Una in La Union builds a table rooted in the north
La Union has a reputation problem. Ask someone who hasn’t been in a few years, and they’ll likely call it overrated—too crowded, hard to get to, with overdevelopment chipping away at its once easygoing surf culture. But they probably haven’t eaten at Una yet.
Tucked inside Salt Boutique Hotel in San Juan, the restaurant opened just in January. Food here goes beyond the usual beachside fare, with narrative-driven service that edges toward fine dining, complemented by clean, tasteful interiors that look out to the sea at sunset.
Building on this, Una presents a culinary repertoire that gathers the best of Northern Luzon and places it all in one table.
Kiniing—a smoked, salted pork delicacy that predates refrigeration—comes down from the Benguet mountains. Basi wine travels down MacArthur Highway from Ilocos Sur. In the mix are tapuy from Baguio and cherry tomatoes from Atok. There is honey from Bacnotan, the next town over, and fresh grapes from Bauang, which you might spot picking signs on the road to San Juan. Meanwhile, in-house, Una transforms carabao milk into butter.
All these ingredients are sourced from within and around La Union. Chef and founder Joaquin Carsi Cruz, whose family runs Solana, a villa in the area, grew up traveling back and forth to the province. “When I’m here, I’ve always explored the wet markets, and there’s always unbelievable, exceptional produce,” he shares. “And it always shocked me why no one really tried to highlight it.”
When Cruz was offered the F&B space inside Salt Boutique, it was, he says, “a no-brainer.”
Born into it
Cruz comes from a family embedded in food. His mother, whom he says people fondly call Tita Ging Carsi-Cruz, made the original menu for Racks and helped grow Romulo Cafe. His grandmother also ran a catering business in Bulacan. “Growing up meant salu-salo-level handaan every weekend,” he recalls.
His family was aware of the toughness of the F&B industry and pushed him toward a career in law instead. But Cruz was consistently pulled back to cooking. After leaving culinary school, he says he learned more through working in Manila kitchens, such as Metronome and Sawsaw. Then, during the pandemic, he and his family launched Lasa Supper Club in Manila, hosting long-table dinners for 12 to 20 guests. La Union’s Una is Lasa’s natural evolution.
Cruz’s partner, Alana Ver, handles the creative direction. An interior designer trained at PSID, she splits her time between Manila and La Union projects, translating Cruz’s vision into brand, logo, and space—built with Silver Fruit Design Studio. “I’m the only person who can actually understand his vision for this restaurant,” she says with a smile.
Meanwhile, Alana’s brother, architect Brian Ver, designed the sleek interiors of the restaurant, the same mind behind Los Tacos, Pluck, and June Eatery.
Pasa-pasa
Despite the precision of service, Una resists being boxed into fine dining. The pricing remains accessible, and the menu is built for sharing, encouraging diners to try as much as possible, especially with their appetizers, or “pasa-pasa” dishes.
Cruz points to camaron rebosado, a Filipino Chinese dish with a Spanish name, as a reference point for the menu’s direction. The talong rebosado captures this interplay. Inspired by the familiar nilagang talong—usually eaten with bagoong—the eggplant is battered and fried like camaron rebosado, then coated in a caramelized bagoong glaze. For the Chinese touch, it’s layered with chili oil, sesame seeds, and peanuts, with a Filipino lemongrass finish. “It’s what every lola eats. We kind of wanted to play with that nostalgia,” he says.
“Filipino food is a cuisine born out of necessity,” Cruz adds, “born out of using what we had to make food that is nourishing and delicious.”
This idea comes through in Una’s ham and keso biscocho. A brioche from La Union’s famous Masa Bakehouse is baked into biscocho, coated in carabao milk butter and Bacnotan honey, and served with housemade kesong puti topped with pickled Bauang grapes, Atok cherry tomatoes, salsa matcha, and torched kiniing. Every component comes from within roughly 50 kilometers. “It’s like charcuterie but with Filipino soul,” Cruz quips.
