Let's eat june issue

L E T ' S E AT THE HOLE-IN-THE-WALL ISSUE JUNE 2014 ISSUE NO. 13

G O S TO S O • QUI R K Y BACON • YOUR LOCAL • SCAR SDAL E • TORCH

JUNE 201 4

WHAT'S INSIDE

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GOSTOSO

QUIRKY BACON

YOUR LOCAL

SCARSDALE

TORCH

ISSUE NO. 13

L E T ' S E AT T HE HOL E - IN- T HE - WA L L ISSU E

PUBLISHE R 'S NOTE

FERNANDO MIGUEL BELMONTE Publisher

ON T H E COV E R

DON JAUCIAN It’s hard to believe that Let’s Eat has been around for one year already. I still remember the first day of starting up this publication like it was yesterday. At the time, Let’s Eat was simply the school project of an Entrepreneurial Management student looking to graduate, and I was meeting strangers that would eventually make up the team, just hoping for satisfactory results. But as the year passed, trying all these new restaurants with new people, I did not only experience a true culinary adventure, but I also created cherished relationships with the people I worked with and met while working on Let’s Eat. At this point, I have found that the project has turned into a passion for me. The person who started out just wanting to gobble up any food he could find now searches for meals he can keep coming back for. My hope for all you readers is that Let’s Eat will be able to bring you what it has brought me, namely adding more colour to your life through the experience of different tastes and flavors, and building relationships with others by embarking on a culinary adventure together. We here at Let’s Eat hope you enjoy and make full use of this, our anniversary issue.

And after one year, we proudly say to you LET’S EAT!

Managing Editor

THYSZ ESTRADA Editorial Associate

PATRICK DIOKNO Art Director

SPANKY HIZON ENRIQUEZ Writer

GABBY CANTERO Photographer

CRU CAMARA & RALPH HILARIO Photographer’s Assistants

LUCIEN DY TIOCO

Head of Sales & Marketing

ANNALYN DELGADO Editorial Assistant

Golden Letter Publishing, 1497 E. Rodriguez Ave., Quezon City For inquiries, call 5277901 local 132 or email letseat062013@gmail.com Facebook: facebook.com/LetsEatPhilStar Instagram: lets_eat_magazine

Shrimp Skwers from Gostoso Photo by GABBY CANTERO

LET'S EAT — Feb. 2014

A JOURNEY TO PORTU GAL

BY SPANKY HIZON ENRIQUEZ PHOTOS BY GABBY CANTERO

Gostoso pairs its piri piri with a flaming yet unforgettable sauce— something that will linger on your tastebuds for days 4­

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LET'S EAT — June2014

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am not a fan of the many new restaurants that seem to sprout up, fully formed, with too cute and too precious names, predictable concepts, overthought and overwrought interiors, and most offensive of all, food that’s serviceable at best. Unfortunately, many of these seem to be popping up all over, and I can spot them from a mile away— establishments put up more with a return on investment in mind, rather than a well thought of menu.

Restaurants planned from a calculated spreadsheet, and not conceived from the mind of a cook committed to sharing his culinary creations with the public.

Fortunately, there are also quite a number of new restaurants that balance the scales. Restaurants that rise from the ground up, built around a unique specialty, cultivated with a

1 Piri Piri Chicken 2 Bolsas 3 Porco Gostoso 4 Shrimp Skewers

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lover’s care, and dedicated to offering only the best possible meals to their patrons who are never taken for granted. Such restaurant as Gostoso, which serves what could be the most authentic Piri piri in the city.

João Branquinho is a gentleman from the south of Portugal, the Alentejo region, famous for its black pigs, the Iberico. João grew up enjoying that most premium of pork varieties, marinated and served with piri piri, a.k.a. Capsicum frutescens, those fiery little red chilis that the famous Portuguese grilled specialty is named after. João is a singer, and thirteen years ago, in an international chorale competition in Spain, he met a Filipina named Stephanie, a member of the UST Choir, who he would eventually follow all around the world, from Dublin to Berlin to London, and ultimately, to Manila.

