Every chef has an a-ha moment, something or someone that puts them on the culinary path.
For East Bay chef and restaurateur JB Balingit, it was a Chevy’s Fresh Mex line cook.
It was 2008, and Balingit, then 20, was working as a food runner at the Pleasant Hill restaurant. He was mesmerized, he says, by the activity in that kitchen: eight “bad ass veteran” line cooks bent over their stations, prepping everything from scratch, even tortillas. One cook, the guy in charge of cooking all the chicken on a mesquite grill, dropped his tongs in the coals. Next thing you know, the man raised the grates with his bare hands and retrieved the tongs.
“I thought, ‘I want to do that,’” recalls Balingit, now co-owner of three East Bay restaurants, including The Hideout Kitchen & Cafe in Lafayette and Vic’s in Martinez. “How do I get so good, build the calluses, the grit, figuratively and literally, to do it like these guys do it? To get through an eight-hour shift on your feet, eating above a garbage can, if you eat at all. I could never go to a 9-to-5 after watching that kind of hustle.”
Talk about hustle. In just 13 years, Balingit has gone from chain-restaurant food runner to creating beloved California comfort food restaurants rooted in his Filipino culture. He’s a Bay Area success story but is quick to credit the rapid growth to longtime staffers and the effort and care they show daily. The entire team has stuck around since the pandemic began.
Balingit and his wife, Astrid, opened The Hideout in 2015 and will be unveiling a new grab-and-go market there later this month. Vic’s, which opened two years later and is a community fixture, is co-owned and run by Rosie and Lourin Meyers, Balingit’s sister and brother-in-law.
And Balingit’s latest brainchild, Guava Island Eats, a fast-casual eatery for rice bowls and island-inspired sweets, opened last year in Martinez and is already expanding to Walnut Creek. Balingit and co-owners Keone and Laura Moore and Lyn Manangan, the pastry chef at The Hideout and Vic’s, are planning a grand opening next month on North Main Street. All are of Filipino heritage.
It’s been a whirlwind decade for Balingit, who was born in Los Angeles but grew up in the Philippines and spent 10 years of his adult life living in Manila. His grandmother was a chef there, and so was his father, who took a young JB along on his early morning trips to the market. While the family called Manila home, they originally come from Pampanga, a northwestern province where the food has a strong Spanish influence. And food was always a big, daily event.
“Dozens of our cousins would gather together at one large table with banana leaves, and they were all amazing chefs,” Balingit says. “The way we ate was based on what was available. Is the okra ready? Is the goat ready? No? OK, let’s go fishing. That was my upbringing.”
While Vic’s and The Hideout don’t serve Filipino food, the menu items closest to Balingit’s heart are reminiscent of home: stews brimming with seafood or short ribs, coffee-apple-cider braised pork shoulder and that famous honey fried chicken. And so is the service, a word Balingit isn’t comfortable with. He prefers hospitality.
“I’ve always tried to anchor ourselves in our culture,” he says. “It’s the sense of family. The act of gathering. When we open our doors, we are opening the doors to our home. My sister remembers every single person who comes to Vic’s. It’s incredible.”
After that first gig at Chevy’s, Balinigit worked as a line cook at Pasta Pomodoro before landing a job as a sous chef at the Sausalito Yacht Club. It was a big step for Balingit, who had no formal training. Then-chef Leslie Durkee was going on maternity leave and hired Balingit “based on character and willingness,” she told him.
“She taught me everything,” he says. “She put me through a two-year culinary program in the span of three months.”
Shortly after, Balingit met the Marcovicis, the brothers behind the Bay Area restaurant chain, Jack’s Restaurant & Bar. Over a three-year period, he went from sous chef to running the back of the house and opening three of their four locations. But it was a 2011 gig back in the Philippines with South African chef Hylton Leroux that truly shaped him as a fine dining chef, Balingit says.
“He was doing French technique in Asia with limited ingredients and doing it so well,” Balingit says. “Going back there rooted me in my culture and solidified in me the kind of chef I wanted to be.”
Guava Island Eats, which the owners plan to expand across the Bay Area, is the first time Balingit is playing with Filipino ingredients like ube and calamansi. In addition to comforting rice bowls, look for locally-made tropical ice cream flavors, locally-roasted Hawaiian blend coffee and a clever take on banh mi with prawns.
“Guava,” he says, “is a direct representation of our cultures expressed through food.”
If you go
The Hideout Kitchen & Cafe: 3406 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette; https://hideoutkitchen.com/
Vic’s: 1500 Pacheco Blvd., Martinez; https://vicsmartinez.com
Guava Island Eats: 716 Main St., Martinez, and coming soon to 1506 N. Main St., Walnut Creek; www.guavamartinez.com
Source: www.mercurynews.com