Young and hopeful

I just had a wonderful lunch at a pop up of this Cubao restaurant and I am happy. Having talked about Slow Food (www.slowfood.com) for over ten years now (when these young chefs were still babies), I am happy there is now a category called “Progressive Pinoy” food.

It means the young chefs creating adobo in a paté, using local seaweed called gamet in a butter and more new ways of using local ingredients. Since I am not often in Cubao anymore, I was happy to dine at a temporary space – called a pop up – in Rockwell for this new concept celebrating local ingredients. To me it is like listening to food culture from the mouth of babes.

And I am hopeful that these young chefs will be the key to preserving our endangered food and keeping our culture alive. They used their own playbook to demonstrate cooking techniques like sous vide, fermentation and lovingly creating sauces and deconstructed versions of usual dishes like the black pancit (noodles). I enjoyed mixing the egg noodles smothered with squid ink sauce with bits (tumpok) and mounds of crushed chicharon (crispy pork rind), green onions, kamias and a dollop of aioli with crab fat (taba ng talangka).

The noodles were topped with a big fresh prawn cooked perfectly sous vide style.

The salad used grilled local vegetables like the lowly kangkong (water spinach), sitaw (pole bean) and sigarilyas (winged bean) topped with pomelo bits and on its side were three dollops again of sauces and bits of crab. I love how you can tell the ingredients apart yet when it is plated but you can mix and enjoy it with your own touch (less of this sauce, more of another, etc).

The dessert was another beautiful creation using coconut ice cream on top of a brownie-looking piece, again smothered with bits of cacao nibs, nuts and maybe chocolate. I just had to order coffee to pair with this and to my surprise they had Benguet coffee (my favorite) and pulled into a beautiful espresso.

This is the way to introduce our local ingredients to the jaded dining crowd who always look for imported this and that. Though it is good to appreciate French butter and Wagyu steaks, we cannot eat it everyday as you may also tire of it. A refreshing break