Just like a fairy tale, our hero found his true love, and upon his arrival in her native country, he also found out that his beloved piri piri were also common in the Philippines, where they are known “siling labuyo”.

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LET'S EAT — June 2014 It didn’t take long before João used the chilies to recreate one of Portugal’s beloved national dishes, and soon after, he started offering his piri piri chicken at the Legaspi Village Sunday Market.

The small stall with its spicy aromas wafting through the early morning air quickly became a favorite among the market’s regulars, and one patron in particular, a young wife named Tatiana Trebol-Olondriz, found herself craving for the piri piri during her pregnancy. She loved, and believed in the dish so much, she convinced João to be her partner in opening a restaurant that would serve the piri piri she so adored. And so, the two novice restaurateurs bravely set forth and established Gostoso in January of this year.

I’m very glad they did. It’s an absolute gem, a small restaurant with a wonderful backstory, serving food that’s truly authentic. Most guests come for the more familiar Portuguese-style barbecued chicken, but I go out of my way to drive to Kapitolyo for the porco gostoso, a slow roasted chunk of tender pork belly and pork ribs, smoky and sexy, specially when liberally doused with the chef ’s irresistibly peppery “awesome sauce”, the piri piri blended with premium olive oil and a secret mixture of spices. It’s served with “olive rice”, sinangag made fragrant and infused with the nutty and herbal flavor of olives.

Gostoso is a destination for my favorite kind of cooking: well-selected cuts of chicken and pork, plump skewers of shrimp, everything masterfully marinated and grilled over open flames. Nothing complicated and with no need to be. The simplicity of its cuisine is part of its charm.

It’s a place perfect for starting the weekend early, whiling away a rainy Friday afternoon with deliciously lazy, and deliriously hazy conversations. Glass after glass of bloody red and bloody good sangrias, paired with those impeccably grilled platters of Portugal’s piri piri.

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RE COMME NDE D DISHE S Piri Piri Chicken, Porco Gostoso, Espeto de Gambas, Coxinha, Bolsas

TIPS 1. The two piri piri sauces available are classified as Original and Mild. The Original is the very hot one, made from cured chilies and the mild one made from a secret blend of spices.

2. A quirky illustration adorns one of Gostoso’s walls telling the story of how the Portuguese discovered piri piri, the fiery berry that changed the way they eat. Don’t miss the stilleto-wearing pig.

3. Gostoso is an exclusive distributor of single serve red and white wines. The come in cute bottles and are equivalent to nearly two glasses of wine. It’s best paired with the Gostoso platter.

PRICE RANG E PIRI PIRI CHICKEN P190 (quarter chicken) to P500 (whole chicken) GOSTOSO PLATTER P380 (Porco Gostoso) to P995 (chicken, pork and shrimp) STARTERS P85 (Fries) to P140 (Coxinha and Bolsas) DRINKS P50 (Bottled Water) to P795 (Wine Bottle) Gostoso Piri Piri Chicken East Kapitolyo Drive, 1603 Pasig.

(02) 477 7330 lovegostoso

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LET'S EAT — June2014

THE BUSINESS OF BACON

BY SPANKY HIZON ENRIQUEZ PHOTOS BY GABBY CANTERO

Quirky Bacon gives an array of dishes with its titular meat product—and then some

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ere’s what most people know about Sharwin Tee: he’s the eloquent and loquacious celebrity chef who stars in one of the longest running cooking programs on television, Curiosity Got The Chef, which is now deep into its 4th Season on the Lifestyle Network. He’s famous for his ever morphing pompadour, his cool collection of sneakers, his colorful and eclectic layered shirt look, and his infectious smile. He’s perfect for the medium, as are his recipes, all of them as interesting, bright, and fun as the host himself.

Here’s what most people don’t know about Sharwin Tee: he’s a modern day Renaissance Man who graduated from the Ateneo de Manila with a degree in Communications, and he utilizes the lessons he learned in Loyola Heights to full advantage when holding court about his culinary passions. He used to teach at the Xavier School in Greenhills, which made him very comfortable speaking in front of audiences, an engaging skill that he now displays in his weekly show. He’s a world-class bowler, so good in fact, that he was recruited to be part of the coaching staff of the Philippine Bowling Team.

