At Naimas, Chef Dabo Pamplona is rebuilding Filipino classics in new formats, from adobo burgers to palabok laksa

“Filipino cuisine is a cuisine of memory,” says Chef Dabo Pamplona of Dubai’s Naimas. “It is bold, comforting and full of contrast, salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami working together in ways that are deeply familiar to Filipinos but often surprising to people discovering the cuisine for the first time.”

The cuisine is built on ingredients most home cooks will already recognise, he says: “Garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, calamansi, tamarind, coconut, seafood, rice and fermented ingredients.”

Asked about the biggest misconception people carry about Filipino food, Pamplona points to the assumption that it can be reduced to one style. “That Filipino food is simply sweet, heavy or a fusion of other cuisines,” he says. “There is much more to it. The Philippines has enormous regional diversity and a sophisticated relationship with acidity, fermentation, smoke, seafood, coconut and preservation. Filipino food is not one flavour. It is a conversation between flavours.”

Inside Naimas

At Naimas, that philosophy translates into a menu built around reworking familiar Filipino dishes into new formats. “Sometimes that means putting adobo into a Black Angus burger,” Pamplona says. “Sometimes it means taking palabok noodles and placing them into a laksa. Sometimes it means bringing sampaloc into an inasal skewer.” The approach isn’t about distancing the food from its roots, he stresses. “The format can change. The technique can evolve. But the story should remain.”

What to order

For anyone new to Naimas, or Filipino food generally, Pamplona points to lumpia as the natural starting point. “It is approachable because the format is familiar, but the flavour introduces you immediately to Filipino cooking,” he says. Beyond taste, the dish carries real cultural weight. “Lumpia represents Filipino hospitality,” he explains. “It is made to be shared, usually in large batches, and it appears at celebrations, family gatherings and everyday moments. It also represents the Filipino diaspora. Wherever Filipinos go, lumpia often goes with them.”

From there, the Adobo Burger is one of the menu’s clearest signature dishes, taking the Philippines’ most personal home-cooked dish and rebuilding it in Black Angus beef. “Almost every Filipino family has its own version [of adobo], which makes it more than a recipe; it becomes a family memory,” Pamplona says of the original dish. At Naimas, “the beef gives us the richness and texture of a great burger, while the adobo flavour brings the Filipino identity.”

For dessert, the Burnt Brazo de Mercedes reworks a classic Filipino meringue and custard dessert with a deliberately caramelised finish. “I don’t want to make the dessert unrecognisable,” Pamplona says. “The goal is to keep the memory of Brazo de Mercedes while giving it a more contemporary personality. You should still know what you’re eating. It just looks and tastes like it has travelled a little further.”

The ingredient behind it all

Across the menu, one ingredient does much of the work: calamansi, a small Filipino citrus fruit. “It is one of the ingredients that can immediately make a dish feel Filipino,” Pamplona says, pointing to its range across the cuisine “in marinades, dipping sauces, seafood, drinks and desserts.”

It’s also the ingredient he keeps closest at hand in his own kitchen. “A little can completely change seafood, meat, sauces, salads, desserts or drinks.”

The road ahead

“I don’t want Filipino cuisine to be treated as something that belongs only to the past,” he says. “Our cuisine has always evolved. Filipinos have always adapted. We have taken ingredients, techniques and ideas from different cultures and made them our own.”

He’s particularly keen to see the cuisine’s regional range travel further. “There is so much beyond the dishes that have already become internationally recognised,” he says. “The Philippines is incredibly diverse, and every region has its own ingredients, cooking methods and stories. I would love to see more regional Filipino cuisine represented internationally.”