Isla Cocina Pilipina

There’s no doubt the food was good. The sisig nachos and the longanisa sliders were a definite hit with me and my husband. The two big disappointments of the evening were the pancit and nonexistent kare kare. There’s vegetarian kare kare. I’m sure it’s tasty, but I wanted the oxtail. I was told by our server that the chef stated that kare kare was traditionally a vegetarian dish — ummmm, no.
Then the pancit arrived. I love pancit. All kinds and variations of pancit. But when I think of pancit, I think of noodles. I don’t think of cabbage. There was more cabbage in this dish than noodles. This was the only dish we ordered that wasn’t devoured.
We ordered the Turon and flan for dessert. No complaints… Both were delicious and also devoured. I was really hoping for Taho and Biko. But I’m used to not finding either in LA, so there wasn’t much disappointment there.
We’ll be back. I’ll stick to my usual mom and pop shops, but we’ll be back.

A REVIEW FROM A FORMERLY LOYAL AND NOW ROYALLY PISSED OFF ISLA CUSTOMER. ISLA, WTF?
My boyfriend and I had been coming to Isla Cocina since before they switched to their new buffet style service. We freaking loved this place — the food, the service, the location. Never saw a Filipino spot like it. They had a really good thing going with the yummy combos and different take on staple Filipino dishes like vegan kare kare and sisig nachos. And though they didn’t serve alcohol, they were super chill with BYOB.
After being closed for awhile, a server told us that they switched to buffet style because the original format for their restaurant had been too hard to maintain. While I get that buffet style food is easier, they had some bomb, super unique dishes before that really set them apart from other Filipino restaurants. Now they are basically like ever other Pinoy spot. Maybe if they didn’t have to pay for such a big space (its way too big for it’s own good), had a different location, and marketed the place better online then I think it would have had a better chance.
With the new buffet style comes their ridiculously unpredictable store hours. I see some of the reviewers have already mentioned this but I can’t help but stress how disappointing this is. I know they had weird hours on weekdays anyway, but being closed randomly on weekends without any clear way of telling your customers is just bad business. We try calling ahead but no one answers and they don’t have a voicemail message system. Their website is out service and their Twitter is so outdated it’s pathetic. There is basically no way to know if they are open other than driving by and seeing an 8 ½×11″ piece of paper sign on the front door. For most of us who don’t live in Eagle Rock this is the most inconvenient thing and it really turns off a lot of customers.
Isla, I thought you had so much potential but now you’ve ended up like most of the other Filipino restaurants. Poor service, same old sh*t food buffet and now unpredictable store hours that leave even your most loyal customers never wanting to go back.

Sorry guys, IF you waste my time. you get a BAD review!
Since we noticed a few tips and reviews that mention they close at random hours; even though they have set times posted on their website. I had my friend call in on Sunday at 6pm to ask what time they close, and we were told 9pm (even though the website and Unilocal! says 10pm). but okay. fine.
So since we were in San Dimas at the time, and it would take about 40 mins to get there, we left at 7.30p and arrived at ISLA around 8.10p. BUT TO OUR SURPRISE… door was LOCKED! So we called their number and the same girl that my friend said had specifically told him that they were closing at 9p, now said that they closed early and gave absolutely no reason why. NOW THAT IS RIDICULOUS!
Get your shit together guys…

I’m glad this place is really good, because it’s been quite a while since I’ve had something new where it made my belly hurt just ’cause I wanted to eat everything on the menu. Solid 4.5
FOOD QUALITY:
LONGANISA SLIDERS was the highlight of the night because you can’t really go wrong with pork sliders that are grilled to perfection served on Hawaiian bread and spicy mayo. My friend said that he could easily just get three orders of these and be happy (I wouldn’t recommend that though unless you want a heart attack…)
Adobo Wings were good too! The chicken was moist and full of juice, and is fried very heavily to a nice crisp. A thick, sweeter adobo sauce is poured over the chicken, but my friend says that’s not exactly how he preferred it since the fry doesn’t absorb the sauce.
Sisig Nachos! While this tasted good I would have preferred lightly fried nacho chips instead of heavier fried ones. Pork came in huge chunks though.
Enough of delicious tapas! I ordered the Sisisilog with Atchara. This was really good because the pork was nice and tender and they would fry the pork skin individually into a nice crisp that could absorb the pork juices and sauce. Flavors were strong and on the savory-​sour side. Now if only they fried all the pieces of fork. how great would that be?!
SERVICE:
Service was nice and attentive. They come check on you once in a while to see if you’er doing okay.
ENVIRONMENT:
This place seems like a modern warehouse that is pretty simple. While it’s clean and tidy, there are just a few nitpick things that they could have made the place look nicer: make sure the blinds aren’t slanted or that the drapery is not crooked.
There’s quite a bit of seating and most seats are booths, so you’ll easily get your privacy.
Overall, I would want to come back here again because they offer really great food. Prices are reasonable and it doesn’t disappoint!

PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK PORK
Dude, how come no one told me how awesome Filipino food is?
Crispy pork belly! Grilled pork belly! Fried chicken skin! Sisig (Blend of pork)!
This type of food has my name written all over it! Thanks for the heads up guys!
Located in Eagle Rock, Isla Cocina Pilipina is a decent sized Filipino Fusion restaurant that’s dimly lit with very minimal décor.
The large menu here is made up of tapas plates, a la carte items and a wide variety of large entrees. Since I’m making up for lost time, I went BIG at Isla. This is all I got:
Chicharon Manok (Complimentary) — Crispy fried chicken skin w/​Isla Sinamak sauce
Longanisa Sliders– Crispy pork longanisa on pan de leche bread & spicy aioli
Sisig Nachos– Tortilla chips topped w/​sisig, house salsa, cream & queso fresco
or
Two Item Classic Plate– Lechon Kawali (Fried Pork Belly) w/​Isla lechon sauce, grilled pork belly strips, white rice & mustasa salad (green mustard salad)
or
Pork baby back ribs w/​taro leaf collard greens & mashed sweet potatoes
Turon a la mode– Warm, caramel glazed banana & jackfruit eggrolls w/​coconut & ube ice cream
The chicharon manok was awesome. Loved the spicy, vinegary dipping sauce that came with it. The longanisa sliders were great. These tiny sammie’s were salty (pork), sweet (bread) and spicy (aioli). The sisig nachos were fabulous. Their sisig was slightly sour and slightly spicy, which means it was perfect. And there was TONS of it. I also loved the crema and the salsa. The two item classic plate was beautiful. I mean, it came with loads of both fried and grilled pork belly. Nuff said. The baby back ribs were fall off the bone tender. The real surprise with this dish was the taro collard greens. MY GOD these were the best freaking greens I’ve ever had. And when you mixed the greens and the mashed sweet potatoes you got one of the best tasting side dishes I’ve ever had. The Turon a la mode dessert was lovely. Perfect ending to a porkfect meal.
Prices here are great. We bought the $ 16 for $ 20 Unilocal deal and they also had a 15% off check in deal. For all the food we ordered it only set us back $ 40 something bucks. That’s a steal. And our server Christian, was wonderful. He was really friendly and attentive.
I’m now in love with Filipino food. Any cuisine that uses this much pork is a winner in my book. If I lived closer to Eagle Rock I’d be a regular at Isla. If you live any where near this place, you’ve got to try it!

Isla Cocina Pilipina has made it to one of my go-​to spots in Eagle Rock and Eagle Rock has so many awesome eateries.
Because of the delicious dishes and friendly staff as well as modern hip ambiance that is also cozy, Isla Cocina Pilipina is now the spot for my circle of comrades to go for both business dinners and hanging out.
Some key points:
— ample parking in both street and in lot
— modern décor
— Filipino food INTERPRETED. Meaning this is their take on food as they see fit as a culinary experience. The dishes I have tried are good but try not to compare it to family recipes and parties. (I know, it can be hard lol)
— Friendly staff who takes time to explain the dishes which is awesome for pushing /​educating Filipino culture to non-​Pinoys.
— a banquet room in which you can rent out
Many folks say that the sisig nachos is their most popular dish. I’d go beyond that. Although I love sisig and their sisig nachos are great, I am sisig’ed out.
I recommend the:
— Calamari– the Isla Sinamak dipping sauce and it’s vinegary goodness
— Chicken Chicharones– don’t be scared. Fried to a crisp. You know the best parto f fried chicken is the skin!
–Camote fries– I was excited to see this root vegetable that I have grown up with fried as a potato. I wouldn’t of thought of it til now.
–Sinagan Steamed Mussel– tamarind tart broth, yummy going down.
— Tilapia with Laing– greens cooked with coconut milk for that smokey taste
— Bistek Lomo — citrusy marinated beef with fries… winning!
— *****Ribs with Laing and Kamote Mashed Potatoes: way good! although in my pic, you will notice that outside of the rib may be overcooked becaused of the charred look, but it was still good. comfort food redefined.
***** also recommend the cucumber soda and the buko juice
I really want to go go back and try the rest of the dishes especially the vegan kare kare. i loooooove kare kare and if i can find a healthier version, that would be wonderful!

