Carlo Lamagna

Executive Chef

Chef Carlo Lamagna is an award winning chef with roots tied to the Philippines and the Midwest. He began his professional kitchen training in Detroit after moving back from the Philippines and, after a few years, sought out further education at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Upon graduation, he moved to Chicago to further his experience in various restaurants, with a brief stint exploring and cooking in Europe. In 2014, Carlo and family moved across the country to Portland, Oregon and, in 2019, opened his ode to Filipino food and culture, Magna Kusina.

Carlo has received many awards and accolades for his work in the culinary field and has been named one of Food and Wine Magazine’s Best New Chefs of 2021 and as a finalist for the Best Chef: Pacific and Northwest category of the James Beard Foundation Awards of 2022. 

In the city of Lamagna’s early childhood, Detroit, he grew up amongst Midwestern sensibility and genteel, gained a strong sense of family and an understanding that food was from farms, not supermarkets.

Gloria and Willie, Carlo’s parents, wanted their children to be in touch with their culture and decided to move back to the Philippines. From his parents, cooking and eating in the way that they grew up was a key point in Carlo's understanding and appreciation of Filipino food and culture.

Lamagna began a pop-up dining series, Twisted Filipino, in 2013 in Chicago and continued them in Portland with great success.

While Lamagna cites respected chefs influential in his career, philosophy, and leadership style, the chefs he most reveres are his late father, Willie, and his mother, Gloria, who both serve as major influences of his modern Filipino restaurant, Magna Kusina and his Denver, CO restaurant, Magna Kainan.