Editor’s note: This week and next, we’re counting down our favorite new Portland restaurants of 2023. At No. 9: Magna Kubo, a new street-style lechonería and sweets shop that’s adding big flavor to Central Beaverton.
To take the full measure of Magna Kubo, a spin-off to Portland’s 2021 Restaurant of the Year, Magna Kusina, you had to be there for Beaverton Restaurant Week. (Seriously.)
At the end of September, this latest restaurant from Carlo Lamagna, its kitchen run by chef Kevin Balonso, rolled out a fully loaded “mini Kamayan” tray for its restaurant week special inspired by the utensil-free — and decidedly not mini — Filipino feasts of the same name.
It wasn’t just a chance to marvel at the restaurant’s golden lumpia, crispy lechon, good roast chicken and fried wings, its tender beefsteak, cubed pork belly, fluffy garlic rice, stir-fried noodles or (whew!) the creamy, coconut milk-braised greens. It was a new framing for Filipino street food: inspired, it would seem, both by the fresh-from-the-airport roast pork Lamagna has bought from roadside lechonerías on trips to Manila, and the meat-loaded pitmaster trays folks line up for at barbecue spots in Austin.
The mini Kamayan left the menu at the end of the promotion, meaning you once again have to buy your meat by the pound, with each set meal accompanied by rice, pickles and sauce. (Letting customers purchase the signature crispy pork in smaller portions, say the quarter or half pound size common at most barbecue restaurants, would allow customers to sample more of the menu.)
The good news? If you can manage not to over-order, you can (and should) save room for Magna Kubo’s stunning halo-halo, which comes packed with shaved ice, leche flan and ube ice cream from rising star pastry chef Alexandria “Allie G” Guevarra. It’s my favorite version of the dessert I’ve tried in Portland or Beaverton.
What to know: Restaurants are booming in Central Beaverton. Southwest Broadway Street alone can now claim the just-opened Don’s Favorite Foods, Hapa Pizza and Pip’s Original Doughnuts, not to mention the many Portland restaurants (Afuri, Big’s Chicken, Top Burmese) on the other side of Farmington Road.
What to eat: Lumpia, roast pork belly, pancit canton with shrimp, halo-halo. And snag an ube-macadamia nut cookie for the road.
Read more: Portland’s reigning Restaurant of the Year is opening a Beaverton lechonería.
Magna Kubo serves lunch and dinner Thursday-Sunday at 12406 S.W. Broadway St., Beaverton; 971-268-5990; magnakubo.com. Note: There’s a second, unconnected Beaverton Kubo (the Tagalog word for hut) in Bethany Village. Make sure you’re heading to the right one!
— Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com