Photo via WhoDat Coffee Cafe

The sisters behind Milkfish are adding more days to their pop-up, and expanding the days that they offer their Filipino eats. Starting Monday, July 16, Milkfish will be at Who Dat Coffee Café in the Marigny three days a week.

Cristina Quackenbush and Cheyenne Druelinger will serve an expanded menu of authentic Filipino dishes from Who Dat’s recently renovated kitchen on Mondays through Wednesdays from 2 p.m. - 10 p.m. Milkfish will remain at Marie’s Bar a few blocks away on Sundays with a smaller finger-food bar menu.

Big buzz surrounding the Filipino pop-up pushed the Milkfish sisters to find a bigger kitchen yet again. Since May 13, Milkfish has been pumping out fresh Southeast Asian soul food to a large following on Sundays out of Marie’s Bar’s small kitchen. The pop-up blossomed in the unassuming bar, but while Marie’s offers a true neighborhood dive experience, it falls short in restaurant ambiance. Even with expansion, Marie's will continue to be an important part of the business, Quackenbush said.

“I’ve met more Filipinos there than anywhere in this city,” she said.

Who Dat Coffee Café, located at 2401 Burgundy St., recently renovated its kitchen, expanding from 200 sq. ft. to 750 sq. ft.  The café has seating in the wood-floor dining room, the colorful café front, and outside. Moving into Who Dat is a step closer towards what the sisters hope Milkfish will one day become – it’s own full-service restaurant.

Craig J. Nero, owner of Who Dat Coffee Café, went to Milkfish in Marie’s Bar every Sunday since the pop-up began, save for last Sunday because Milkfish sold out of everything by 10 p.m. (The sisters brought Nero a plate of their food the next day). Nero invited the Milkfish sisters for a residency in his cafe to give his loyal patrons something new in the neighborhood – Filipino cuisine – in a consistently comfortable setting.

“We’ve created an environment here where people can relax… Our job is to make nice little places where people can come back to to appreciate the neighborhood, regardless of the blight and misdoings of the corporations trying to come in and change our community. We’re going to do our best to keep it simple, hometown,” Nero said.

At Who Dat, Quackenbush and Druelinger will be able to expand their menu to, as they put it, tell the story of the Philippines through its different regions’ dishes. The menu that got Milkfish national news includes authentic Filipino fare such as chicken adobo (national dish of Philippines), sisig (pork and chicken skin & livers with calamansi sauce over rice), lumpia (fried rolls of ground pork, garlic, ginger), and spam fried rice. Yes, spam. And it’s their most popular dish.

New additions to the menu will include kare-kare, a stew of braised oxtail, peanut butter, eggplant, bok choy and string beans (this dish sold out as a featured dish at Marie’s), and milkfish two-ways – one with mussels and shrimp, the other stuffed. Their most popular vegetarian dish, mechado, will now be served two ways – one vegetarian, the other beef braised in tomato, vinegar and soy sauce. All of their dishes can be served vegetarian.

“We have a good faux meat selection,” Quackenbush said.

The idea for Milkfish began when Cristina Quackenbush was serving at Chef Adolfo Garcia’s restaurant, Rio Mar in the Warehouse District. She cooked up a few dishes as her mother would make them and brought them in for her fellow staff. Chef Garcia was very impressed, and made it his duty to help Quackenbush serve these dishes to the public.

The pop-up started at Rio Mar in January, moved to Chef Garcia’s other restaurant, A Mano, in March, and then moved to Marie’s Bar in May.

“I’m doing the starving artist thing,” Quackenbush said about Milkfish evolving from a pop-up to a residency, to one day a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Nero said the new addition of the Milkfish sisters is a good fit because the three share a homegrown passion for cooking and restaurant experience. Nero, Quackenbush and Druelinger have worked every position in a restaurant.

“Equal passions can make a place explode,” Nero said as the sisters smiled.

Café Nero, the restaurant in Who Dat Coffee Shop, will continue to serve Creole-Cajun breakfast, lunch and dinner. Café Nero’s dinner service, which began in June after the kitchen was renovated, will be served Thursdays through Sundays. The deal is: Quackenbush and Druelinger will run the kitchen as Milkfish on Mondays through Wednesdays, and will cook under Café Nero on Thursdays through Sundays.

“We may give [Quackenbush] a day off,” Nero said of the mother of five, who still bartends at Rio Mar three days a week.

At Rio Mar, Quackenbush ferments and infuses her own liquors, which she said she will bring to Milkfish at Who Dat when Nero secures a liquor license. In the meantime, BYOB and no cork fee.

Nero became owner of the Who Dat Coffee Café during the Saints’ Super Bowl Championship Game in 2010 (hence the name) with partners Amy Kussmann and Ade Lowrey. They completely gutted the space in five days. The café has since evolved into a neighborhood coffee shop in the front, where a crowd of regulars gather everyday, and a full restaurant in the back.

From the shrimping haven of Delcambre in Cajun country, Nero got his culinary knowledge from Jeanne Romero, his grandmother. Nero said she would go to the yard and cut green onions to cook her grandson’s meals. It’s that homemade feel Nero wants his customers to experience in the Marigny neighborhood. Café Nero makes 4 gallons of remoulade a week to be served on dishes like soft shell crab, seafood salad, green tomatoes, and shrimp various ways. Café Nero also regularly sells out of prime rib on Sundays.

Who Dat Coffee Café is located on Burgundy and Mandeville in the Marigny. Milkfish will serve Filipino fare Mondays through Wednesdays, 2:00pm-10:00pm. Café Nero serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week, dinner Thursdays through Sundays until 10:00pm.