Isla Cocina got a great write up in LA Weekly, so I was curious to try it for myself!
Brought my non-​Filipino friends here for an introduction to the cuisine of my heritage and had a GREAT experience.
The owner, Martin, was able to arrange for us to have a selection of many items to try family style. He was SO easy to work with when we said we’d be coming with a party of about 15 people. The restaurant itself is nicely decorated and very large so it’s great for a large party.
This was the perfect place. The dishes had authentic roots with contemporary presentation. They even had a YUMMY Vegan Kare Kare… SO AMAZING. Vegan Filipino food = the unicorn of culinary delights. UNREAL.
Best of all, my friends had a great time and had a positive first experience with Filipino food, which is what I was hoping for. Thank you Martin & Isla Cocina and I wish you much success!

Modern twist on Filipino food? Amazing.
Do not come here if you’re looking for your typical large amount of Filipino food served. This is more of an upscale place that you can bring your non-​Filipino friends where they can understand the menu and eat.
As soon as you walk in, the ambiance is not your typical down-​to-​earth Filipino restaurant. It’s very trendy and modern. We were seated right away and was even given a sampler of an appetizer for free.
The food is great. The hubby and I shared on a Longanisa sliders which comes in a pair. We devoured it immediately. We also ordered the sisig nachos. Yum! For entrees, I ordered the Sisigsilog with Egg and hubby ordered Filipino style Burrito. Both were so good. My non-​Filipino hubby who’s very picky actually likes this place. Yay!
Presentation of the meal is great. They even give you a flask of water and plating is excellent. The value for your food is superb. Majority of the entrees cost no more than $ 10.
In the end, I paid using my credit card and the server has an Ipad on hand to swipe my card. I get to write my signature in the ipad and had an option for the receipt to be emailed or text. Talk about tech savvy…
Nice place + Parking+Good Food+Cheap+Good Presentation and Service = Awesomeness!

Where to start. Waitress forgot to bring the soda. Which would have been understandable had the place been busy, but it was not. There were only 4 tables to wait on between 3 waiters.
For the price we were expecting much more than what was served. A la carte items were good for one person. The vegan kare-​kare was unanimously panned by all the tripe-​loving people at the table. The grilled pork belly was ok but again they served little and the rice it was served with is the hard brown stuff. No real Filipino eats that kind of rice. The lumpiang shanghai was ok. The mussells were prepared like sinigang so it’s not the normal garlicky one you would expect. It’s actually hard to taste the mussells when it’s prepared like sinigang. When we ordered the garlic rice they should have asked if we could have that as a substitute to the hard brown rice. And the garlic rice was so-​so, bland actually. Moreover, the water had an after-​taste. Like the pitcher was used for juice butt was not rinsed thoroughly.
I don’t know who’s been giving this place 5-​stars but they sure fooled me. The price is definitely not worth the food. The food is definitely not worth the wait.

