Off the main highway in Silang, Cavite, through a zigzag of narrow roads, you’ll encounter a gigantic Indian wooden gate reinforced by narra planks.

This is the sign that you have arrived at the newly opened private dining restaurant called Mrs. Saldo’s. If you look for Mrs. Saldo, you may never find her. The owner and chef Rhea Rizzo isn’t the type to put her name on anything—even her own restaurant.

It got its name instead during a night out with friends while drinking a white zinfandel from Napa called Saldo.

“One friend just said, ‘Why don’t you call it Saldo’s?’ I found out that it meant ‘balance’ in Spanish and I liked the idea of that. Since it sounded too masculine, I thought about putting ‘Mrs.’ in front of it so that it’ll become more like me,” Rizzo explains.

Inside Mrs. Saldo’s artsy playground

As the server guides you from your parking into the main dining hall, you get a glimpse of a beautifully tiled fountain and outdoor seating area that Rizzo calls the Moroccan garden. You pass under a Japanese torii gate that may be hard to see with all of the lush foliage. Giant Alocasia plants with leaves as big as an adult dot the property.

The entrance to Mrs. Saldo's bespoke private dining restaurant — The entrance to Mrs. Saldo’s bespoke private dining restaurant

Mrs. Saldo's main dining hall — Mrs. Saldo’s main dining hall

“I’ve asked the landscaper to make the place look like Jurassic Park but manicured,” she says.

A blue wall emerges with a wooden door and a sign that has “Mrs. Saldo’s Bespoke Private Dining” on it. And it’s at this moment you feel as if you’ve discovered treasure in the jungle.

“I’ve asked the landscaper to make the place look like Jurassic Park but manicured,” Rhea Rizzo says.

The server opens the door and reveals blue encaustic tiles, a long, 12-seat wooden table, and a brick wall at the far end of the room. Sunlight streams through the solihiya screens on one side of the room while the other feels like you’re entering into someone’s living room filled with artwork, books, and objets d’art. It’s eclectic but it’s personal and layered.

Mrs. Saldo's 'greenhouse' room — One of the two smaller private rooms just behind the main dining hall

Vintage and bespoke furniture and quirky artworks dot Mrs. Saldo's — Vintage and bespoke furniture and quirky artworks dot the space

A wild ride to self-healing

Rizzo’s path to opening the restaurant was far from linear. A formally trained chef, Rizzo had to step back from her career when she realized her young son had a speech delay.

Shortly after, she gave birth to her daughter and found that she has autism. “My kids are my priority and so I resigned from my work and took care of my children for the next 10 years,” she says.

Yearning to return to work, Rizzo was approached by a friend to do marketing for restaurants. She did this for two years but realized that her heart wasn’t in it. After closing up shop, she did what most people do when they have a bad day—she turned to Netflix.

Chef Rhea Rizzo — Rhea Rizzo’s comeback into cooking began after watching an episode of Chef’s Table

“I did some soul searching and I watched this episode of ‘Chef’s Table’ that had me crying at the end. My husband asked, ‘Do you want to go back to working in a restaurant?’”

She emailed the chef of the episode that moved her and asked if she could work in his restaurant. He replied and said yes. The chef? No less than Gaggan Anand.

“I did some soul searching and I watched this episode of ‘Chef’s Table’ that had me crying at the end. My husband asked, ‘Do you want to go back to working in a restaurant?’” She emailed the chef of the episode that moved her and asked if she could work in his restaurant. He replied and said yes. The chef? No less than Gaggan Anand.

“I will always be grateful to Gaggan. At that time, it had been more than 10 years since I worked at a restaurant. And I’m not young anymore. So there’s always that hesitation if I could still do it. I worked there and it was the most emotionally, physically, mentally challenging thing I have ever done—being away from my family, friends, the comforts of home, in a different country with a different language,” she recalls her stint in Thailand.

A mural by Aya Abad that portrays Rhea Rizzo's grandmother who was a tattooed woman from Northern Philippines — A mural by Aya Abad that portrays Rhea Rizzo’s grandmother who was a tattooed woman from Northern Philippines

“There were many days that were 13 hours long. One time, I had to hold on to the prep table because I thought I was going to faint. It was really hard work but I didn’t want people to see that. I wanted to push through it. Through this experience, I found out what my limits were and blew through them. I realized, oh my God, I’m really stronger than I think I am.”

