KAPALUA, Maui — Chef Joey Macadangdang gazes out a picture window of Maui's Pineapple Grill and casts his mind back 23 years, when he was a 13-year-old, newly arrived from the Philippines, and his first job was delivering newspapers. "My route was right down there," he says, gesturing toward Napili.

It is a long way from a farm in Ilocos Norte to this golf-course restaurant with its postcard views of the west Maui mountains and Pailolo Channel, and its menu of crispy duck spring rolls, lobster coconut Thai bisque, Asian braised short ribs and soy-charred kampachi.

When he was 15, Macadangdang got a job as a busboy/dishwasher at a place called Eric's Seafood Grotto. But soon he had his eye on the guys in the white chef's jackets. "You watch the cook, you just ask a lot of questions," he recalled. "You ask the other guys, how do you get into the kitchen?

"The answer was you work, you show them you're interested, you take on any task with enthusiasm — and you always ... ask questions."

Macadangdang kept asking, through stints at restaurants up and down the Maui coast — Blue Tropix nightclub, the Rusty Harpoon, the Kapalua Grill and Bar, Roy's Restaurants (for 10 years), and, finally, Pineapple Grill, a restaurant that he helped create with his friend and veteran front-of-the-house manager Chris Kaiwi and their Mainland backers, the Cohn Restaurant Group.

The restaurant celebrated its first anniversary earlier this month with a benefit party, having won best new restaurant honors in two different reader polls and been recognized favorably by food critics. Macadangdang was there, stylishly dressed in a crisp seersucker chef's jacket with a Nehru collar, covered in lei, presiding over the menu for the last time. After much soul-searching, he's moving back to Roy's to oversee operations of both Maui restaurants.

But before he left, it seemed a good time to reflect on the past, particularly for the benefit of the many like him — Filipino immigrants who are the backbone of many restaurant kitchens but who so rarely reach the executive chef or chef/partner level. "I tell these guys, you can do it if you really want it," said Macadangdang, 36, who is married with a 5-year-old son and lives in Lahaina. "If you want to become a chef, you have to understand yourself, you have to know who you are. And you have to understand food, the flavors. You have to have passion and dedication."

SASHIMI PIZZA MAN

He's pushing his young chefs to go to school and even thinks sometimes about enrolling in Maui Community College's well-respected culinary program, just to have the credential. He never had the time, or the luxury, of schooling beyond Lahainaluna High School. On the other hand, if savvy restaurateur Roy Yamaguchi is trusting him with a management position — sought him out and wooed until he couldn't say no — perhaps he knows as much as he needs to.

He's been cooking, after all, most of his life, starting at age 5 when his mom showed him how to wash the rice. As a youth, he was often charged with making the family's lunch and carrying it out to the rice paddies. His mom is a good cook, he says, but "my dad is even better. Mostly the Filipino men are cooking."

Macadangdang remembers the first time a dish he created appeared on a restaurant menu: It was an 'ahi sashimi pizza served at Blue Tropix. He enthusiastically describes this admittedly odd-sounding dish: a personal-size pizza with roasted tomatoes and pounded 'ahi carpaccio drizzled with wasabi-garlic mayonnaise and garnished with pickled ginger, chives, red onions, fried capers and shaved Parmesan cheese. "Until this day, they come in here asking, 'Hey, where's the sashimi pizza?' They remember that dish," he said, smiling. With food as fleeting a creation as it is, a chef can ask for no better compliment.

Pineapple Grill was a dream come true for Macadangdang — his "house." He believes that a good chef (indeed, any good employee) has to treat the restaurant as though it were their own, to take responsibility for the success of the place.

"I like walking into the restaurant when you're the first one, the only one there. This is my chef's philosophy: You have to enter it as though it was your home. Then, when the others come in, they say, 'Chef, you're here. What do we do?' And you're ready."

Late at night, as service winds down, he likes to sit with his sous chef and trade ideas, or scribble in the little notebook he keeps to record inspirations for new dishes. Servers, he says, are his research staff. "When you create a menu, you don't really know if it's going to work. The customers will tell you, and you have to listen," he said. Pineapple Grill staff are trained to seek feedback and note which dishes generate the most comment, which get eaten all up and which come back to the kitchen.

INTENSITY OF FLAVOR

At Pineapple Grill, for the first time, Macadangdang had the challenge of building a menu from scratch. He and managing partner Kaiwi shared a vision of a casual but elegant place that would appeal to local tastes as well as visitors. They wanted lots of seafood on the menu — a minimum of five fish or shellfish dishes, plus several specials a night — and lots of pupu, since they envisioned a bar where people could hang out, order small plates, make a quick meal after golf or before a movie.

They call the result Pacific Island Cuisine, and it expresses Macadangdang's commitment to "intensity — getting an intensity of flavors into the dish." There is also a subtle touch or two of the Philippines in his creations.

A popular first course, crispy duck spring rolls, characterizes Macadangdang's style. At its base, the dish is a Philippines classic: lumpia with achara — green papaya salad. But instead of the usual pork, Macadangdang stuffed the rolls with rich, meltingly tender confit — duck leg braised in oil — with shiitake mushrooms and cabbage. For another twist, the confit is infused with lemongrass, garlic and thyme, and the stuffing mixture contains cilantro, ginger, garlic and a little light shoyu. The refreshingly tart grated green papaya relish employs sugar, vinegar, salt and chilies. And a drizzle of sweet-hot banana chili sauce brings the whole dish together.

LAYERED FLAVORS

Macadangdang likes to barbecue, loves sweet and spicy flavors, enjoys using Asian aromatics and believes in layering flavors by using several different techniques in a recipe. His braised short ribs begin with bone-in ribs that are slowly braised in an Asian-spiced beef broth (lemongrass, kafir lime leaf, ginger, garlic, soy and strong broth) until the meat is tender enough to separate from the bone. He then makes a sweetish glaze flavored with sake and mirin and the trimmed pieces are finished to order, caramelized in this glaze.

For the restaurant's first-anniversary party, Macadangdang created an Asian risotto served with a poached moi fillet. The risotto, laced with shrimp, shimeji mushrooms and truffle butter, is made with a type of short-grain rice from China that has been infused with the flavor of bamboo, giving it a pleasing vegetable aroma and celadon color. "In the Philippines, we call this arroz caldo, rice soup," he said, ladling a spoonful of fish stock over the rice and fish.

Though he's leaving, the Pineapple Grill menu will retain "Chef Joey's" signature for at least the next six months, presided over by Maui-born chef Ryan Luckey, who worked alongside Macadangdang, Kaiwi said.

As he takes on the challenge of moving up from managing a single restaurant to several, Macadangdang is looking forward to learning still more about the business that has been so good to him. "I'm still on the journey," he says. "The learning is never-ending."

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.