Fresh from opening Greenlight Burgers, Chef Alvin Cailan knows exactly how to reach our hearts by way of our stomachs. Because food&mdash;when it&rsquo;s good&mdash;feels like romance. It disarms you. It makes you a little googly-eyed. You savor every crumb like it&rsquo;s the only thing that matters. You take photos to remember the feeling. You launch it. You keep choosing it. And before you know it, you&rsquo;re in a relationship.

Alvin Cailan's love story with the Philippines began quietly<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">&mdash;<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">through childhood summers spent at his <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">lola<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">&rsquo;s house in Parañaque. While his parents worked in the States, school <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">breaks meant being sent home, where Tagalog seeped in through daily life. His speaking may still be broken, he says, but the connection has always been real.
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By 2013, that connection became purpose. Alvin had already become one of the most prominent Filipino-American chefs in the U.S.&mdash;the mind behind Eggslut, a key force at Umami Burger, and the founder of Amboy, recently named the #9 best burger in the world. He also reached a global audience as the host of First We Feast&rsquo;s The Burger Show. With that platform, he says, &ldquo;people finally listened when I talked about Filipino food.&rdquo; 
The Philippines took notice. The tourism board began flying him home to explore regional cuisine, deepening his relationship with Filipino food. And as US politics shifted and racism became more rampant, Alvin started imagining where else he might build a life. The Philippines, a place he already loved, felt right. 
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For him, Filipino food is identity, not rules. As Chef Margarita Forés told him, &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re Filipino and you&rsquo;re making it, it&rsquo;s Filipino food.&rdquo; Even his burgers carry that instinct&mdash;sweet red sauce with mayo, sun-dried tomato paste, muscovado sugar, vinegar, and a few drops of patis. Small signatures, big truth. 
Tell us about Greenlight Burgers. How did the concept come together?
The partners I have here are people I genuinely love eating with. It&rsquo;s a business, but the relationship is built on food and friendship. We travel, we send each other restaurant recommendations, we obsess about where to eat next. 
At some point, we said, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s just make a burger.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m 42. I don&rsquo;t want to run a 300-seat restaurant anymore. I want fun concepts I actually love. A huge footprint isn&rsquo;t appealing to me; something small and focused like this is. 
This place is 40 square meters. The design is intentional&mdash;the light shines directly onto the table so the food is the star. 
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Technically, it&rsquo;s called Greenlight Burgers or Greenlight Burgers by Alvin Cailan, but the name isn&rsquo;t what matters. What matters is: you eat a burger here, you love it, and you know you can come back. 
We even decided not to put a big name on it. Our branding literally just says &ldquo;Burgers.&rdquo; We don&rsquo;t aspire to churn out 100,000 units just for the sake of scale. And even if we do grow, I still want people talking about the burgers, not the brand.
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What makes a truly great burger? 
First of all: the beef. And equally important: the bread. A burger is 50&ndash;50 beef and bread. 
The bread is the comfort hug. When you bite into it and feel that softness and fluffiness, that&rsquo;s what makes you feel taken care of. Then the beef brings the flavor. Cheese is just the accessory&mdash; melty and delicious, but if the meat and the bread aren&rsquo;t great, cheese can&rsquo;t save it. Those two are non-negotiable for me. 
Our bread is baked fresh every day. If you look at the bun, the sesame seeds are on the bottom&mdash;both top and bottom halves. That&rsquo;s my signature. Since 2016, my burgers have had custom buns that look like that. If you&rsquo;re on the explore page and see that bun, it&rsquo;s probably mine. 
Our beef is the same beef we use in all our restaurants around the world. We grind it fresh every day. We don&rsquo;t buy pre-ground meat. We control the fat content, remove the silver skin&mdash;so it&rsquo;s super tender, soft, and it shines. That&rsquo;s what a good burger is to me. 
There&rsquo;s a cap on how many burgers you serve each day. Why? 
The buns are precious. We only have 150 buns a day. When we&rsquo;re out, we&rsquo;re out. 
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That choice doesn&rsquo;t always fit the typical &ldquo;build a massive brand&rdquo; logic, but I&rsquo;m not chasing that. We&rsquo;re focused on quality and on the experience of eating this burger. If demand grows, we&rsquo;ll grow&mdash;but thoughtfully. Manila traffic is wild, so if friends in Quezon City need this, we&rsquo;ll open a small spot there so they don&rsquo;t have to cross the city. You don&rsquo;t need a huge space for a good burger; you just need standards. 
