so yes uh my name is Raina Montenegro I am a self-taught chef um I do have a restaurant in Brisbane California if nobody knows where that is no one does uh five minutes from San Francisco airport so we're there we're we're only at takeout place but we we are open Thursday to Sunday and if you Shameless plug right now uh Instagram I don't know if you can open it now but chef. R now you can see a lot of thirst trap photos that are food related some of them but uh yeah so thanks so much for having
me I wanted to tell you my story about how I came here um I landed in 1997 from the Philippines uh let me give you the slide here my introduction so this is where I'm from know little little island there it's called Negros um uh from a city called dumag City City now I'm just a small town girl I'm not going to start singing you know Filipinos are known we all it's like either you're a nurse or you can sing and I think they forgot about me when that day happened because I can do neither so yeah I
'm not going to start I'm I'm from small town um I saw America as you know the through the lens of movies really like I I I thought this is when America was was in the movies so to my disappointment when I landed here in 1997 I thought I was going to marry this guy I was like I'm definitely going to marry the Legends of the Fall Brad Pit not the other versions but this version right here I was super disappointed but I'm like you know what I have a backup Top Gun Tom Cruz not any other not other
version but yes so this was my whole outlook of how America was going to be landed and I lived in 19th admission when it was really crazy I was what am I thinking I go over here and this is not this is not the America that I I've seen in the movies what's happening no um but humble beginnings I loved it um so before I go into my whole journey of how I got my business running and everything I wanted to share with you guys why I turned vegan um this because of this girl right here that's my daught
er's guy when she was born she was already vegetarian her father was vegetarian and she had this really bad skin issue and we couldn't we didn't know what it was talk to the doctor oh everybody has skin issues you know like three or three out of 10 kids have it and so one day she was really having an issue with her arms having really bad rashes and and she couldn't she couldn't move her arms and I felt really bad for her so of course like any mother would do if the doctor doesn't tell her what s
he needs to hear she goes online and she starts doing her investigative work so I went online and I went into the rabbit hole of what everybody does when you're online right you just look at every single bad thing that's out there worst thing ever but I just read an article I'm not sure I tried to look for that article but it showed how skin disease has a direct relation on consuming Dairy right so then I was like man this could this could possibly be the Cure so I told her you know what you're
already vegetarian let's just take out the dairy out of your diet and you see what happens and no word of a lie five days later the rashes were gone and we've been dealing with these rashes for five years so I went into the internet again and I went down the rabbit hole of dairy and then I came across all these documentaries about you know animal uh slaughter houses and Etc and that night it turned vegan 100% vegan and mind you I am a deep fried pork knuckle eating Filipina okay I was like what
was I thinking you know am I going to miss out on all these tosino and Leon pork belly and all these other things you know what am I going to do you know and thank God at that point I was already a caterer I had catered For meet you know to these other big companies and I was like I am not I refuse I refuse to miss out on all these things you know because I for me food is comfort food is my love language I don't care about those other love language honestly [Laughter] love food is my life give m
e food and I'll love you forever you know so I dedicated my seven years when I turned vegan 2016 to create you know I don't want to toot my own horn but the best vegan food you'd ever have um I say this because 65% of my my customers in the restaurant aren't even vegan they just go because they love the food I I call myself or they call me a transitional uh vegan establishment where when you have a tough time transitioning over to being vegan it's good to go there first CU you'll you'll have the
same stuff that you'll have before you know like eating meat so that's what I did I dedicated my seven years so let me see go back to my notes in one second um so that's what I did when I was about when I was growing up in the Philippines I would go to my grandmother house and I don't know there's a lot of Filipinos here but we would have fiesta every year you know every town would celebrate Fiesta and it's like celebration we would cook like all these food and at 500 a.m. you know 500 a.m. I w
ould hear squealing of pigs right because the way we would Slaughter it is we don't just kill them we actually tie a rope in their legs and do a do a invert them and then just get the blood out of from here so for me when I would wake up and that squealing would happen I would be like yes we're having lechon today woohoo you know that would be like it right so I really never did I did never had an awake I never it just kind of this tradition we we've been taught that this is what we do right thi
s is this is I mean why mess with tradition and for me when I turned vegan that night after I watched those documentaries I finally had my Awakening and so now I'm I'm definitely all in I'm not just vegan for the health I'm vegan for every for all you know so back to my didn't want to miss out so no one teaches you how to to cook plant-based especially in 2016 it was hardly any options at all there was no egg there was no milk there was none of that so I basically had to do a lot of R&D had to t
hrow a lot of things you know but I was determined to make it happen so just watch so I'll tell you another story when I was n this is why I be I I uh went into cooking in the first place when I was 9 years old in the Philippines I was really I don't know he really bored boring there you know you're just living in the ocean you just get tired of it after a while but uh I was 9 years old and I said you know I'm going to bake a cake I'm going to start baking I started baking this cake and then I w