Here’s what most people should know about Sharwin Tee: he recently

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LET'S EAT — June 2014 02

opened his very first restaurant, “Quirky Bacon”, and it’s menu is every bit as unique, as diverse, as creative, and as interesting as the chef in the kitchen. Ever since I watched him cook up a kesong puti poutine on one of the first episodes of his show three years ago, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to enjoy his Filipinized take on Canada’s national comfort food of hand-cut fries, cheese curds, and hot gravy. Apparently, I wasn’t alone. The quirkified version is one of the restaurant’s bestsellers: kamote instead of potato for the fries, kesong puti from Bulacan rather than cheese from Vancouver, and the chef ’s adobo gravy taking the place of generic brown gravy. It’s a sweetish, savory, sticky, and gloriously cheesy dish.

1 Quirky Bacon Burger 2 Pork Panalo Roll 3 Avalanche

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Bacon, that most glorious of meats, can be found everywhere on the menu, even on the healthier options. The Tempura Bacon Salad, a tart strawberry vinaigrette playfully teasing a bowl fresh greens sourced from Baguio and wood ear mushrooms from Zamboanga, and topped with a long thick slice of artisanal bacon, cooked crisp, then battered and fried to make it even crunchier still. It’s the ultimate proof that bacon makes everything better, even salads.

The menu of Quirky Bacon is certainly as entertaining as Curiosity Got the Chef: Sharwin’s signature dish, one that he’s prepared in food festivals all over the world, from Manila to Moscow, is his pork panalo roll: longganisa from Calumpit, Bulacan, stuffed into a slab of pork tenderloin, the whole embraced by lashes of the ever present artisanal bacon (but of course), and served with a glaze of guava and siling labuyo. It’s representative of the Chef ’s pure passion for ingredients from the Philippines, and his culinary education in Canada, a blessed marriage of East and West, and all other points of the compass in between.

Ask the quirky chef who his main influences are, and he will unabashedly reply with two famous names: the late great chef, author, and television personality Nora Daza, whose eponymous cookbook is still a revered reference, and Stephen Yan, host of “Wok With Yan”, that pun-ny cooking show that was a childhood favorite. Now all grown up, Sharwin Tee, and now with his own hit TV show, is following the footsteps of his idols, and just like them, is becoming an inspiration to the next generation of Filipino cooks and chefs.

RE COMME NDE D DISHE S Tempura Bacon Salad, Quirky Bacon Burger, Garden of Good and Evil, Pork Panalo Roll, Avalanche (dessert)

TIPS 1. Quirky Bacon’s focus on simple but flavorful food extends to where they source their meats, vegetables and even breads. All their ingredients are organic, sourced locally and from artisanal makers.

2. Look out for their daily specials.

Handwritten on a piece of paper together with your menu, their latest quirky creations make their debut here.

3. Don’t miss Chef Sharwin’s iced teas.

Made from freshly brewed tea and natural flavors, it changes every two weeks.

PRICE RANG E APPETIZERS 250 (Guava Glazed Hot Wings) to P480 (The Incredible Hock) MAINS P260 (Black and White Fish Plate) to P1490 (Seared Wagyu Steak) BURGERS P235 (CPR) to P465 (Quirky Bacon Burger) DESSERTS P45 (Ice Cream by the Scoop) to P385( Coffee Tea and Me Split)

Quirky Bacon 192 Wilson St., San Juan del Monte (02) 570 2494 qbresto

LET'S EAT — June2014

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

BY SPANKY HIZON ENRIQUEZ PHOTOS BY GABBY CANTERO

Makati’s much-talked about neighborhood joint, Your Local, goes beyond the hype with its distinct take on ‘Pan Asian’ cuisine

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uddenly, it’s the name on everyone’s lips. Your best friend wants to celebrate a birthday there.

