Dinner Service at Pamana Launches This Week in Portland

Pamana, a restaurant “inspired by Filipino ingredients and dishes,” has been in residency at The Hoxton since last September. They’ve been serving bunch there these past six and a half months or so, and this Thursday, April 30 they’ll launch dinner service at Pamana.

When the owners Geri and Ethan Leung mentioned this to me at a recent event, I knew I wanted to know more. I reached out to them over email with some questions and they were kind enough to respond. Here are the details about dinner at Pamana (which means “legacy” in Tagalog).

Why Expand To Dinner Service at Pamana

The brunch scene is pretty boss in this town, and Portlanders love brunch (I count myself in that group). It would be easy to just stay with that, so I was curious to better understand why they wanted branch out to a dinner menu.

It turns out it was based on both a desire and the opportunity to offer more. “We wanted to showcase another offering beyond brunch,” wrote Geri. “It also gives hotel guests, residents, and visitors to Old Town another dinner option to consider.”

Through their new dinner menu, this is a chance to share with Portland the food they love to eat. “Our goal is to share our story as Filipino Americans—and it goes beyond brunch,” wrote Geri. “Dinner is another creative expression of our food and we have the opportunity to introduce more ingredients and dishes with the community.”

She continued, “The menu comes from a place of nostalgia. We grew up with dishes our families made, and while we want to recreate it sometimes it’s never as good as mom’s. So in that case we just try to have fun and utilize the ingredients we have on hand locally.”

Ethan, who is the chef at Pamana, has been adding techniques he learned in the kitchens he worked at while in Seattle. Side note: Geri and Ethan came to Portland from Seattle and opened their Filipino food cart Baon Kainan in 2021, which was hugely successful.

“Ethan did a lot of R&D with his team to create these dishes,” explained Geri. “They referred to family recipes, learned techniques, and dishes we like to eat. Ultimately we’re not recreating “traditional” Filipino dishes but trying to capture the feeling of eating those dishes. We hope it brings up memories with loved ones.”

The Dinner Menu

The food menu is divided into three main categories: To Share (Or Not), which is appetizers/small plates; Gulay & Rice, which are vegetables (I’d love to see my favorite, Ginataang Kalabasa there at some point) and a couple of rice options (including garlic rice!); and Plates, which are larger servings that include meats, fish and seafood, and noodles.

Also, they will offer dessert—“a very small dessert list” that includes their own Halo Halo.

They will change the menu with the seasons because, as Geri said, “We want to be PNW-forward in our menu.”

Favorites To Eat at Dinner

I asked if there were dishes that were particular favorites of theirs, or ones that are not to be missed. “We definitely recommend trying our salmon kinilaw, Palabok prawns, and pork belly sisig,” wrote Geri. I can say from a personal place that the pork belly sisig (aka sizzling sisig) was the thing I zeroed in on when I saw the menu. It’s one of my favorite Filipino dishes. Always with an egg!

Also, most of these dishes are based on their family recipes. “While we learned most of these from our moms,” explained Geri, “They’re recipes that we’ve adapted because our moms didn’t always have written recipes. They always made things from memory.”

And To Drink

The menu includes a few drinks—Coke/Diet Coke, Philippine canned juices (including Four Seasons), and their homemade calamansi soda, which sounds fab—mixing their calamansi-ginger syrup with club soda. But they do have other options.

“We have collaborated with the Hoxton Hotel to create cocktails and mocktails that pair well with our menu,” explained Geri. “We also have San Miguel on tap!”

Dinner Service at Pamana: Why Choose Your Evening Meal There?

There’s a lot of dinner options out there, and diners have the opportunity to choose from myriad cuisines. So why choose Pamana? “If you want to try something new and feel at home, Pamana is that place for you,” wrote Geri.

“Dinners here will be welcoming, relaxing, and a place where you can gather with friends and family to celebrate milestones, reminisce over memories, or just hang out,” she added.

They’ll be offering table service, too, adding to the level of service at Pamana. “We want Pamana to continue to be a place for connecting,” explained Geri. “Filipino cuisine is still new to the mainstream dining scene, so our team will spend more time with guests sharing details about the dishes and ingredients.

It’s Personal

Geri wrote that one thing they always face is the questions, “Are you Filipino? This isn’t authentic. Is this even traditional?”

Geri offered a response: “We never said we were aiming for those things or that we’re trying to prove how Filipino we are. This menu and this restaurant is so personal to us—it truly is our take on Filipino classics, a dedication to where we came from and the family that got us here.”

She continued, “We grew up in the States where our family didn’t always have Filipino ingredients locally, so there was a lot of ‘freestyling’ the recipes. We saw our moms do it and so what we do is a little bit of a nod to that creativity and also resiliency. Because they kept these recipes alive even when they didn’t have access to the same products or ingredients from home.”

It is a time-honored tradition to swap one thing for another, whether it is because of need (e.g., the ingredient is not accessible, is cost prohibitive) or desire (replacing the ingredient for something else because of a preference, e.g., taste, texture, nutrition, dietary). I sometimes talk about the time I asked Andy Ricker about “authentic Thai” and he took me to task on that. What is authentic? Sometimes it’s intention over ingredients that makes something “authentic.”

Dinner service at Pamana will be Thursday through Saturday—so just three days—from 5pm to 9pm.

This is a great option for dinner in the downtown/Old Town section of Portland. The Hoxton has really upped their drinks and eats game—with Pamana and Deadstock on the lobby/ground floor; Tope on the roof; and 2NW5 as their downstairs speakeasy (knock three times).

I stayed at The Hoxton a couple of years ago (not sponsored) and it was a good experience. I can only imagine how much better it is with these great food and drink amenities—with Pamana offering a beautiful, flavorful—and personal—menu of Filipino flavors, ingredients, and dishes. I hope you will get a chance to stop in for dinner starting this Thursday!

Dinner service at Pamana [starts April 30, 2026]
15 NW 4th Avenue, Portland
Pamana website | Instagram | Facebook