The Focaccia, the Bacalao, and What Mother's Day Means at Rang's Cocina Moderne

At Rang's Cocina Moderne this May 10, it comes with two dishes that weren't on the menu before — one that is staying, and one that is coming back for a single day.

The rosemary sourdough focaccia is new and permanent. It arrives with three compound butters: Filipino adobo topped with crunchy fried garlic, Italian pesto finished with extra virgin olive oil, and Spanish Manchego and honey dusted with paprika. Three heritages, on one plate, before anything else has arrived at the table.

Chef Rang Tan grew up around women who cooked from their heritage without making a point of it. Chinese, Filipino, Spanish — not separate things to draw from, just the way food tasted at home. She built a catering business in Manila on that foundation before she brought it to Las Vegas. The focaccia is the most plainly she has ever said it. It is $15.

The bacalao is a different kind of story.

Last spring, Rang served bacalao à la Vizcaina at Vegas Unstripped, the city's annual chef-driven culinary festival. Salted cod, slow-cooked with bell peppers, garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, potatoes and olives, over jasmine rice. A Basque dish that traveled to the Philippines over three centuries of Spanish colonial history and became, along the way, a Lenten staple on Filipino tables — something your lola made, a dish that was simply always there.

After she served it that night, Hispanic guests came back to her station. Not to ask what was in it but to tell her it reminded them of their mothers. Their grandmothers. A kitchen from a long time ago.

Rang wasn't trying to recreate anyone's memory. She was cooking from her own. But that is what happens with a dish that has been passed down long enough — it carries more than one family's history inside it.

She is bringing it back on Sunday, May 10, for one day only.

At Rang's, this is what the cooking has always been about — not remaking something to prove a point, but letting a real history show up honestly on the plate, and trusting that it will mean something to the person eating it.

That is what Mother's Day looks like here.

Reservations are open now at rangscocina.com or by calling 725-214-1188. Rang's Cocina Moderne is at 5900 W. Charleston Blvd., Suite 11, open Tuesday through Sunday, 5 to 9 p.m.

Book your table for Sunday, May 10.