Your family wants to have brunch there this weekend. Your significant other wants to take you on a dinner date there. Your officemates want to go there for happy hour. Every food lover from all over Metro Manila, from the far north of Fairview to the deep south of Alabang, wants to visit an unassuming new restaurant located deep in Makati’s Central Business District, a neighborhood joint on a tree-shaded street in Legaspi Village. Your Local is suddenly the hottest new restaurant of 2014.

It’s perhaps the buzziest (and busiest) restaurant since Wildflour opened its doors in 2012, and Your Local is getting as many raves at present as the still very popular landmark in Bonifacio Global City did two years ago. I’m not surprised— the restaurants are similar in some aspects. Both have stark almost utilitarian, but non-intimidating interiors. Both have intriguing industrial lighting fixtures dropping

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down dramatically from their ceilings.

Dining in either restaurant is an experience that transports guests to the East and West Coasts of the United States: in the daytime, akin to enjoying a brisk lunch in the middle of Manhattan in New York; during the evening service, the ambiance is that of a friendly after-hours café slash bar off Market Street in San Francisco. Cosmopolitan yet quite cozy, classy but not uncomfortably so. And the food served in both establishments? Absolutely stellar. But where Wildflour’s cuisine is decidedly Western in character, Your Local is firmly entrenched in the East as far as its flavor profiles go. “Pan Asian”, as the Your Local chef-patrons describe their menu.

The main men behind Your Local are Chef Denny Antonino and Chef

1 Torched Salmon Donburi 2 Chorizo Sandwhich 3 Beef Rendang Buns 4 Chilled Roast Bell Pepper Soup

LET'S EAT — June2014 Nicco Santos. While both keep a close watch on their restaurant’s striking open kitchen set-up, the two major responsibilities of running a successful start-up restaurant are divided equally between them: Denny takes care of operations and the back-end of the business, while Nicco oversees the creative aspects and the development of their menu. Their partnership, their division of labor, the focus on the micro and attention to the macro, has resulted in a very impressive and undeniably appealing showcase for their cuisine.

The star of the show is the torched salmon donburi, so popular that Your Local should get an award from the Norwegian Seafood Council for all the

salmon they stock. The kitchen prepares endless orders of this deceptively simple yet elegant specialty of the house: seared salmon, the skin made crisp by the torch; flavors multiplied exponentially with the sly addition of mentaiko, a fermented fish roe from Japan. All this, on an ebony bed of al dente black rice with shiitake mushrooms, bringing all the flavors and textures together brilliantly.

I recommend ordering the chilled roasted bell pepper soup, a gazpacho of sorts, a bracing Bloody Mary in a bowl (minus the alcohol, of course). Sweet, smoky, spicy, savory all at the same time.

And just to make things even more interesting, as your soupspoon descends into the deep vermillion, it bursts open

the yolk of a sous-vide egg.

I could go on and on and wax poetic about the menu. The chili crab served in a deep fried Man Tao could very well be Singapore’s national sandwich. The chorizo jam in a squid ink bun, slathered with pepperoncini cream cheese, topped with a sunny side up egg and caramelized burnt onions—it’s the best burger without a patty in the entire city.

You know that feeling when you discover something so special that you want to keep it to yourself first, savor it slowly, and yes, somewhat selfishly, before finally sharing it with everyone else? That’s exactly how I feel about this restaurant. But I know it’s too late. Your Local now belongs to all of us.

RECOMMENDED DISHES Beef Rendang Buns Chili Crab Buns Torched Salmon Donburi Chorizo Sandwich Lamb Rendang

TIPS 1. One of Your Local’s standout dishes is the Torched Salmon Donburi. Torched, not smoked, because it makes for a more interesting texture. Also the premium Norwegian salmon is cooked perfectly medium every time.

2. The small space can get very packed.

Reservation is a must during busy nights like Fridays and Saturdays.

