Community Driven and Community Focused: Chef Melissa Miranda, by Danielle Krull
On the intersection of Beacon Avenue and Stephens in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle there is a vibrant mural, “Feed the People'' that goes hand-in-hand with the ethos of Lutong Bahay. In Tagalong the restaurant’s name means “home cooked,” an atmosphere that Chef and owner Melissa Miranda, along with her staff, have cultivated for their guests new and old at Musang. “We are cooking from our childhood memories to either take you back to some place that you’ve been before or to create a new memory for you,” Melissa shares. When you meet Melissa and her staff, whether it be the sous chef, line-cooks or the servers, you can tell that they are passionate about the food that they are preparing and serving.
“We want people to come and learn about our food. We're taking our culinary experiences and journeys from other places and applying them to our food. That’s how we opened Musang; everything is so intentional. Service matches our food, matches our beverage program, matches our decor and how you walk into our home. We understand that a lot of people haven't experienced our dishes before, and we want to educate and share our stories.”
It’s also about the neighborhood where Musang is located that comes with the education of Filipino food experience. “Beacon Hill was really the only place we hoped to be. Growing up, there was Inay's Kitchen, Manila Video, Kusina Filipina; when they all closed, we knew we had to reclaim it and be here. We had thought we were going to be in a different location because we didn't have the capital, but luckily we ended up here. It felt right; the space was meant for us.”
For Melissa, her first culinary journey begins with her dad whom the restaurant is named after. “Musang was my father's nickname when we first moved here. He drove a black mustang and the T fell off. So his friends started calling him Musang, which is fitting because it means WILD CAT in Tagalog,and he is definitely a wild one. He was the one that really taught me about Filipino food and involved me in cooking in the kitchen at a young age. When I traveled back home to the Philippines, I met this healer in the middle of the mountains and she saw my owl tattoo, and told my friend in Dialect, 'Why does she have an Owl, it should be a MUSANG.' So it was a sign. When we started our pop-ups it was our way of honoring him and the sacrifices he made to get us here.” It wasn’t until attending the University of Washington that Melissa was introduced to the world of restaurant hospitality where she worked in front of the house as a server and hostess all throughout college. “It was a different education and it introduced me to a new world and people that would influence my life in ways I never knew.”
After finishing school Melissa moved to Florence, Italy and attended Apicius: Culinary Arts and Hospitality which is part of Florence University of Arts where she gained a foundation of food. “The most important thing I learned was to treat food simply, highlight the seasons and create stories and experiences for people.” Living and working in Italy for about five years, she moved on to New York to help open an International Street Food restaurant with one of her friends. She also worked in a corporate position at an Italian restaurant where she learned about management and how to communicate with teams. “Most of my staff were Hispanic and it forced me to learn to speak Spanish and really lead by example.”
Establishing herself in the culinary world, Melissa returned home to Seattle - “My family is all here and it felt like it was time to come home. I wasn't really familiar with the food scene here, so it was important for me to start at the bottom and familiarize myself with the landscape. My first love was Italian food, and I started doing Italian pop-ups with the hopes of opening an Italian style Trattoria; however, upon my return, I saw that all of the places I grew up with had shut down. So, I started doing Filipino pop-ups all over Seattle. We hustled for 3 years wherever we could to get our name, our food and culture, and especially our FIlipino hospitality out there. Fast forward and here we are.”
Musang opened its physical location after many pop-up events in the beginning of January 2020 alongside a feature on the Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s PBS show, No Passport Required. Like many independently-owned restaurants across the United States, Musang had to temporarily close their doors due to COVID-19 when the State of Washington and Seattle was hit the hardest by the virus. After taking a two week hiatus, Musang re-opened its kitchen as one of the first of its kind in Seattle: a not-for-profit and no questions asked community kitchen providing home-cooked meals for people in need and raising relief funds for those in the hospitality industry affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The community kitchen was fully supported through monetary donations from the community and grants totalling $80,000.
Here is my candid and socially distanced conversation with Chef Melissa Miranda.
Danielle Krull: What was the atmosphere like during the beginning stages and during the last two weeks for you and the Musang crew before you decided to temporarily close and revamp Musang as a Community Kitchen, providing meals at no cost or donation base alongside a community pantry?
