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Meet Kora, the NY-based Filipino bakery with a 10,000-person waitlist

Lifestyle | Food

Meet Kora, the NY-based Filipino bakery with a 10,000-person waitlist

By John Legaspi

Chef Kimberly Camara and Kevin Borja present how their leche flan and ube doughnuts are made

While we remember 2020 as the year of the pandemic, it also marks the rise of food entrepreneurs. Filipino home cooks here and abroad turned their family recipes into blueprints for at-home enterprise as they take the stirring wheel and build their own brand. Among those that gained the sweetest success is Kora, a New York-based bakery that specializes in making doughnuts celebrating Filipino flavors.

Kimberly Camara and Kevin Borja (Photo from Kora's website) and their famous ube and leche flan doughnuts (Photo by Kenneth Camara)

Led by chef Kimberly Camara and her partner Kevin Borja, Kora first emerged in the summer of 2020 in their apartment in Queens. Now, they’re operating in an industrial kitchen with their own team. From having a 5,000-person waiting list, the bakery’s list has blown up 10,000, and that’s all thanks to their special doughnut creations.

Highlighting Filipino heritage, the doughnuts pay homage to chef Kimberly’s late grandmother, Corazon. According to the brand’s website, it was when Kimberly fried a batch of brioche dough that she decided to share her grandmother’s recipes through doughnuts.

Their top creations put the spotlight on Filipino flavors that made 2020 and 2021 great years of “quarantreats.” Bringing everyone a taste of the Philippines are their famous Leche Flan ni Lola, Ube, and Camote-cue doughnuts.

Curious about how they make their signatures? American food news and dining guide website Eater has entered Kora’s kitchen where Kimberly and Kevin share what goes into the doughnuts, and believe us when we say that every minute of the video is a mouthwatering moment.

Watch it here:

Related Tags

doughnuts Kimberly Camara food kora Kevin Borja

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