Local Knowledge: Run by a Father-Son Duo, Rex’s Cuisine Is a Love Letter to Central Luzon Cooking

A deep-fried pork knuckle the size of my head lands on the table, silencing all conversation. The serrated knife cuts through with a little effort, but when the hard exterior breaks and the steam clears, the meat smells flavourful. It is an exceptional bite – salty crackling, tender meat and a thin layer of fat. When you dip a mouthful in sweet house-blended soy, it’s even better.

“When I perfected the crispy pata, I said to my wife Angie, ‘Let’s open a restaurant’,” Rex’s Cuisine owner Rex Urbano Sr tells Broadsheet. “It’s boiled for two hours and then deep-fried. I’m just going to tell you the secret ingredient: it’s lye water, a Filipino product.”

In 2021, a few months after Covid, Urbano Sr leased a small space in an old school shopping centre just off one of Brisbane’s busiest main roads in Acacia Ridge. “The [initial] purpose of the restaurant was because no one could go home to the Philippines. I thought, ‘Why not open a Filipino restaurant?’ And then I remembered I have recipes from my grandma and mother. I also cook at home a lot so it made sense,” he says.

Before opening Rex’s Cuisine, Urbano Sr worked in uniform manufacturing for 30 years. He moved from Central Luzon, north of Manila, to Australia in 1993, and he’s lived in Acacia Ridge ever since.

He’s always had a passion for cooking for others. “Growing up, [my dad] always cooked big batches,” says Rex Urbano Jr, the owner’s son. “It was like, ‘Who’s coming over?’ He always cooked two pots of food even though there were only five of us. After cooking he’d call all our relatives over.”

Eight months after opening his busy diner, Urbano Sr was diagnosed with stage four liver and pancreatic cancer. He was told he had six months to live. At the time, Urbano Jr was working as a retail manager. When he found out, he uprooted his life and took over the day-to-day from his father without hesitation. He’s now the restaurant manager.

“I was still guiding him [with the restaurant] even though I was having chemotherapy, but I wasn’t scared about my [health] situation because I was focused on the restaurant. After my wife took me to the hospital she would come [to the restaurant] too so I could rest at home,” Urbano Sr says. “I came here once a week to visit, but I wouldn’t stay long because I couldn’t bear the smell of the food because of the chemo. I’d just visit to say ‘Hi, hello. I’m still here. You’re doing good.’ I wanted them to feel like I was by their side.”

Since Urbano Jr took over, he’s learnt most of his father’s recipes – just in case. Central Luzon dishes straddle the line between being starkly savoury and seriously sweet. Signatures include sisig (diced pig’s head) served on a sizzling plate; kare-kare – oxtail stewed in a rich, nutty sauce; and a plethora of grilled marinated meats, basted with a house barbeque sauce. The menu also embraces contemporary household staples like Filipino spaghetti – a sweeter version of its Italian counterpart – as well as adobo, chop suey and sinigang.

Angie Urbano runs the floor and the dessert station, where she serves leche flan, Pampanga-style halo-halo and a variety of cakes. “Mum creates her own kind of clientele, the more mature [customers] like the aunties and uncles. She’s more popular than us and people ask for her. They look disappointed when she’s not here,” Urbano Jr says.

Rex’s Cuisine is also one of the only restaurants in Brisbane that offers the boodle fight – a traditional feast of grilled meat, offal, fish and seafood, barbequed skewers, boiled eggs, lumpia and seasonal fruit and vegetables laid out on banana leaves and eaten by hand. It’s often booked for celebrations and feeds larger groups.

The restaurant serves calamansi juice, bubble tea and bottled beer. The drinking rituals of the Philippines – drinking beer, eating pulutan (drinking snacks) and belting out Celine Dion – suit the climate and culture of Brisbane perfectly. “If we get the opportunity to branch out and open another one, I want Filipino drinking culture to carry [the concept]. That can intertwine with the karaoke-ness of it all,” Urbano Jr laughs.

Rex’s Cuisine
Shop 24/28 Elizabeth Street, Acacia Ridge
0426 202 361

Hours:
Mon to Wed 11am–2.30pm, 5pm–8.30pm
Thu 11am–8.30pm
Fri and Sat 11am–10pm
Sun 11am–9.30pm

rexscuisine.com.au
@rexscuisine