I am all for iconoclastic cooking styles and innovative fusions as long as the end result creates flavoursome, toothsome new flavours that in some way equals or bests the base cuisine from which it is derived. Isla Cocina Pilipina does a gallant effort in attempting to transcend traditional Pilipina cuisine which has up to now been the gold standard in the community.
Younger Pilipinos living in LA have been exposed to the multicultural, multiethnic melting pot and are now exploring their own Pilipina cuisine through the lens of multiculturalism. Therefore, there is an expectation now for more leading edge, less tradition bound restaurants, and Isla Cocina Pilipina may be in that group of the avant garde new wave.
1) Chicharon Manok: fried chicken skin in the imitation of pork cracklin’s. Similar effect as the pork chicharon, but the accompanying vinegar sauce was a good gastrique to cut the fattiness.
2) Calamari: Standard fried, small «firefly“calamari, but the batter was lightly herbed.
3) Lumpiang Shanghai: thin crispy eggrolls which contained chicken instead of the standard spiced ground pork filling with the traditional red/​orange sweet & sour sauce. The chicken filling made the lumpia lighter and less filling.
4) Sisig Nachos: shreds of pork belly with pico de gallo-​like chunky salsa, crema & queso fresco. Nice refreshing version of a Pilipinoized Mexican American dish. However, the taste profile was not exceptional.
5) Paksiu na Lechon: I special ordered the Paksiu and white rice as a main course so it would not be served in a french baguette. The traditional Paksiu is made from Lechon or whole roast pork. When the roast pork is not all eaten, the left overs are used the next day by recooking the lechon in a sweet, vinegar sauce. So the texture of the meat is that of a roast… thick pieces of meat and a layer of fat and skin.
But, the pulled pork style of shredded pork meat in sweet vinegar/​patis made this taste more like a North Carolina Pulled Pork Barbecue that is marinated in sweet vinegar and served in a sandwich. Maybe that is why Isla serves its Paksiu with bread. However, if I wanted a North Carolina Pulled Pork, I would go to Gus’s in South Pasadena. The vinegar salad of cabbage & carrots was refreshing to clear some of the fattiness.
6) Ginata’ang Pork: was in a vinegar adobo sauce with the addition of coconut milk to add a creamy richness. The flavours melded well in this dish. The wild rice was a bit dry and lifeless in taste. Maybe they should use a broth to cook the wild rice in instead of plain water to add more Umami.
7) Balut: Duck egg that has been fertilized and allowed to develop an embryo in the egg. Cracking it open released a tasty broth that my friend Robert said reminded him of a foie gras-​like flavour. I also tasted a light Tonkotsu ramen broth flavour. The egg white was exceptionally chewy and rubbery, but the embryo and the yolk was soft, creamy with a slight sulfur richness of the yolk. Aesthetically, the inside of the shell is imprinted with the developing blood vessels of the embryo so that it looks like an Art Nouveau etching. Salt was the accompanying condiment.
8) Diniguan: Robert offered to let me sample this rich dish of pork meat in a sauce enriched with pork blood. The sauce is slightly grainy, and looks like a «mole sauce». The taste is heavy with metalic iron mineral-​like tones. For me this would be an acquired taste.
9) Various cane sugar bottled sodas are offered: Cola, Cucumber, Cream, Orange, Rootbeer, diet Cola. There is definitely a taste difference from corn based sucrose. The cane sugar has a more rounded, soft sweetness. The fresh cantaloupe agua fresca was full of the flavor of the melon with pieces of the melon floating in the glass.
Good tasting food that brings satisfaction is the «proof of the pudding». The concensus was that the food here at Isla did not meet the taste requirements of a memorable meal. Something truly innovative in Pilipino cooking might be to increase the amount of raw vegetables and fresh herbs that would pair well with the food in order to lighten the meal as well as providing a fresh contrast to the meat, fat, and carbohydrates that are so plentiful. Now that would be a new, innovative healthful direction for the avant garde cuisine Pilipina.

Disappointing is all I can say. I dined here with a group of friends on Saturday night, and we left underwhelmed, especially when our waitress told us that she just broke the machine to make Halo Halo, and that they were out of the tropical fruit flavored ice cream that’s used for their Turon a la Mode. All this taking place at 8pm on Saturday. I can understand the machine breaking, but how can you NOT have ice cream on hand?
Secondly, it was bad enough that many of the dishes did not taste good — my entrée of the Lechon Kawali had cuts of pork belly, with the skin on, that was re-​fried. So that made the skin tough, and almost inedible. Parts of the pork belly meat became overcooked and dried out. The sandwiches were served on thick French rolls with a very thin layer of either pulled pork or barbeque chicken. My friends literally ate a couple of bites and left the rest of the food on their plates.
Their strong points appear to be their stews and soups, as the Dinuguan (pork blood stew) was quite tasty and spicy, without tasting too minerally. The Lumpiang Shanghai (mini egg rolls) was perhaps the best dish of the night as our party went through 4 orders in minutes. Crispy and full of well seasoned ground chicken.
One of my friends ordered the Crispy Pata (crispy, boneless pork leg meat served with Isla Soy-​Sinamak dipping sauce), but he wasn’t told that this dish would take a long time to prepare until the rest of us (11) were served our entrees. How can you not warn a customer the cooking time for a dish if it’s going to take a 20 to 30 minute wait? By the time he was served, the rest of us were just about finished with our entrees.
Lastly, our waitress was a bit on the impatient side, seemingly giving us sour puss faces while taking orders, as we tried to figure out what we wanted. Being one of the ones who was indecisive, I apologized for not being ready, but she didn’t even bother to smile or even say, «that’s fine.» She was already flustered at 6pm!
All of the problems that we experienced from our dinner left too much of a negative impression on us. Particularly, we were most disappointed with the Lechon Kawali, as that was one of the dishes a few of us had look forward to eating.
Granted the dishes were inexpensive, but I would rather pay a bit more to get better quality food and service.
Sorry, but we will not be returning.
By the way, hire a couple of servers/​bussers to help out with the wait staff. 2 waitresses to serve such a large restaurant that was 75% full is too overwhelming for them and just ends up hurting customers as they have to wait longer times to get decent service.

