Melissa Miranda’s second restaurant, Kilig, opens its doors today, October 10. While it’s markedly different from her first spot, Musang, it shares a few central tenets: great style, a genuine emphasis on community, and the goal of bringing Filipino dishes more firmly into the spotlight.

Kilig is a fast-casual spot—the kind that's mostly about lunch, but still has a good bar. Right now it's open weekdays from 11 to 7. Miranda signed the lease at 710 Eighth Avenue South way back in 2022, but Kilig’s arrival does coincide with the start of soup weather here in Seattle. Which is handy, since one of its signature dishes is bulalo, a rich soup made with simmered beef shanks and a specific confluence of vegetables: cabbage, corn, and potatoes.

With a truly great bulalo, says Miranda, “you really taste that bone marrow coming from the bones.” She plans on “making sure every bowl has a beef shank bone in it.” Her version includes a few savvy tweaks (the cabbage is charred; potatoes are marble; beef is from Preservation Meat Collective). But otherwise it’s a fairly faithful rendition of bulalo from her childhood. Miranda’s extended family has already visited and determined her version lives up to their own youthful memories.

The soup was one of Miranda’s favorite dishes growing up, and she liked the idea of a Filipino restaurant that focused on a single dish: “Pho is something that is so huge and important, why can’t we introduce something to that effect?”

Kilig will also serve a vegetarian bulalo made with mushroom stock and seared oyster mushrooms, plus pancit—a noodle dish that’s a favorite on the menu at Musang—recast to be more of a lunch entrée situation for solo diners. One dish on the menu definitely didn’t come from Miranda’s childhood: a mashup of kare kare and dan dan noodles that sounds intriguing as hell. This involves Szechuan elements (wheat noodles, chili crisp) and flavors from the Philippines’ kare kare stew (short ribs, peanut sauce, okra, eggplant, long beans, bagoóng). “It’s really weird but really good,” says Miranda.

It also feels fitting given Kilig’s address in Chinatown–International District. “With Musang, that felt like a homecoming for us,” says Miranda. Her original restaurant on Beacon Hill created a Filipino landmark in a neighborhood that used to have many more. Her new spot now adds a Filipino restaurant to a neighborhood where Filipino Americans’ historical presence hasn’t always been as well documented—or preserved—as that of Seattle’s Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese communities.

Plus, says Miranda, she spent weekends here eating dim sum with her family as a kid. “There’s a lot of nostalgia.”

Kilig’s bar reps some of Miranda’s father’s go-to cocktails, like the Beautiful, a snifter of cognac and Hennessey you chase with a shot of bulalo broth. Another drink made with Hennessey and apple juice should also look familiar to Filipino Americans, she says. There are also nonalcoholic options, handy for a place that plans to be lunch-forward.

Over time, Miranda wants to expand Kilig’s hours and add some items to the (intentionally small) menu, like a soup of the week and pata, a crispy fried pork knuckle.