Modern Filipino American Mama Guava Is One of the City’s Most Exciting Restaurants
There’s a catch: The popular lunchtime pop-up in Chinatown is slated to slated to close after February.
Photo: Mari Taketa
Don’t go to Mama Guava for pancit or adobo—you won’t find them on the one-page menu. Go for the lumpia, a crunchy wonder rolled in silken look fun and touched with tangy chile oil. Or the utog burger, whose twin beef patties are smashed with longanisa sausage and dolloped with a sauce of banana ketchup and pickled onions. In the old Pig & the Lady space on King Street, Mama Guava is the modern Filipino American diner we’ve been waiting for.
There’s much to say about it, because I’ve eaten here five times since it opened in October. Here are the main bullet points:
- In the same way Pig & the Lady is Viet-inspired but not a Vietnamese restaurant, Mama Guava is Filipino-inspired. Plates are sometimes modern American, sometimes global, sometimes close to chef-proprietor Monique Cadavona’s Kalihi girl heart, and nearly all show Filipino inflection.
- It won’t be there much longer: The five-day-a-week lunchtime pop-up will close when the lease expires at the end of February. After that, Cadavona—who cooked at Zippy’s, Pig & the Lady and MW Restaurant before sharpening her skills at Michelin-starred New York eateries—says she’ll likely turn to private catering.
Photo: Mari Taketa
So go now for the lumpia look fun ($15) and equally memorable bowls of crackly, wispy fried chicken skin ($7).
Photo: Mari Taketa
Go for the utog burger ($18), which lives up to its name (look it up) but is nearly overshadowed by the umami-rich garlic fries it comes with. And if eating blood isn’t your thing, the dinuguan sausage with threads of pickled green papaya ($19) may be your gateway dish. Cadavona’s version opens with soft notes of lemongrass and closes with a gentle earthiness that makes me ache for red wine.
Photo: Mari Taketa
Skewers are newer and feature barbecue pork, fish balls, quail eggs or tender grilled chicken glazed with kalbi sauce ($5 to $14 a skewer). Also notable is the surprisingly light salt and vinegar boneless fried chicken with rice and soy-calamansi tomatoes ($20).
Plant-forward dishes include stir-fried ong choy ($13) and tortang talong ($18) of charred eggplant with egg and garlic fried rice. Desserts are grilled butter mochi and chocolate chip cookies; and drinks include a matcha latte with a banana turon purée and a leche flan house cold brew.
Photo: Mari Taketa
If three chicken dishes seems a lot for one lunch, this was my brain overcompensating for the speed of Cadavona’s perpetual creativity. Her menu does switch up. Favorite top sellers get swept away to make room for new ideas, so I missed earlier chicken iterations, including salt-and-pepper karaage chicken and a crispy chicken burger. The crunchy, anato-red banh xeo I ordered every time is gone, as is a popular fish curry with roti. So is the homey hotpot of shaved pork belly, mushrooms and fish balls that was my first hint of a heart and skill set combo you don’t often see here.
“Where’s the smoky flavor in the broth coming from?” I asked when Cadavona dropped off our next dish.
SEE ALSO: O‘ahu’s Best New Restaurants of 2025
“Hondashi,” she said—powdered bonito soup stock common in local Japanese home kitchens—and her answer threw me back to Sheldon Simeon’s early days at Lineage Maui, where the humblest pan-Asian flavors of his Hilo childhood were the stars of the menu. Simeon used hondashi too.
“I’m so glad you said that,” Cadavona said. “He and Andrew [Le of Pig & the Lady] were my inspirations for this place.”
Monique Cadavona. Photo: Mari Taketa
As it exists now, Mama Guava is likely to become a fleeting part of our restaurant scene, one you’ll remember years after it’s gone. That’s not just because of the lease. Cadavona’s cooking is driven by curiosity and connection—in New York, homesick during the pandemic, she cooked and served local-style plate lunches out of her apartment; and she left La Jardinier, which holds a Michelin star for its French nouvelle cuisine, after a few months because “I found no joy in the food,” she says. “The food at Le Jardinier I couldn’t connect to, and food I can’t connect to, I have no excitement for.”
Marrying the flavors of her heritage with whatever sparks her joy, Cadavona’s food at Mama Guava connects. Try it while you can.
Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 83 N. Hotel St., Chinatown, mamaguavahnl.com, @mamaguavahnl
Mari Taketa is the editor of Frolic Hawai‘i and dining editor of HONOLULU Magazine.