as so proud I didn't know that you had to preheat the oven I didn't know that you you I the difference between baking soda and baking powder I what is that you know so I was just like whatever I'm going to just use whatever this there so then I I was so proud of the cake it turned into this really gross slimy kind of thing right so I presented to my parents I was so proud of myself I said oh my gosh I made my first cake my dad started eating and I knew it was terrible because he was just forcing
himself to eat it and my mom my mom is a disciplinarian Filipino women you know very direct and so she was like you're just wasting ingredients what are you doing you know this is stop whatever this is stop it you know and so my father eats it and just doesn't doesn't you know and say he told my mom don't discourage her she could be really good at this you know so I think that's part of why I'm so driven to to be the best at everything I'm not I'm not but I I dedicated my childhood into making
the best cakes and I I got really good at it I think and so now this day my mom still begs me to make the desserts that she loves because I I they started you know I don't know why I told you that story I just wanted to tell you guys that you know it can be done there's a lot of uh very talented people here and if somebody says oh you know being vegan is so hard it's just just so hard to do but you know what there's a lot of resources online now that you can use to make your own food that used t
o be your favorite and you want just want it to be healthier you just want it to be better for yourself okay so cooking became a an escape for me really I mean I when I would go through a tumultuous time of my life and or I would see my parents arguing or if there's like a really oh I know broken hearts my my brother used to call me the president of the broken heart Society because I I would always have my heart broken for some reason um so every time that would happen I would bake I would be I
would bake the most beautiful cakes when I'm sad it's a kind of a joke now between my friends it's like oh she's baking yeah she's sad if she's cooking real food she's not really that sad she's happy but uh yeah so that's that turned into my kind of my refuge you know as a as a kid and until now I go there and I I do my mad scientist stuff and uh I create something crazy and I sell it at the restaurant and they love it thank God it's like phew so I didn't want to skip the part where I bought my
first restaurant which was the worst idea ever so if you guys are thinking of buying a restaurant it's a really hard business you guys don't do it so I basically cashed in my 401k and bought my very first restaurant in 2016 at that point I wasn't vegan yet so I I used uh my 4 401k to buy it um a year later I became vegan so I bought a meat head heav restaurant I'm talking pork blood all these things right Dinan that was like one of the their their big things skin crispy chicken skin or whatever
A year later I was like what am I going to do I am a chef you know I'm I'm the one cooking here and I'm selling I just didn't it didn't align with with my belief system so restaurant went down was making barely $50 a night and and it's just not sustainable and so I had to make a choice either we close the restaurant and just say goodbye to my 401K investment or we change it to vegan right and I was playing with the idea for so long finally 2017 I'm like f it you know I'm going to do it I'm going
to change it to vegan I'm going to create this menu and it's not even going to be Filipino it's going to be there's some many Phil some Filipino items some American some be a world cuisine blah blah blah so no word of a lie somebody got worried about it um we went viral uh there that Friday we opened there was a line at the door in the ghetto in s in in in Daily City where like people's cars got broken in they would go anyway because they wanted to try the food and we made about two $2,500 that
every night from then and it saved my restaurant and I literally sat down the corner of my restaurant that night and I cried my eyes out because you know there is something to be said about aligning your values to what you do in life you know I really believe that like when you're when when you're not aligned it it just doesn't work you know so again I don't know why I told you that story let's go back to the food um so after that I opened three more restaurants went through some personal stuff
and I decided after 2020 covid hit us really hard and I decided you know what I'm going to close all these restaurants and like focus on opening as myself a chefa in Brisbane and this is where we are now four years later I believe 2021 three three years later so I say it's where's my slides so I'm going to go through since I have to go through the nutritional effects of being vegan let's see yeah the basics so it's really hard to understand when you're not vegan like how can how can uh I eat no
w like when I told my mom I was turning vegan she said so you're just going to eat salad I was like yeah Mom that's all we eat is salad that's it no it's yeah so I wanted to you know like my mom just read the labels so let me give you an example like most breads are actually vegan you know you just read the label making sure they don't have eggs or milk so the easiest thing to explain about veganism is what it is is nothing from not no animals and nothing that comes from an animal so if you thin
k about it right so you're thinking about milk and eggs and all these things just read labels so substituting animal products you're like oh how am I going to have my eggs in the morning how am I going to have cereal without milk so the basics is bread milk eggs dairy and so look at all these right like if this was in 2016 guys I would be like I totally sympathize with you there's nothing you got to make your own butter I'm so sorry or make your own Mayo now look at all this some of them are not
