While Angrydobo hopes to turn itself into the go-to place of diners looking for the best-tasting adobo, its owner, actress Judy Ann “Juday” Santos Agoncillo, also wants it known that the well-loved Pinoy dish isn’t the only thing served in her restaurant.

This is why, for two nights each month, Chef Juday will be collaborating with chef Sonny Mariano (“He has been the ‘yin’ to my ‘yang’ from the very start”) and will be serving a 10-course degustacion at the Angrydobo branch in Westgate Center Alabang.

Degustacion, a meal served with different dishes for a fixed price, showcases the skill of the chef. Agoncillo, meanwhile, has another reason for organizing the twice monthly Chef’s Night.

“Since we have a standard menu in the kitchen, we also want to break away from the routine,” she said.

The Westgate branch is ideal for hosting a Chef’s Night because it has a bigger kitchen compared to their branch on Taft Avenue, Manila. It also has more seats.

Heirloom recipes

“Chef’s Night makes me happy,” said Agoncillo. “Ang sarap maglaro because we use premium ingredients. This collab with Chef Sonny features dishes that are highly requested in our own households. It offers heirloom recipes, as well as flavors I’ve tasted during my trips abroad. It’s really about my journey as a chef and as a mom.”

Mariano has been a chef consultant at Angrydobo since it opened in late 2019. “My job is to standardize the menu and train our staff. I manage the kitchen because she is too kind. While I work to maintain cost, Juday is always all-out. Gano’n kasi siya magmahal.”

Chef Juday’s appetizer board featured her homemade sesame crackers and bite-sized pan de sal with bulalo butter, tinapa mouse, chicken liver pate, calamansi curd, and this writer’s favorite—the spiced bacon jam.

She then supplemented this with her own take on the beloved Pinoy dish, sinampalukang manok. As she poured sinampalukan broth over a bowl of chicken terrine and oven-baked chicken skin, Agoncillo explained that whenever she would create a dinner spread for noche buena, she always made sure to serve “something simple” at breakfast the following day.

Hangover cure

“The sinampalukan is the perfect dish to cure a hangover,” she declared.

The Oyster Duo sat on a bed of salt—one set was fresh (with sinamak vinegar, pickled onions, and spring onions) and the other was baked, and had the Angrydobo master sauce with custard and roasted garlic on top.

Agoncillo then served three items all at the same time—“pinakbake,” crispy pata, and prawns thermidor. “You are allowed to take home portions that you feel you cannot finish anymore. Lahat tayo gusto mag-Sharon,” she said, referring to the viral “Balutin Mo Ako” meme culled from Sharon Cuneta’s hit song “Bituing Walang Ningning” involving taking home food from dinner parties.

Agoncillo said it was hard for her kids to appreciate the humble pinakbet growing up because of the briny flavor of the bagoong. This was why she baked the dish with bechamel sauce, torched it, and topped it with a heap of microgreens.

This was paired with crispy pata, with meat sourced from Dingley Dell, no less. “This is a brand that (British celebrity chef) Gordon Ramsay prefers, so it’s not cheap at all. I said, ‘Why not? It’s Christmastime after all!’”

The pork leg was roasted for five hours and quickly deep-fried to retain moisture. It was served with the Angrydobo master sauce vinaigrette.

The three-cheese baked prawns thermidor is a favorite of Agoncillo’s eldest daughter, Yohan. Growing up, Chef Juday recalled that her family only got to eat prawns during Christmas. “It eventually became the favorite of my own family. This is a treasured recipe that I want to share with you.”

Agoncillo also collaborated with Mariano on a five-grain dish that consists of white and yellow corn, black rice, quinoa, and adlai. This was sauteed with garlic and butter.

The pan-seared barramundi was what Chef Juday jokingly referred to as a dish “para sa nakakaangat-angat sa buhay.” Topped with deep-fried capers, the fish was served with cuts of purple lettuce leaves.

For us, the most remarkable feature of this dish was the green sambal paste, also an Angrydobo signature recipe. Chef Juday was in Bali, Indonesia, looking for plates and bowls for the restaurant when she chanced upon this flavor.

“We wanted our stores to be cute and Instagrammable, but instead of the tablescape, what went viral was our bottled sambal flavors. It was one of our best-sellers during the pandemic,” she said. The brown butter sambal paste also tasted awesome with the thermidor.

Mechado porterhouse

As the evening’s main event, the porterhouse mechado was served as a tribute to Agoncillo’s son, Lucho, and her brother, Jeffrey, who are both steak lovers. Chef Juday said her family used to make mechado, but with a cheaper meat cut. “Dahil tayo nga ay nakakaangat-angat na, I thought why not raise the level of our mechado by using porterhouse steak?” she quipped.

The steak was a wonderful thing to see. It sat on a bed of mechado sauce. Beside it was a huge serving of parmesan mashed potato, red pepper jam, and some roasted garlic. It is best eaten by including all the sides in one bite, to experience a burst of flavors and textures.

The dessert was inspired by two of Mariano’s favorite brands—Angrydobo and Matcha Tokyo. It featured the popular Bulacan delicacy inipit flavored with the Japanese matcha and steamed milk. Beautifully placed beside it was the polvoron, made from ground black sesame seeds, topped with cubes of ripe mango.

Just when we thought the night was over, Agoncillo surprised everyone by handing out a sampler box containing sweets that were baked by her three kids: Yohan’s brown butter polvoron with lemon zest, Luna’s dark choco chip cookies, and Lucho’s butterscotch.

Mariano said that he and Agoncillo would argue a lot, especially about costing. While his menu is always “simplified,” he said Agoncillo “liked to experiment,” meaning, she would really push for a certain idea and then Mariano would later realize that it actually works.

One time, she told him to watch the American series “The Bear” because its lead character is so much like him. “Palagi raw kasi akong galit (She says I’m always angry),” Mariano said, laughing.

“Despite the arguments, we always end up feeling happy with our output.” INQ