, this okra is from Africa' – for a vegetable dish you can imagine how much that is going to cost. We said, ‘no, this is not sustainable, we need a different variety.' And that was the exercise we went through."

This continued in their sourcing of delivery boxes, which are reusable and recyclable, as well as the day-to-day running of the restaurants. When Kasa and Kin launched, the grill menu was dominated by skewers until Rowena looked at how many bamboo skewers were being used and made some changes.

On location

Romulo Café and Restaurant

Address 343 Kensington High Street, London W8 6NW

Covers 70

Head chef Allane Sia

Typical dishes Dingley Dell crispy pork hock (boneless, crispy pork hock served with mung bean and moringa), £15.50; truffled chicken adobo ‘Romulo-style' (Norfolk chicken cooked in soy sauce, garlic and cane vinegar, scented with black truffle, served with bok choy and sweet potato), £14.75; ube cheesecake (purple yam cheesecake topped with sweet young coconut bits and served with ube ice-cream), £8.50

Kasa and Kin

Address 52-53 Poland Street, London W1F 7NQ

Covers 90

Head chef Lok Balal

Typical dishes Beef kare kare (slow-braised beef cooked in peanut sauce, annatto and sautéed shrimp paste, roast bone marrow with aubergine, green beans and pak choy), £12.75; octopus brushed with smoked oil, chilli and garlic, laid on a bed of spiced chorizo, £18; vegetable adobo (a mix of butternut squash, carrots, okra, baby aubergine, pak choy, Padrón peppers, chilli, spring onions and green beans cooked in soy sauce, garlic and cane vinegar, £12.50