With accessible, dietary-restriction-friendly seasonal menus and open-fire cooking methods, this collaboration between career chefs and partners has been an instant Hudson Valley hit.
Pop-up at C.Cassis Tasting Room in June 2025. Photo credit: Food As Content.
In their first year running the Filipino food pop-up Sira Ulo, career chefs and life partners Jesseca Naldo and Harrison Cohen have cooked their way across the Hudson Valley with a kind of joyful relentlessness—an almost accidental business fueled by open fire, community momentum, and the shared love of Filipino cuisine.
“When we started dating, we were thinking about what we could do together,” Cohen says. “We did one informal pop-up at Commune Cafe + Wine Bar in the city with friends and family to gauge hype, and it just spiraled. Suddenly we were doing events almost every weekend.” Most of those events were in the Hudson Valley, where Naldo’s family is from.
Both chefs come with deep, varied backgrounds. Cohen has been working in kitchens since he was 15, cooking in far-flung places from New Orleans to Hawaii and throughout Southeast Asia. Last year, he left the brick-and mortar restaurant world to run his own food truck—Smokin’ Harry’s—outside Keegan Ales. “A local business was very insistent on buying my truck over the winter,” he says. “I finally said OK. And then I just went with it.”
Naldo, who was born in Kingston to Filipino parents, has her own ample culinary resume, with gigs everywhere from Seattle to New York City to Spain, and locally at Inness. In her own home kitchen, exploring Filipino food has been a way of staying connected to her family. “This is the food I’ve eaten my whole life,” she says. “This is the way I’ve known Filipino culture most intimately.”
The pair didn’t initially plan to launch a business. They took what was supposed to be a one-month cooking contract in the Florida Keys last winter—a gig that grew into four months. “We spent that time brainstorming all the fun things we wanted to cook and do together,” Naldo says. When they returned, they staged a small pop-up just to gauge interest. People showed up and the momentum began to grow.
Their first major break came through Basilica Hudson’s Farm & Flea Market in May as part of Enoki Catskill’s curated Reflections of Home project—with artisans, artists, and food vendors representing the Asian diaspora in the Hudson Valley. “We went from serving 50 to 70 people to preparing for 5,000,” Cohen says. The exposure was immediate and transformative. “That event really opened doors for us,” Naldo says. “It made us realize how many formats we could operate in.”
From there, the season became a blur: a regular gig at Rose Hill Farm in Red Hook, the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, weddings and funerals, farmers’ markets, breweries, dispensaries, and collaborations. Getting into Garlic Fest—typically a long-established vendor circuit—was its own milestone. “The person who coordinates the food vendors runs it owns a business in Saugerties. We literally just knocked on the door with a printed portfolio,” Cohen says. “Next thing we knew, we were sandwiched between people who’d been doing it for 30 years. It was nonstop from morning to night. It was insane.”
That in-person connection as a means of growing and sustaining their budding business has been a surprisingly consistent and delightful throughline in Sira Ulo’s debut year. “We’re so used to restaurant work—you cook in the back and you never know what’s happening out front,” Naldo says. “But with a pop-up, you are face-to-face. You see the same people week after week. The curiosity and support has been incredible. Being able to take something still relatively unknown in this region and be a vehicle for discovery—it takes a lot of education and explanation—but it’s very rewarding.”
The food itself is a collaboration between heritage and exploration. Naldo and Cohen lean heavily on open-fire cooking techniques, seasonal produce, and the flexibility of a pop-up menu. “Filipino food lends itself to being both comforting and adaptable,” Cohen says. “We wanted to make it as accessible as possible while also keeping it nostalgic.” Nearly all their food is gluten-free, dairy-free, and nut-free, and they always have vegan options. “Some of our best compliments are people with dietary restrictions saying, ‘I can actually eat this,’” he adds.
Seasonality drives their regular menu changes. Skewers established themselves as a summer staple early in the season. Once the cold weather set in, they shifted gears to soups and stews, a strong suit of Filipino cuisine. They source as much produce and herbs as they can from the one-woman operation Dirt Dance Farm in Kingston and Back Home Farm in High Falls, while their dry pantry goods come from Asian markets in Albany. “It’s been great to buy from friends,” Cohen says. “There’s nothing like driving 10 minutes to pick up lemongrass from someone doing beautiful work.”
Summer menus featured “Mom’s lumpia,” served with sweet chili-vinegar sawsawan dipping sauce; “Dad’s chicken adobo” season with soy sauce and cane vinegar, mixed peppercorns, bay leaf, and crispy garlic; and pancit (glass noodle) and rice bowls with proteins like chicken inasal or grilled beef short ribs condimented with soy sauce, ginger, pineapple, and banana ketchup. In fall, heartier dishes like arroz caldo (a savory, hot rice porridge); bola bola meatball soup; and oxtail kare-kare (a nut-butter based stew served with grilled eggplant, okra, and Chinese long beans) began to appear on the menus.
The 2025 season ended on a particularly high note with the three-day “Pretend Restaurant” pop-up with C. Cassis. “That was the culmination of everything we’ve done and built,” Naldo says. “We finally got to see our food on real plates. Not to take away from the flavor, thought, or quality we were putting into our food all year, but a disposable bowl is just so different compared to a coursed-out meal with service and beverages in a beautiful setting. It even changed how we see our food.”
The question Cohen and Naldo have fielded all year—“Where can we find you?”—finally looks to have a more concrete answer. The pair are in the final stages of securing a kitchen inside a recreational facility in Red Hook, a hybrid space that blends on-site operations with a semi-permanent home base for their pop-up prep. “It would let us host events, do menu releases, and offer food pick-ups,” Naldo says. “It’s not a full restaurant yet, but it would be a consistent base where people can find us.”
Real estate challenges, industry volatility, and personal well-being all weighed in on their visioning for the 2026 season. After cooking outdoors during an especially hot summer and into late November through sweltering heat, rain, snow, wind, and late-night breakdowns—they’re prioritizing sustainability. “This year we’re focusing on making the same impact without destroying our bodies,” Naldo says. “We’re being intentional about how we grow and picking which events make sense for us.”
After taking a few weeks off to rest, recover, and visit family, Naldo and Cohen will pick back up with Sira Ulo on February 11 at Rose Hill Farm to accompany the Boondocks Film Society’s screening of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Then on February 18, they’ll be at at Mirador for a Filipino-driven, Spanish-style tapas dinner, and on February 23, Sira Ulo will be at Restaurant Kinsley for a roasted pig dinner collaboration. Future winter and spring pop-ups are in the works. Stay tuned to Sira Ulo’s Instagram for details.
While plans both short- and long-term are still being finalized, Cohen and Naldo are coasting on the high of their first season and the feeling of being held by the local community. “The Hudson Valley has been so incredibly welcoming,” Cohen says. “Last year, we were just really going with the flow, taking all the opportunities, and supporting each other. Both of us were really amazed with how inviting other businesses and like-minded individuals have been. It has been so reassuring that this is a really possible path to take as a chef because of the community you can build. We feel inspired to continue on this path of sharing our story together.”