3. They open 11AM to 2PM then opens again at 6PM to 10PM

PRICE RANG E * selected BITES – P190 (Pomelo Salad) to P280 (Beef Rendang Buns) SOUP – P190 (Chilled Bell Pepper Soup) to P195 (Roasted Potato Soup) ALL DAY BRUNCH – P340 (Pork and Beans) to P490 (Chorizo Sandwich) MAINS – P325 (Chicken Rice) to P1750 (24 Hour Sous Vide Cord Fed USDA Choice Beef Short Rib and Steak and Eggs) HOUSE WINES – P250 (Colombelle per glass) to P1350 (Ortonese Sanglovese Merlot per bottle) Your Local 102 Esteban St., cor Rufino St., Legaspi Village Makati 823-6206 or 0917 810 9002 yourlocal.ph

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LET'S EAT — June 2014

E AT L E T ' SE E T S W S

ACE IN THE HOLE

BY SPANKY HIZON ENRIQUEZ PHOTOS BY GABBY CANTERO

Peanut butter, buttered popcorn, chocolate—Scarsdale’s donuts run the whole rainbow of delectable flavors

D CLOCKWISE FROM TOP:

Carlo’s Favorite, Lemon Meringue, Tiramisu, and Apple Pie

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ecades before the Paleo, the most famous weight loss regimen was Scarsdale, named after the suburb of New York where it was invented.

Ironically, the popular diet town is also the namesake of our city’s hottest new destination for the richest and grandest artisanal treats. An insane variety of doughnuts, the likes of which I’ve never seen: churros-inspired chocolate, buttered popcorn, and the Elvis; a peanut butter-bacon-banana confection guaranteed to make your clothes as skintight as the King of Rock & Roll’s.

Chef Carlo Miguel and his partners have done it once more: reinventing a classic, and making it sexy again.

Scarsdale is at 514 S&R Shaw Boulevard,, Mandaluyong City; Call (02) 631 7647 or check scarsdale.ph or facebook.com/Scarsdale_ph

' S E AT L E TTREATS

' S E AT L E TTREATS

10% off on Sangrias.

Get a 20% discount for a minimum spend of P500 on food and drink.

' S E AT L E TTREATS

FREE Appetizer for every order of ALL THREE platter.

L E T ' S E AT X

Coupon is valid from 27 June to 27 July 2014. Only one (01) coupon can be redeemed per transaction. Use with other discount or promotion is not allowed.

Not replaceable when lost and nontransferable to cash. Only the coupon from Let’s Eat print edition will be entertained..

L E T ' S E AT X

Coupon is valid from 27 June to 27 July 2014. Only one (01) coupon can be redeemed per transaction. Use with other discount or promotion is not allowed.

Not replaceable when lost and nontransferable to cash. Only the coupon from Let’s Eat print edition will be entertained.

L E T ' S E AT X

Coupon is valid from 27 June to 27 July 2014. Only one (01) coupon can be redeemed per transaction. Use with other discount or promotion is not allowed.

Not replaceable when lost and nontransferable to cash. Only the coupon from Let’s Eat print edition will be entertained.

LET'S EAT — June2014

L E T 'SK D R IN

SPIRITED AWAY

BY SPANKY HIZON ENRIQUEZ PHOTOS BY GABBY CANTERO

Blaze the alcohol trail in Torch Tucked away in an unassuming corner of Connecticut Street, Torch first gained renown for its spirited take on mixed drinks.

Their Dragon Sangria, served in a bowling ball-sized bowl, is quite literally, a fruit cocktail—dragonfruit, guavas, strawberries, apples—all fresh and bright, floating in a sparkling white wine spritzer. Their signature Beer Tail Mango Daiquiri has to be seen to be believed, and there’s a proud line of Japanese Single Malts ready for kampai. But what makes Torch really hot? The most unique bar chow around. Gather the courage to order the peanut butter and jelly chicken wings. It’s wild, but it works.

Torch is located at 63 Connecticut St., Greenhills, San Juan. Call 02 477 3771 or visit facebook.com/torchph 15­

Y OU R GUIDE T O T HE C IT Y’S B E S T F OOD SPOTS E VE R Y L AS T FR I DAY O F T H E M ON T H L E T ' S E AT Your Local (G/F Universal LMS Building, 106 Esteban Street, Legaspi Village, Makati). Photographed by Gabby Cantero.