Took my baby daddy here for father’s day and he left with a huge grin on his face. Win! Service was great, food was even better!
Sure, our cholesterol is probably out of control. Who cares? Totally worth it.
We shared the chicharon, adobo wings, sisig nachos & garlic rice. Holy crap. Everything was so good. Loved loved loved the adobo wings the most. Crispy fried chicken wings topped with adobo — holla! Can’t wait to try making this at home! I would go back just to get that with a side of white rice.
Their modern take on tapas style Filipino food is so creative. There’s nothing like it out there and this foodie approves!

This ain’t your Nanay Gloria’s, Goldilocks point-​point ish. If you’re coming here expecting your tita baby’s adobo or your Tito boy’s kare kare you might as well keep your ass home because you will be disappointed. This aint your traditional filipino spot. This place takes classics that we grew up on and they remix the shit out of it like Puff Daddy. If you are cool with that you will love this place. It’s been a long time coming and it’s only fitting that it’s in Eagle Rock.
Sisig nachos: effin bomb. Spicy enough to give your taste buds a jolt but not too spicy where it’s not flavorful. Once you let the sisig sauce marinate into the chips for few minutes it gets better with every bite. No joke.
Adobo wings: marinated adobo wings that are deep fried. I’m a adobo crackhead. I can have it all day everyday. This was a unique take on a classic dish. Crispy, flavorful goodness I tell you.
Also ordered the chicharon manok (fried chicken skin) garlic rice and halo halo for dessert. Comfort food at its finest.
I wish they had a bar or liquor license. Imagine drinking a 1903 or one of eagle rock brews here? Make it happen and I would be here on a reg basis.

I needed a place to buy catering trays for an event. I emailed Isla Cocina Pilipina and asked if they could accomodate a few requests. I received a prompt response. I was assured that, yes, they could make the ginataan with chicken only and not with the shrimp, but that they would have to see if they could make lumpia without any meat in it. I am not sure why this is hard to do, but it took 2 days for them to get back to me and say that it could be done.
I received another email a couple of days later saying that without meat, the lumpia would be quite large and would cost twice as much. However, there was a suggestion to order only half as many as I had originally wanted, and they would cut them in half. I was grateful for this suggestion and agreed.
I stopped by the restaurant before my event to pre-​pay for the food so that I could send someone to pick it up. Although I had emailed beforehand, it still took a while for the guy to straighten everything out, including figuring out how much he was supposed to charge me for the food. The transaction took longer than I had expected, but the guy was very polite.
The next day a friend went to pick up the food. She told me that whoever met her scolded her for not showing up right at 4pm.(I took this report with a grain of salt, because my friend is easily offended.) However, what I *did* experience was this…
I got an email from the same person that had helped me out before, telling me that he had undercharged me for the food and that he was going to send me an invoice for the difference. Now, honestly, I’ve owned a business in the past, and here’s what I know. When you screw up, you eat the loss. You do not expect the customer to go out of his/​her way to cover your mistake. Maybe the guy realized this, because he never did send me that invoice. I have not heard anything from him at all, not even a question about whether the food was good.
So…about the food… for the most part, it was good. The bistek was very good. I don’t really love ginataan, but my guests liked it. They also really enjoyed the vegetarian kare-​kare. I honestly didn’t try it, because it just smelled like peanut butter to me. The lumpia was, indeed, enormous. The reason it was so large was because the vegetables were not chopped small enough to roll the lumpia tightly. However, it was tasty, except for the occasional too-​large pieces of cabbage.
The restaurant would have gotten 4 stars for the food, but, unfortunately, the service reduced the number of stars I would have given. If I had realized how long the place has been in business, I would have probably chosen to go elsewhere. I will probably return to this place, but I will give it a year or to see if the owners can get their act together first.