Your career path is wild&mdash;from washing dishes for nuns to building global concepts. How did it all begin?
I&rsquo;m a 90s kid from Southern California. Back then, it was gangster rap, gang violence, and if you were a child of immigrants, you hung out with other children of immigrants&mdash;and did a lot of stupid things together. 
My mom is an incredible woman. She works for the Catholic Church as an accountant, very close to God. When I started going down the wrong path as a teenager, she asked her friends to hire me to wash dishes for nuns in a convent to keep me out of trouble. 
That&rsquo;s how my culinary journey started&mdash;washing dishes at Sacred Heart Retreat House, watching chefs from around the world fly in to cook for celebrations when a new nun was ordained. I was this kid watching them put on their jackets, tie their aprons, do that little knife tap before service. I romanticized all of it. 
I finished high school, went to a regular college, worked hospitality jobs&mdash;nightclubs and restaurants&mdash;but all I could think about was cooking. Eventually, I moved to Portland, Oregon, went to culinary school during the economic crash when there weren&rsquo;t many jobs, worked in the best restaurants there, then moved back to LA and did the same.
You started working in a convent at 16. What was the biggest lesson you took away from the nuns?
The funniest memory I have is washing dishes&mdash;400 plates, pots, pans&mdash;alone, at 16. And the sisters would come and sing to me while I washed. I loved the singing, but in my head, I was like, &ldquo;Please help me wash these dishes!&rdquo;
But the real lesson was responsibility and teamwork. In the convent kitchen, I learned that nothing works without the whole team. Every person has a job, and everyone helps each other. The outcome isn&rsquo;t just money&mdash;it&rsquo;s someone&rsquo;s smile, the belly rub after they eat something good. That feeling is everything.
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You&rsquo;ve said you were rebellious growing up. Is that still true today?
I&rsquo;m terrible with authority. Very rebellious. If you tell most people, &ldquo;Open a restaurant in the Philippines,&rdquo; no one would say, &ldquo;Open a 12-seat restaurant.&rdquo; But I will. This place is very me. 
I don&rsquo;t know how to make 120 restaurants. I know how to make one&mdash;and make it good. I like doing things people think won&rsquo;t work. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they don&rsquo;t. You learn from the failures. 
I&rsquo;m 42 so I&rsquo;m less rebellious than before. Sometimes I even catch myself saying, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do that.&rdquo; But I still listen to the music people don&rsquo;t want me to play. I don&rsquo;t blast rap here because of all the titos, but the instinct is still there. 
How did Eggslut and your early concepts shape the chef you are today?
I started my own business called Eggslut. That was my baby for <span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">about five years. We opened at Grand Central Market in LA, and it exploded.
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As Eggslut expanded, I realized I wanted to use my platform to promote Filipino food. So I stepped back from a lot of the day-to-day operations and started focusing on helping Filipino chef friends find their own paths&mdash;investors, spaces, all of that. 
We created an incubator called Unit 120, where Filipino chefs could showcase their cuisine, build a following, and then open their own spots. Kuya Lord, which is now one of the most famous Filipino restaurants in LA, had its first pop-up in my space. We&rsquo;re very proud of that. 
After that, I moved to New York, consulted for Food &amp; Wine&rsquo;s Chef&rsquo;s Club Counter, opened there, lived in New York for five years, then moved back to LA after COVID. I opened Amboy, hosted The Burger Show, and just kept making burgers&mdash;while still flying back and forth to Manila as the food scene here exploded with places like Toyo, Metronome, and others. 
Beyond lifestyle, you&rsquo;ve also hinted that there&rsquo;s more opportunity here than abroad. What do you see in the Philippines that you don&rsquo;t see in the States?
In the States, to open a restaurant like this, I&rsquo;d probably own a tiny percentage and hand over most of my IP, sweat, and tears to a big investor with way more money. You burn out and start hating cooking because you&rsquo;re basically a slave to the deal. 
Here, the opportunity is different. You can actually build something with Filipinos, for Filipinos, using Filipino capital. You can scale and create a whole ecosystem that&rsquo;s ours.
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A Love Letter to Burgers: Chef Alvin Cailan

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