At Kuya Lord in Hollywood, Lord Maynard Lllera seamlessly transitions his delicious, personal Filipino cooking from pop-up to restaurant.
The first time I saw Lord Maynard Llera was in November 2020. He was masked and occupied by a shimmering-hot wok full of vegetables in a converted garage. He had transformed part of his home in La Cañada Flintridge into a separate kitchen for Kuya Lord, the takeout pop-up that he and his family ran during the pandemic.
Two years later, I’m watching Llera in action again. This time he multitasks behind the counter of his 5-month-old, 28-seat restaurant in the Melrose Hill section of Hollywood. He takes my order. He calls out dishes for his chefs to fire. The restaurant’s kitchen is in full view. He watches a new team member over his shoulder and lobs a few instructions her way while she tumbles vegetables and noodles in a wok larger than the one his garage could accommodate.
With satisfaction I settle at one of the communal tables and consider the food that soon arrives — how right it feels to eat this meal with the immediacy in which it was intended.I go directly for the “lucenachon,” Llera’s nickname for a Filipino-inspired version of porchetta. He rolls pork belly into a cylinder, its center stuffed with lemongrass stalks, fennel fronds and spears of red onion.
Llera opens the throttle with prawns simmered in garlicky crab paste and further amped with calamansi juice and fish sauce. The sauce is the culinary equivalent of Newton’s third law: For every sweet note there is an equal but opposite reaction of compelling sourness; for each clap of acid, there is a rumble of funk. Its flavors stay quick and urgent. I slurp drops of it off the prawn shells and drag noodles or rice through its last pungent splotches.
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