Moundsview, MN — Kushina’s first ingredient for cooking teeth Love — that’s what owner and chef Jailyn Tavares emphasizes to the customers who walk through the door.
Tavares is a warm, motherly person who opened the restaurant with her husband, Scott Zimmer, in the summer of 2022. She has experience in the restaurant field, and she worked in a five-star restaurant and several hotels in Minneapolis back in the Philippines.
But when her mother, now 89, gave her the family’s handwritten recipe, Tavares turned to Zimmer and said, “We have to do something about this.” The two treated it as a hobby for several years before deciding to open a food truck and get into the restaurant business.
“I have to try not to say anything to (my husband),” Tavares said. “Every time I thought, ‘I wish I had a food truck,’ he built me one. He built a food truck, and then I said, ‘Oh, I wish I had a deli,’ and he built this. You made it for me, and now it’s a restaurant. I can do it.” I don’t want anything more. ”
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Most of the dishes on the menu are from the Cebu region where Tavares was born and raised. Although she was materially poor, she says her childhood was surrounded by nature: the sea, gardens, and vegetables in her backyard. When she was growing up, her parents were known as the best chefs in the area.
Her food is sweeter than that of the northern region of the Philippines, which has more of a vinegary aroma. But what she treasures most are humba, her mother’s pork belly recipe, and dinuguan, a pork blood stew that was representative of her late father’s. She likes to serve food together, so her table has portions of her mother, her father, and herself.
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Dinuguan is especially popular with customers, who say that there is no iron taste in the stew.
“And I always tell them,” Tavares said. “Because there’s a lot of love out there. That’s what we got. A lot of love.”
She is proud that customers come from all over the area to taste her food. Some people drive from Canada or the Dakotas.
She recalled once a few nurses came back from a trip to the Philippines and told her that they had been to several famous restaurants, but nothing could beat the taste of her halo-halo. Ta. Tavares is thrilled that she was able to make her own ice cream, from ube and mango flavors to fresh buko pandan leaves. Zimmer claims ice cream is “going to be the next ube” and will skyrocket in popularity over the next few years.
“This is probably my passion,” Tavares said. “We all have talents. I think I had the talent to be a chef.”
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Tavares also uses her talents to give back to the Filipino community. In a corner of the restaurant, he sells shirts, bags, necklaces, keychains and more, with all proceeds going to an organization called Tumblers of Hope. The aim is to gift tumblers to children in the Philippines so they can refill their water instead of relying on single-use plastic.
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“I said to my husband, if there’s something we can do, why don’t we do it?” Tavares said.
For now, Tavares and Zimmer are spending long days at the restaurant cooking, preparing food and getting to know their customers.
“I always tell people, when you come to Kushina, don’t think of this as a restaurant,” she said. “Consider this home. And we welcome you. We welcome you home.”
