Food

Paolo Dungca Takes Filipino Ginataang Talaba From Rustic to Refined

Liz Grossman

One of Paolo Dungca’s happiest memories of growing up in the Philippines is of his grandmother cooking, even if he wasn’t always thrilled about eating dishes like ginataang talaba (oysters in fragrant coconut milk). “As a kid, I wasn’t really a fan of oysters; they were sort of weird to me,” he recalls. But after he moved to L.A. and later became a chef, he grew to appreciate not only the...