Chef Reina

Reina Montenegro was born and raised in Dumaguete City in the Philippines and moved to the Bay Area in 1997. She started her restaurant career as a personal chef and caterer in 2012 when she decided, after 10 years at a corporate job, to follow her passion for food and cooking.
Montenegro has created dishes for Mayors Jean Quan of Oakland, Tom Bates of Berkeley, and the late Ed Lee of San Francisco and big corporate companies in the bay. In 2016, she opened ‘Nick’s' in Daly City. A year later she decided to change the concept to vegan as the first Filipino Vegan restaurant in the Peninsula. Montenegro opened 3 popular Filipino vegan restaurants in the Bay Area; Nick’s Kitchen, ‘Nick’s On Grand’ (opened 2018 in South San Francisco), and ‘Nick’s On Mission’ (opened 2019 in San Francisco). Now she has pivoted her business into a storefront of her own and has come out from behind the Nick’s brand, launching ‘Chef Reina’ in 2021. Now she is here excited to share her dishes with you all.