Pork Belly and Okra Pickles, Filipino Style!

“My father is from Thailand, my mother is from the Philippines,” said King Phojanakong, owner of Umi Nom.

“When mom cooked it was Filipino [food], when dad cooked it was Thai," he said, while slicing into a whole pig with what looked like a hacksaw.

Phojanakong, who grew up in Manhattan but spent summers in the Philippines, is preparing for Pig Island, a festival this Saturday on Governor’s Island, where restaurants from all around the city serve up a variety of pork dishes.

Phojanakong, who prides himself in using every part of the pig when preparing dishes at the restaurant, is making Roasted Lechon and Braised Adobo over rice for the event.

And while I had a little trouble talking to him with a dead pig head smiling at me from the corner of his kitchen, Phojanakong seemed genuinely excited about every step of the process.

And this is the idea behind Umi Nom, which offers a mix of Filipino and Thai dishes, served in tapa-like plates. Phojanakong said he wanted to bring something unusual to the neighborhood. And while Thai is easy to find in New York, Filipino fare is hard to come by. He delights in devising new recipes, yet still incorporating traditional Filipino cuisine.

“It’s not very common,” he said. “That’s why I did small plates. That way people can come in and experience the food.” He then added that this was before the tapas fad became vastly popular in New York City.

Umi Nom is definitely an eating experience -- a great place for large groups to order several small plates to share. Options include glazed shiitake mushrooms, house pickles, grilled mackerel, sausage and beef sliders, house cured beef, roasted manila clams and more. Order these, a few plates of rice, and some of their incredible chili sauces, and you have yourself a party.

I’ll admit that this was my first Filipino cuisine experience, and I wasn’t disappointed. What surprised me most was was how different the food was from anything I had tried before, although there were some similarities with other Southeast Asian dishes.

The first dish I tried was the pork belly sandwich, which comes between a flaky, soft baguette with atchara (pickled carrots, radishes and green papaya), cilantro, and cucumbers, very similar to Vietnamese banh mi. The creamy chili aioli and pork belly, however, are unlike anything I’ve tasted. The pork belly is salty with an incredibly soft, tender inside and crisp, grilled outer crust.

The chili aioli adds a sweet spice, and the juices of the meat and aioli soak up into the soft bread in overwhelming flavor. The vegetables add a necessary freshness to the whole dish. This sandwich – a filling meal at $9, and served with a pile of fries – is the perfect lunch option.

A small plate of house pickles comes with atchara, okra, eggplant, onions, and cucumbers. Since the main ingredients are rice wine vinegar and palm sugar, the pickles are slightly sweet and acidic tasting and sour, but not overpowering.

I especially loved the okra and eggplant, which are usually soft, tender vegetables. Umi Nom's are firm and crunchy, like pickles. Add the eggplant flavor, and the combination works especially well together.

The house-cured beef tapa is similar to a jerky. Phojanakong explained that this kind of meat is a popular traditional Filipino dish from before proper refrigeration. After the beef is cured, they deep fry it for a crispy flavor. The end flavor is slices of sweet, warm, chewy, smokey meat, that is slightly more moist than your average jerky.

Although usually very salty, the jerky flavors in this tapa are quite subtle. And while I loved the smokey chili sauce that came with the tapa (a thick sauce made with roasted vegetables, fish sauce and pulverized dry chilies), I would almost recommend eating the two separately. Eating sauce with nothing else? Trust me, you’ll want to, once you taste the flavor.

In fact, what I love most about the dishes at Umi Nom is the close attention to subtleties in the flavors. Each ingredient had a separate flavor that seems too good to combine with anything else. And yet, when you put the two flavors together (as I finally did with the beef and the chili sauce), the taste is altogether different and wonderful in another way.

If I haven’t convinced you yet, let me leave you with this: For dessert I had the warm Thai chili chocolate cake. Served hot, you can actually smell the chocolate as the dish is set down. Similar to lava cake, the chocolate cake has a crust of rich, dense chocolate brownie-like texture. This is then topped with a hot blueberry sauce and confectioners sugar, with a dollop of whipped cream on the side.

As you cut into the cake with your spoon, hot, thick, chocolate comes pouring out and mixes with the blueberry sauce. The flavors dissolve into each other, leaving you with nothing but a melting pile of perfection.

Umi Nom is located on the corner of Classon and Dekalb Avenues and serves lunch and dinner daily.