my favorite but you know some of them them are so we could talk about those after um and then see the egg my favorite is the just egg it's they've really come a long way and it really is like egg so good so now the favorite question of all plant-based people but where do you get your protein like every time I would date a guy that says that I'm blocking his number immed immediately like do you read come on you know so yeah I'm blocking you right away if you ask me where I get my protein this FY
I so let me just here look at all this can you read it so many I'm G let that sit for a moment yeah there's a lot there's a lot of places you could eat protein and I I'm going to expand on this in a second so basically when you take take meat or any kind of meat in your house right you still have to flavor it right to make it taste good so think just think about that so when you're using tofu you're using lentils you're using uh soy protein any kind of uh meat alternative you still have to you y
ou can still flavor it like you would flavor meat so that's how my thinking was when I turned all my dishes vegan so you still have to add salt pepper seasonings you have to but for us for me what I've noticed is we need a little bit of uh flavor kick because you know these tofu they're not as flavorful so you add mushroom powder you add uh veggie there's there's veggie chicken bullon now there's veggie pork veggie beef so there's so many things you can use for omami flavors you know if you want
ed it to taste like fish you can add combo you can add sea weed I mean there's just so many things you know so most spices are vegan so you just have to read the labor labels to make sure so it could be a challenge you know I love challenges unfortunately that's like I strive on CH somebody says oh you can't do that oh what what do you mean I can't do that I can do it you know um but yeah so that's what you you use uh that's what I use anyway the seasonings um there's so much more that you can u
se especially nowadays you can really go crazy so yeah you know balancing the flavors very boring but yeah so now I'm going to Showcase some of my signature dishes I hope this is the correct slide yes so this is my chicken katsu very proud of it with a side of mac and cheese yes we eat mac and cheese we eat Mac cheese and with rice because carbo loading is our business Filipinos right left this left side is the U pancakes and that's a massive burger that I made so good it has cheese inside and t
hen I decided to do you know what Wing Stop my kids loves Wing Stop wings I can do that right look I got the barbecue lemon pepper and buffalo so Leon is the pork belly right there on the left side and I have have uh local Moco on the right side is anybody hungry yet uh Philly cheese steak okay so I make my own Meats those meats that you see the Sates on that use that I don't buy it I actually make those from scratch and this my pride possession proudest moment of my life brace pork belly took 3
6 hours to make seven days 36 7 Days yeah seven days basically it's I made that out of nothing so there's this there is this uh method called wash flour where I took flour and extracted gluten from it and then I manipulated that gluten so that it will taste and look like pork and this this took me so long I'm probably never going to do it again but I'm just trying to tell you it can be done I mean there's probably way smarter people in this room right now than I am but this is also what brunch l
ooks like at my restaurant we have the bira tacos we have the pancakes the lpia two kinds lumpia Shanghai which is pork and the vegetable lpia that's made of vegetables and then there's the skewers on the right side there top it's my favorite so let's break the myths about ve veganism and one is we lack protein but I already showed you that we don't right next oh we we are lacking of B12 iron calcium but the fact is we can actually get those from Beans lentils broccoli and fortified plant milk i
nteresting um they they say we're deficient in omega-3 fatty acids but yes it does it is commonly um sourced from fish but we can get it from flax seeds chia seeds hemp seeds walnuts and alga based supplements um well it's another myth is like vegan dyes are boring now with the food I just showed you was that boring I that's not even a third of that's not even like a pinky of what we sell at the restaurant we have like so much I have a crab cake Benedict that's amazing and my mouth's watering ri
ght now um vegan diets are only for eni environmental and ethical reasons nope they're actually not they're for everybody um they're expensive no they're not they're not expensive not anymore they used to be and then this is my favorite one vegan diets are not suitable for athletes or body bodybuilders who is this my favorite athlete Colin Kaepernick he actually came to my restaurant and ate there I was I died I fainted like a few times he just didn't even know it okay he was there with a bunch
of people and and I didn't even know that he was there someone just told me he's like hey do you know you have a famous person in your restaurant I'm like who but yeah this guy is totally vegan awesome this man here oh you're you're probably going to tell me oh wait wait what am I doing hold on second one second uh this guy you're probably oh they're athletes you know they have chefs they have like personal trainers and all these things blah blah blah okay this one this guy's actually you can st
alk him on Instagram later but he's also an influencer he he has a documentary coming out in on February 1 called they're trying to kill us it's another uh vegan documentary and uh he is actually my personal a friend he's awesome and he's vegan and look how he's huge and he's my best friend who's like you know my my oldest son anyway uh he is really um he's also 100% vegan and he does not cook he doesn't do anything but he survives in this vegan diet so like there's no excuses at this point so n
ext the health benefits what are the health benefits let's take a look all right why R this is so boring you guys can actually Google these things you really can't I mean if you Google that you see everything why blah blah blah and here's another one the benefits your blood pressure okay let me tell you a story while you're reading that I have this Clinic that I go to I pay certain amount of money every month and it's very fancy it's very high te high-tech uh I go in there and you basically go i