If there is a Filipino restaurant that became a terrific introduction to those who haven’t had Filipino food before, this is the place!
My non-​Filipino boyfriend and I went here to get some tapas (small plates) to go and were surprised to see how amazing the ambiance and food were. In fact, he was definitely impressed when he ate Filipino food from Isla Cocina Pilipina.
We ate almost everything that we ordered, and I had to admit that each bite was delicious. There wasn’t a simple dull moment I can remember while eating the following dishes: sisig nachos (what a creative, specialized dish!), dinuguan with puto, calamari, lechon kawali, and apan-​apan.
Overall, Isla Cocina Pilipina (which used to be Barrio Fiesta, 3J’s, Isla Buffet, etc.) is a LEGIT Filipino restaurant to try in Eagle Rock.
P. S. I am planning on coming back to eat inside next time!

DO NOT COME HERE if you’re looking for your mom’s traditional Filipino dish, you’ll just be disappointed. Come here instead if you have an open mind and want some good ass Filipino-​flavored food with great service and a nice ambiance. It’s great to see some young’uns being creative and not afraid to break the mold of 98% of other Filipino restaurants.
When we went, we had the Sisigsilog thing and the special of the day, a beefsteak dish that was lemony (like mom makes) but with a cuban twist. So good. We didn’t finish the Sisigsilog because we wanted to save room for dessert, so we fried it up the next morning with rice and an egg and man it was goooood.
Warning: the servings aren’t huge so don’t be disappointed when your small dish comes out. Personally, I think their serving sizes are perfect because it’s just enough to get you full without feeling bloated and in a food coma. There’s never any sense of regret that you ate too much.
Halo halo — bomb. Toron — bomb. Just be sure to order your own because if you try to share with a friend you’ll be fighting for the last bite.
To top it off, they had a playlist going that featured Jodeci, Ready for the World, some old school Prince and even some Goapelle. My kind of place!
p.s.
What they need to do next is open up another location somewhere in Hollywood and stay open late. Can you imagine going here at 2am on a Friday night after the club? They would kill it.

This is located in the old Barrio Fiesta in Eagle Rock. The space is humongous, but most of the diners filled in the main dining room. The menu is small, both with classic Filipino dishes and new takes on them. I went for the Vegan Kare Kare. The sauce was good, a little heavy on the peanut butter but good. I can’t remember all the vegetables in the kare kare but it had eggplant for sure and what I believe was a soy skin, which i guess is supposed to replace tripe. I thought having vegetarian kare kare on their menu is brilliant, because it is usually made with ox tail, but ox tail is not a cheap cut, so having a vegetarian version is way better. My date had a bistek. He liked it. They are still without alcohol license at the moment. Décor is minimal, dark with splashes of red and white.

Thank goodness I have a preggers foodie friend who’s always looking out for new places to eat or we would never have discovered this place. You see, Eagle Rock (like the Covinas) is Filipino-​mecca and there are a ton of little nooks to eat delicious ethnic food. .. . but this place is SPECIAL.
How come more of my people aren’t flocking to this hideout?! Perhaps it’s because they don’t serve traditional Filipino fare as we had it when we were tots, but reinterpret these comfort dishes in such a phenomenal way. The menu itself was intriguing, like pork adobo sandwiches and longanisa sliders you’d never see in a traditional Pinoy place.
They gave us free chicharron (pig skin, not as gross as it sounds, TRUST) with their heavenly (and even available for purchase) vinegary sauce chock full of onions. They were crispy, surprisingly light and just sour enough with the dipping sauce. We also ordered Shanhai lumpia, which was perfectly cooked and the filling was meaty and flavorful. Second up was fried calamari, which had a slightly harder shell than what an Italian restaurant would have but it’s what I grew up eating and I love the crunch, especially with that exceptional vinegar sauce.
For an entrée, I had the lunch special which comes with 2 choices of protein, sour soup with veggies, this unique wild rice they had which was such a great alternative to plain white rice, and a vegetable choice (I had mustasa, a bitter green that was cooked in oil with some other vegetables and offset the protein I had on my plate). I had a fried fish called bangos, which was deeeelicious. And the fried pork chop, which true to my Filipino-​sensibilities, still had a little bit of the fat on it to make it nice and juicy. I LOVED MY ENTREE.
The hubster chose the spicy sisig silog which came with a fried egg (oh boy!) and rice. It was TASTY. My preggers gal had the same thing as me but instead of fish, had the chicken bbq. It’s unlike American bbq, which is dripping in sauce; instead it’s marinaded with a sweet/​salty combination that just zings in your mouth. Her hubby had this AMAZE-​BALLS burrito that had shredded beef, cheese, avocado, and an egg it in. It’s so funny because it tasted nothing like a Mexican burrito at all, but tasted exactly what a Filipino burrito would be if such a thing normally existed (if that makes any sense).
We also had buko (coconut juice) which came au naturale with a straw inside the fruit. The cool host also cut it up for us so we can eat the meat at the end; he even topped it with coconut ice cream because he said, «This is how my dad likes to eat it.» Now how nifty is that?!
Very minimalist décor; like they didn’t change the seating from what the space was before – probably a diner, guessing from all the booths instead of straight up tables. But that is of little consequence. If you’re already a fan of the food of my people, you will be of this place. It’s just cool to try dishes which seem familiar but have a certain refreshing change, and you can tell, the chef knows how to cook from the heart. And by the way, talk about bang for your buck, we got all that food for something like 65 smackers! Dinner is probably a little more expensive but not much.
La Isla, MAHAL KITA!!!

