Filipino cafe Hiraya and its modern upstairs sister restaurant, Kayu, will close on H Street Northeast after June 30 as chef Paolo Dungca and his business partners part ways. But a more casual Kayu will reemerge at a new location near Dupont Circle this summer.
The split between Dungca and father/son co-owners Juan and Jeremy Canlas centered around differing ideas of how to move forward as the business struggled to bring in enough traffic. The Canlases wanted to diversify the restaurants’ offerings and bring in one of their other concepts, Double Up Burger, while Dungca wanted to stick exclusively to his native Filipino cuisine.
“Although the brand and the concept was great, everything looked great on the surface level, we were having difficulty making ends meet with the current situation with our economy and situation in DC,” Jeremy Canlas says.
As Dungca tells it: “I had a vision of how we should tell our stories through Filipino food, and I think they had their own visions of how they wanted to do restaurants, which is understandably fine.”
Canals adds he has no hard feelings toward Dungca: “It’s nothing personal, obviously. We’re still in a good relationship, still friends.”
Dungca is wasting no time reviving his modern Filipino concept at 1633 17th Street, Northwest. Kayu 2.0 will feature a similar but more streamlined menu, including a la carte and seven-course tasting options. He hopes to lean into his vegetable renditions of Filipino classics such as mushroom dumplings in a mushroom tea—a riff on traditionally porky pancit molo. He’ll also carryover signatures such as a savory cassava cake topped with crab fat, jamón Ibérico, and trout roe.
The space is roughly the same size (40 to 45 seats)—plus a patio—but will feature a brighter look with oak wood accents. “It would still kind of be reminiscent of what a house should be,” Dungca says.
Dungca says he hopes to offer some of Hiraya’s creative Filipino-inspired lattes, pastries, and fried-rice bowls on the brunch menu. He’s also looking for real estate to give Hiraya a standalone space.
Meanwhile, Canlas says he and his father will continue their lease on H Street with some new restaurants. They’re still considering bringing their local wagyu smash burgers from Double Up Burger (which has locations in Fort Washington and Clinton, Maryland) to the Hiraya space. But they will simultaneously keep some kind of cafe—just not a specifically Filipino one. (One menu possibility: breakfast burritos.) Upstairs, the restaurateurs, who are also Filipino and operate Mang Eton Filipino Food in Annandale, will likely open a different, more casual Filipino restaurant with a new chef.
“There’s no hard date on it just yet. There’s still a lot of moving pieces,” Canlas says.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
