Jojo Hernandez was five years old when his father enlisted in the Navy and transferred to America. “We moved here in 1995. Before I became a chef, my dream was to become a pilot. I worked as a dishwasher and then went to medical school,” he says. After a couple of years of training and working in the medical field, he decided to go back to school to become a chef. “When I started working in restaurants, I realized how much I love cooking, creating meals, plating, and especially seeing people happy as they eat my food. My philosophy is ‘put love in my food and you will be loved.’”
After working in a variety of culinary settings, including an 18-year stint as the executive sous chef at the Florida Yacht Club, Hernandez realized that his family’s dishes, including those of his mom and his wife, were what he really enjoyed eating and cooking. “I thought, why not start cooking Filipino food? I had been a chef for 20 years. I enjoy eating my family’s food; why not put this out to the community?” He created Abstrakt Filipino Essence, which, he says, “is 80 percent Filipino food with 20 percent my twist based on my experience. My goal is to make Filipino food as accessible as Chinese or Japanese food. I treat everyone as my family—if you eat my food, you’re part of my family. There’s no such thing as a VIP— everyone’s a VIP as far as I’m concerned.”
On the Menu at Abstrakt Filipino Essence
Pinoy Salted Egg Salad
Composed of eggs brined for 30 days with spinach, tomato confit, and a calamansi vinaigrette
Steak Silog
A Tanduay-grazed New York strip steak with poached egg, arroz caldo karokke, and garlic herb mushrooms.
Lumpia
Fried rolls filled with ground beef and pork