Melissa Miranda: We had an incredible 2 and a half months of just chaos. People were here to support us and not because of No Passport Required.We had been putting in the work for the last 3 years to empower, educate and uplift our culture and community. We built this place because people were ready for it, because our community needed it. We had and have always supported our people, aligning ourselves with organizations like FEEST and Youth Care, and we continue to do so with Young Women Empowered. We closed down before it was mandatory. We did it for our community. We saw how busy we were and we knew that it wasn't safe and that we had to close. We operated one day with take-out and it was still busy and so we took one day off, and on that day the decision was made to offer meals at no cost for our Community Kitchen. We didn't stop, we started with 6 days of meals and went down to 5 and we did that for 2.5 months. There was no question for us and no doubt that we had to do it because no one was taking care of us. It wasn't a revamp. This is who we are and we still operate our community kitchen twice a week and feed over 600 meals to families. It was never seen as a loss. This is part of our new business model. This is how people should be looking at the future. We aren't just a restaurant. We are a healing space, a community space, and an education center.
DK: What was the process you and your crew took to shift the restaurant model to a community kitchen andis this a concept that you hope to continue?
MM: We looked to José Andrés for inspiration, but we just did what we knew best: cook food for people. We raised over $80k in donations for our Community Kitchen program as well as grants we applied for to fund our program. The other folks we collaborated with and worked with are long-time friends of mine and are all in line with our vision of community first. We are finding ways to integrate this into our business model to make this sustainable.
DK: Can you share with me the highs and lows or a story that has stuck out to you the most during these times of uncertainty for many independently owned restaurants like Musang?
MM: I think the word that comes to mind for us and for a lot of other small and independently owned businesses is resilience. There have been many, many, many moments, that I have faced during the last 5 months that I have been stressed out, that I have felt depleted. I've been very fortunate to have a supportive, patient and tenacious staff who believes in our vision. Jonnah, my sous chef, and I ran Community Kitchen for the first month before bringing on Chris of Xpat Supper Club and Cam of Guerrilla Pizza Kitchen to help out two days a week. We learned a lot about our community during this time, having open and honest conversations about the future, what was working for us and what wasn't. I am fortunate to have a strong community outside of Seattle of other chefs and restaurant owners that have helped build us up and support us too. The reopening was interesting for us. I always said that I would never do take-out, nor would we do reservations, but that is the thing about survival and adapting, and we definitely had to do it all. It was different from our original opening because we weren't seating guests inside. We missed that interaction which is so important to the experiences here. When we did take-out, it was a lot of figuring out how the food is going to travel because it was important for me to bring the Musang experience into people's homes, while having it be easy to reheat and shareable for them too.
The Beacon Hill Walkabout happened because I just really wanted something for our community. There is a vibrant and beautiful BIPOC community here and I know that we had all been feeling alone in all of the struggles. The Station does such great work and we couldn't be more blessed with neighbors like Seaweed International and Earthseed and we just wanted a space that was safe for us to celebrate and to support. We wanted to curate an event that was COVID-19 safe and also celebrated the important BIPOC community.
DK: We briefly talked about how you and your team have been taking care of yourselves mentally and physically. Any advice for the readers of Womanly, hospitality industry workers, etc. who may be struggling to find balance between work life and personal life during this stressful time of uncertainty?
MM: I think it's important for people to look at the silver linings during this time. I realized that I don't have control over a lot of things and that this was a time for me to slow down, find my inner peace, and work on myself so that I would be able to take care of my team. A lot of my team were unemployed while we operated as a community kitchen, and during their time off, they rediscovered themselves, their hobbies, and the balance of rest. We push self care a lot, making time for therapy, massage appointments, exercise, all things that help with the mental part.
DK: If and when COVID-19 levels out, what does the future of Musang look like for you and your team? For independently owned restaurants?
MM:As for the future, who knows? Each week is a different surprise. We are working on building an outside pPatio covering to help with the winter months. We have a plant shop coming in and popping up called The Powerplant Seattle, owned by our friend. We are focusing on our Merch and planning to release some awesome one- offs. We are working on getting more local Filipinx artists in our space too. I think that we will also have more intimate experiences here in the fall and winter;. some music and food, but we'll see. We're just taking everything day by day. We’re working on systems to make sure we are sustainable; making sure we can provide healthcare, benefits and invest in the futures of each team member to ensure a quality of life.. We aren't just a restaurant anymore, we're a community space.
If you would like or able to support Musang and the Community Kitchen please checkout musangseattle.com for information.