I’ve been to a lot of Filipino restaurants in my life… this is one of the few that I would recommend, whole heartedly, to anyone who wanted to experience filipino food. Most Filipino restaurants tend to be family style… or worse. cafeteria style restaurants. Isla Cocina is the first real modern style Filipino restaurant I’ve been to. All the chefs have gone to culinary schools and its very interesting to see the modern takes on traditional Filipino dishes.
THE ORDER
Chicharon Manok — 4 out of 5 — A complimentary dish since it was my first time there. It is a deep fried chicken skin serviced with a spiced vinegar dipping sauce. Just as awesome as it sounds… it doesn’t get much better than fried chicken skin. It’s kind of like salt and vinegar chips on crack!
Longanisa Sliders — 4 out of 5 — Filipino pork sausage meet inside a super soft roll dressed with a spiced mayo. Nice little tapas plate (2 slider for $ 4). The loganisa was tasty and the spice mayo was a nice touch… which there was a little bit more of it.
Sisig — 5 out of 5 — Very nice surprise. Sisig is one of my favorite dishes and I’ve never had it like it was here. First off the plate as absolutely gorgeous. The knife work on the pork belly and how it was cooked and garnished was perfect. The consists of chopped and seasoned pork belly dressed with a house made dressing. The pork was perfectly cooked. It was juicy and flavorful. There were chunks of crispy pork skin throughout the dish that added a nice crispy texture to the dish. Then the house made dressing added a tartness along with a subtle heat. Very well balanced and conceived dish. My advice is order this with a side of rice! It almost feels incomplete without it.
Ribs with Laing and Kamote Mashed Sweet Potatoes — 5 out of 5 — Wow! Biggest surprise of the night. Again beautifully conceived, executed and dressed dish. The pork ribs were DELICIOUS! They were better ribs than I’ve had at the last 3 BBQ restaurants I’ve been to. The ribs were super tender. A gentle twist at the bone and it popped right out. The ribs had a tasty glaze that really brought it to life. the Laing, which is a curry like veggie side was tasty. Some of the better Laing I’ve had. It was bold and tasty with a nice heat to it. Lastly the mashed sweet potatoes were equally tasty. A great addition.
OVERALL
The restaurant has only been over for a little over a week and is still a bit of a work in progress… but I can only see it getting better. The Tapas style preparation of half the menu is a fun way to experience and taste filipino food. The prices are more than reasonable. And down the line they will eventually get their liquor license and open up a bar area which will really push this place through the roof.

Came for the grand opening and MAN was i impressed. As Marivell C. said it, «a hip Filipino restaurant?!» — or rather, a hip, authentic ethnic food restaurant! That’s crazy rare, even in LA. Usually the food is good or the ambiance is good, but not both. Until now!
Isla’s busting up the real authentic foods, like dinuguan, sisig, etc. in great flavors and portion sizes. The servers are young, fun, and very friendly. This is a place you can hang out and bring your friends, or your filipino parents, and everyone will be happy.
Added plus, the sangria is off the hook!
Parking in the private lot adjacent, or on the street.