“Higher end Filipino restaurants have been more for the titas (aunties), the bougie and sophisticated crowds,” Jun Jun owner JoJo Flores explained. “It’s lacking in a lot of cities, including Montreal; we don’t see that level of focus on plating or quality ingredients often. With Jun Jun, we want to offer a new generational take on our cuisine.”

While Jun Jun fully embraces Filipino cuisine’s inherent cross-cultural qualities, it spins them further: Anyone unaffiliated with Filipino food will often find that by googling the name of a dish off Jun Jun's evolving menu will show something entirely different—what was once a stew, a soup a dessert, or a ceviche has become the inspiration for something entirely different, yet the touchpoints of flavour remain in subtle ways.

Take the bulalo carpaccio for example, which turns the traditional Filipino beef shank soup of shanks and marrow with corn on the cob into a plate of thinly sliced tenderloin topped with a marrow-demi mayo, a grilled corn salad, and fermented cabbage.