From sunrise to spritz
Besides serving full meals at dinner, Una begins early, being a hotel restaurant. Breakfast ranges from a brioche mushroom toast topped with kesong puti scrambled eggs and truffle soy-glazed mushrooms to beach breakfast staples like longsilog, tapsilog, and crispy danggit.
But after breakfast, the litson baka-dobo palayok makes an appearance. One of the dishes people see on Instagram and drive up to order, this claypot rice dish is cooked in beef jus, then reduced with housemade vinegar and soy sauce. Infused with garlic, the base is caramelized until it achieves super-crispy tutong rice. On top is a no-frills sous vide beef belly with mushrooms—cooked in the same adobo sauce—finished off with a poached egg. The palayok comes from Bacnotan craftsmen, which you pass on the main road.
“It’s a lost art,” he says of cooking in clay. “And it’s super LU.”
Another detail that Manila diners might miss is that in La Union, fish is priced flat. Unlike in Manila, where maya-maya, lapu-lapu, and tanigue follow a hierarchy, Cruz sources from fishermen, removing middlemen and keeping prices consistent. The menu simply lists “catch of the day.”
That freshness shows in a reconstructed sinigang—lightly smoked fish is served over caramelized bagoong and dehydrated vegetables, precisely seared to avoid the overcooked, rubbery texture so common in the country. Cruz admits it took time (and wasted seafood) to train the team, but the results show.
For dessert, the champorado layers toasted malagkit and jasmine rice, made with tablea from his lola’s recipe, finished with a salted caramel patis foam, and Auro’s award-winning chocolate ganache. Topped with shaved lumpia wrapper, the texture currently tips toward too crunchy, but the sweet-savory balance holds.
“If you would taste each of these products individually, they’re all individually Filipino,” the chef says. “But put it together, and you have something new.”
Cocktails follow suit, developed with Ken Alonso of Proudly Promdi, using local liquors and northern ingredients. The Sampaguita Sangria blends Elyu fruit wine, agimat gin, lychee, and sampaguita, while the After-Merienda Spritz refreshes with butter-washed tequila, Ilocos basi, sweet corn-miso cordial, and prosecco.
A truly localized La Union restaurant
So what does Una mean? Not “first,” not “best,” but simply “one,” in a reference to togetherness and shared dining.
“How can you feel connected if everyone has a different dish in front of them?” Cruz says. Hence why everything is designed for sharing—and the staff will guide you through it.
The team, entirely hired from the area, is notably engaged, explaining dishes, sourcing, and techniques with ease. “If there’s a reason I can pay them well in the province they’re from,” Cruz says, “then these people don’t have to go to Manila to get work of the same caliber.”
“It’s their first time,” he adds, “among all the jobs they’ve done, to explain all the dishes they’ve been serving. And I didn’t push them toward that curiosity. They built it themselves.”
Alana emphasizes the same philosophy, “At Una, papasok ang guest ng gutom, aalis sila ng restaurant na busog at masaya… And there are no VIPs here. Even if they’re restaurant owners or politicians. Everyone is treated like a VIP.”
When asked about the expansion of Una, Cruz is clear that this isn’t meant to scale. The model depends on La Union and its ingredients, people, and pace. “La Union is not overrated,” he says. “People just don’t know what else is here. It’s not just surfing. May mga palayok din dito. May kiniing. May tapuy.”
There’s something to be said about chefs who give everything to the craft of cooking—and more so about those like Cruz, who has left home, moved north, and built around what La Union has to offer.
The presence of Una seems to raise the bar for what La Union could be, not just as a weekend destination for the beach and parties. Una is a solid reason to come back for delicious food along the coast, that simultaneously supports local communities, from the fishermen in San Juan to the palayok makers in Bacnotan.
The ingredients have always been here. And with Una, someone finally dared to do something different with them.
Una is located at The Salt Boutique Hotel, Urbiztondo Rd, San Juan, La Union, open from Mon to Thurs. from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Fri. to Sun, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
