Other
Chad Valencia
Chef
- Discipline
- Other
i. Biography
The Trajectory
Formal training and city apprenticeship form two different kinds of discipline. At Le Cordon Bleu, Pasadena and LASA, Chad Valencia worked from a technical base while remaining inside the local context that would shape the food: ingredients, communities, appetite, and pace. The value of that education sits less in credential than in structure — a way to make precision hold memory without sanding off its edges. Kitchen work across the city added speed, repetition, and the practical grammar of service. In kitchen role at Sqirl and kitchen role at Canale, Valencia worked inside restaurants where identity is rarely singular and technique has to stay responsive. The useful lessons were operational as much as stylistic: balancing brightness and richness, keeping food immediate, and letting produce, acidity, smoke, and texture read cleanly on the plate. Filipino flavor, family memory, and California kitchen habits came into a more defined restaurant language at LASA in Los Angeles Chinatown, where Valencia was co-owner and executive chef until 2021. The work carried inheritance into service without reducing it to nostalgia. Since 2021, the next iteration has been business operator at Lasita in Los Angeles, with the cooking still built from adaptation as much as origin.
The Current Work
Filipino-American food combining Pampangan family memories with Californian kitchen experience is the most accurate frame for the cooking because it treats those references as working materials rather than separate categories. Acidity, smoke, cure, fruit, and family history function as parts of the same build. The food can be bright without becoming thin, and remembered without becoming fixed. Red Snapper Kinilaw with Asian pear, calamansi, purple daikon, and black radish shows that register clearly. Raw fish, citrus, crisp fruit, and radish create a dish built on freshness, edge, and contrast. Egg Noodles with calamansi butter and fish sauce-cured egg yolk works from the other side: butter for roundness, cured yolk and fish sauce for salinity, calamansi for lift. Brightness and depth are the recurring tools. In Valencia’s hands, the food is not simply a translation of inherited dishes, and it is not a break from them. It is a city-shaped expression of Filipino cooking, made through place, labor, and remembered flavor. The working thesis is stated plainly in his own words: “We’re equal parts Filipino and Californian, a combination of nostalgia and growing up working in California kitchens.” That balance gives the restaurant its texture. Memory stays active, and California is not used as backdrop; it is the terrain through which the food is made.
Signature
Signature dishes include Red Snapper Kinilaw with Asian pear and Chicken inasal and pork belly lechon.
Peer Recognition
Chad Valencia has received Plate Magazine Chefs to Watch (2018). StarChefs listed Valencia’s Red Snapper Kinilaw with Asian pear, calamansi, purple daikon, and black radish among his featured dishes at LASA. StarChefs also listed his Egg Noodles with calamansi butter and fish sauce-cured egg yolk as a featured dish at the restaurant. The pair records two poles of the work: kinilaw as clarity, tension, and freshness; Egg Noodles as richness, cure, and depth. Diner response during the pandemic became the clearest recognition around Lasita. Chicken inasal and pork belly lechon became hits with repeat weekly customers, helping guide a menu change. In a period when restaurants had to read demand quickly and without ornament, that kind of return mattered: recognition measured in repeat visits, familiar orders, and customers coming back for the same flavors. For cooking built between Pampangan family memory and California kitchens, that response is concrete. It happens at the counter, in the takeout bag, and at the table. It confirms a style that is personal without closing itself off, rooted without being fixed, and distinctly shaped by Los Angeles.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Chad
What is Chad Valencia's current role?
Chad Valencia is chef culinary innovation at Panda Restaurant Group.
Where did Chad Valencia train or study?
Chad Valencia trained at Le Cordon Bleu, Pasadena and LASA.
What is Chad Valencia known for?
Modern Filipino food in Los Angeles.