nto this apparatus right and they scan your entire body and they take blood you know they take everything so I do this once a year physical and I come from a line of very unhealthy family genes my father has been drinking medicine so his cholesterol doesn't go crazy high blood pressure my mom's the same thing my brother who's two years older than me is also taking meds they call it maintenance I don't know if you guys know they call it maintenance so they can still eat the food and then just dri
nk the maintenance you know so my doctor comes to the when I was waiting for my results he comes and me P he pulls up my results on screen huge I was like oh my gosh I'm probably I probably have to take you know I'm scared because I have jeans and all these things and he goes he comes over to me and he's like H I was on the fence about being vegan now I think I'm going to be vegan I said why he said because you are the trophy of great health and I think that I'm not even a healthy vegan guys I I
'm Filipina I like deep fried things you know but the fact that I don't consume meat I guess helps so I can show you all these you know studies and research and you can look it up yourself but for me it's actually from experience I'm I'm really talking to you as a person person to person you know and I just wanted to tell you guys that you are what you eat so whatever what what you put in your body is what's going to come out so I have a friend who was uh had diabetes and he turned it around wit
hout taking any medicine so it really is you want to live if you don't so I get a lot of haters that say to me well you know Filipino and vegan that's an oxymoron or like Filipino and vegan that's like a contradiction like you are dis you're like disgrace to our culture you know I've I've had that trust me I've had that many times but what I really am I say to them is I'm not really taking your culture away from from you I'm not taking it from you I'm just taking it and I'm creating a healthier
version version of it and giving it back to you you I want to save your life that's all I am really here for and I'm really not that vegan that shoves anything my belief system down your throat I don't do that I I don't even I'm not even the one that you know goes to the front of the lines putting placards up I don't go to Safeway and put some blood on me and say do not eat me don't kill no that's not I do I really do not I do it silently and I do it through food and food is my culinary Act acti
vism and I just want to make good food that's good for you and I think that you can do this for you too and your family I feel like if you only just if you do it for only maybe once a week or twice a week that's huge huge benefit to yourself you know I I but that's I'm not a preachy vegan so I'm not going to do that yeah so where am I the benefits okay now o this is interesting so interesting all right I was in the ne Netflix documentary called you are what you eat I don't know if you saw it I h
ave one minute 20 second Fame my not my that's my 15 minute of Fame I think so this is really interesting to me because I know a lot of people and you know what I can't confirm or deny that I've personally tested this cannot confirm or did I okay guys don't quote me on that one at all so my my personal friend actually she was part of this experiment when they did the uh you are what you eat so they did this test where they showed the the twins uh a very boring video like birds or something and t
hen they had put like some kind of apparatus to check the blood flow down there and uh so and then they showed them some pornographic you know video and the results were look at that 383 per increase in women and this is not just somebody saying oh by the way you know it may do this they literally did a study Stanford University did this right so I don't know if anyone cares but I mean when I'm looking at you guys are pretty young still right and for the men don't worry I forget about you in men
's sexual performance research notice has showed 8% increase in erection hardness and 3 to 500% increase oh my God as I said I cannot confirm or deny I have personally tested cannot but I'm just saying they did a study of these three men they were athletes I believe I'm not mistaken during the game changers documentary they did one person eating vegetarian one person eating meat that night and then only for one night okay this was not even this is not even like a prolonged thing one person eatin
g vegan meal and they did they they slept all three of them did the the they did a whole study thing and that's what happened so yeah just saying there's like it's a win-win guys it's a win-win I mean it's Valentine's Day tomorrow come on you know everyone's going to call their husband and wives today they be like hey can we eat vegan tonight so that tomorrow I mean you can't really you mean this is a study this is this is tried you know so anyway let's let's get get rid of that slide so anyway
so these are the suggestions I really like what the hell a friend of mine directed this movie uh Forks Over Knives is one of the ones that really got me to turn vegan and the last one my favorite because I'm in it oh my gosh you are what you eat um the best thing about this documentary is because it's not just kind of a hearsay it's not people saying it may or may not it's it's not like just people throwing out their opinion this is actually a study that Stanford University did um of eight twins
that because twins have the same DNA and they tested you know their stool their their everything they did every all the studies and you can't really deny facts and so that's my absolute favorite favorite documentary you should watch it it's fun it's fun so I think that is it I think that's all I have so anyway again Shameless plug um Instagram thank you so much for having me I know we're going to have a Q&A we have food after which is the tusino the lumpia and the panit so hopefully you'll like
[Applause] it
Comments