New Food Mecca in the Metro
Sick and tired of Makati and The Fort? There’s a new restaurant hub in the Metro and it’s not as far as the State of Alabang. It’s Shaw Boulevard.
Sick and tired of Makati and The Fort? There’s a new restaurant hub in the Metro and it’s not as far as the State of Alabang. It’s Shaw Boulevard.
In the past few months, we have seen some of the best coffee bars in Makati enter the market: Yardstick and The Curator in Legaspi Village; Toby’s Estate and Commune in Salcedo Village; and just last week, Refinery at Rockwell.
Enter a pricey restaurant and you will find the usual: a bisque or cream of whatever soup, pan-seared foie gras, salad with arugula, sea bass, steak and a chocolate lava dessert.
Two great events happened this week in London: the San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards, and Chowzter’s World’s Tastiest Fast Feasts Awards.
After the intense debates in the “Off the Menu” Food Forum last month attended by industry leaders, the clamor to further promote Filipino cooking to the world was heard loud and clear.
With summer just around the corner and after the excesses of Christmas and Valentine’s, it is time for Lenten penance. Time to start counting calories to resurrect our bikini-worthy bodies or, in most cases like this columnist’s, get rid of that built-in salbabida (floater) in our middle!
In town last Tuesday for the Nespresso Food Forum’s The Next Big Thing were David Thompson, chef of Nahm, which bagged the No. 1 spot at this year’s Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards; Leisa Tyler, regional chair of the World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards; and Raymond Lim of Les Amis, a restaurant in Singapore that has constantly made it to various lists of Asia’s best.
I have met the chef of my dreams—a young American-educated Brazilian who has worked with the world’s best chefs: Thomas Keller at Per Se in New York, Andoni Luis Aduriz at Mugaritz in Spain and Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in London.
The verdict is out and newspapers worldwide have carried the headline: Nahm, a traditional Thai restaurant in Bangkok serving historical and heritage recipes, is Asia’s Best Restaurant for 2014.
If there is anything that distinguishes Filipino cuisine from that of our Asian neighbors, it would be the heavy influence of Spanish gastronomy. Unlike other Southeast Asian countries that have distinctly light-textured yet very spicy recipes, we have heavier meals that veer towards the salty; saucy and sweet. This is in large part due to over 300 years of Spanish colonial rule and the osmosis of Spanish flavors into our own culinary lives. Hence, our love for flavors based on chili peppers, tomato sauce, garlic and onions.
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