A legacy of strength and vision

After finishing her stint with Gaggan, she wanted to learn more. She then traveled to Ubud in Bali for three months to get Raw Vegan-certified. Rizzo thought this was important as a mother of a daughter with sensitivities to dairy and gluten. “Because of my daughter’s autism, I wanted to be an inclusive restaurant.”

It took three years to build Mrs. Saldo’s—with Taal Volcano’s eruption wiping out almost eight months of organic farming and setting her back to square one. Then the pandemic followed, delaying her construction.

Indonesian chicken satay with Bumbu Bali peanut sauce

Peranakan lamb curry with blue pea coconut kaffir rice

She sourced all the finishes and furniture herself, handpicked meaningful (and mostly local) artwork for the walls, and learned to take care of the plants. One dining room she designed like a maximalist greenhouse is home to a Mr. Okra painting and hundreds of plants seemingly meant to engulf diners—in the best way possible. “They’re like puppies. You just need to know what they need and give it to them.”

Mrs. Saldo’s opened to the public on Oct. 15. With a new variant of the coronavirus looming, Rizzo takes comfort in an interesting fact she learned in her experience trading and investing in the U.S. stock market.

Rhea Rizzo adds mulberries into her Thai fish curry to inject some acidity and cut through the curry’s flavor profile

“I’ve learned that a lot of the Fortune 500 companies were born during The Great Depression. During that time, they were thinking, who’s dumb enough to start a business when everything is down? Everyone was jobless. And I know it’s not an apples to apples comparison, but when I read that, I thought, ‘If those guys survived during the hardest of times, I can, too.’ We haven’t really marketed Mrs. Saldo’s but thank God that we are booked all the way through January.”

Is Mrs. Saldo’s the next favorite dining destination?

Rizzo has five different family-style menus you can choose from beforehand: Asian is akin to a trip through Southeast Asia, Southern comprises dishes from her mother-in-law’s home city of New Orleans, South American captures Rhea’s love for spice and Mexican cuisine, Vegan, a colorful menu designed to play with plant-based dishes; and a Brunch menu with items that can be ordered a la carte.

When tasting her dishes, you can tell she’s in control. Her travel stories from different cities blur together, spin in and out of your pull, and seamlessly mesh together into lovely and innovative products you can’t help but love as well. She dives deep into memories and folds her vision into the mix.

When tasting her dishes, you can tell she’s in control. Her travel stories from different cities blur together, spin in and out of your pull, and seamlessly mesh together into lovely and innovative products you can’t help but love as well. She dives deep into memories and folds her vision into the mix.

Her version of Neua Yang Nam Tok, a beef dish from Chiang Mai, Thailand with blood, is reimagined in her Asian menu as a neat slice of Beef Wellington, while the Peranakan lamb curry takes a familiar curry flavor, runs off with a milder idea, and assembles them on a landscape of cucumber cilantro salad, fried shallots, and crisp pineapple slices to create a refreshing yet familiar identity.

On her Thai fish curry that uses air-flown Hamachi (Japanese amberjack or yellowtail), cilantro, and fried shallots, Rizzo cultivates a delicate and dreamy dish that explores her Thai culinary “upbringing” and focused view—her menu all throughout is littered with instances of personal experiences accrued over the years.

This is also the case in her honey buns and coconut ice cream dessert, which is her rendition of—and homage to—a local mobile seller who pushes his cart to sell street confection.

The strength of her private dining menus could bring assumptions that her a la carte brunch dishes might be the weaker links, but it couldn’t be any further from the truth.

The brunch menu takes you all around the world from Morocco’s shakshuka to South America’s carne asada

The plates are unmistakably familiar but structured with the same singularity and joy that make Mrs. Saldo’s a silky success. The Eggs Benedict, for instance, uses smoked bacon from neighbor Tuny RestoFarm and in-house baked sourdough English muffins.

Whether it’s adding a “Mrs.” in front of Saldo’s to create the image of her restaurant, scattering mulberries on her curry to cut through its richness, or knowing when to take time off to prioritize her family, Rizzo is living up to the name of Mrs. Saldo’s and strikes the right balance.