What makes one Filipino?
That was the quintessential question I reflected on while anticipating last week’s dinner, where Ricky Estrellado, Nobu New York executive chef, was expected to create his restaurant’s signature dishes with a Filipino touch with Manila head chef Michael de Jesus.
In the culinary world, Nobu is known for elegance and innovation wrapped up in tiny Japanese packages. For the special two-night dinner, the two chefs worked within the framework of Nobu’s established tenets — Japanese-Peruvian fusion — and added a Filipino twist with ingredients like calamansi, bagoong, sili labuyo and lato.
I was curious and a bit intrigued. While I am more familiar with Japanese than Peruvian food, I still wondered how one would connect these three (including Filipino) into a string of courses.
Filipino flavors are bold, seasoned to the edge for an ultimate pop in the mouth. Japanese seems to thrive in subtlety, in both taste and aesthetic.
What head space do these chefs need to be in when planning their dishes?
The eight-course menu started with an amuse bouche (above), a gyoza wrapper fried into a crisp cone and filled with traditional sisig that was amped with a bit of foie gras. The single thin slice of the sili labuyo brought it home for me. It was one indulgent tease. It was like one hot kiss you would never have again. We requested for seconds, but no, it was not to happen. The bite was more fleeting than a haiku. Beautiful in its brevity.
The second dish (above) worked so well as a follow-up to the sisig cone: local tuna lightly dressed with just a bit of calamansi that barely seared its sweet diced flesh. It tasted so clean and refreshing. It was as simple as it sounds, yet far from unforgettable, as each bite came with a bit of kizami (chopped) wasabi roots, which gave it a pleasant and intense zing that drew the fine line between kinilaw and sashimi in each mouthful.
Here’s where it got a bit tricky (above): the lumpia ubod in shisho-flavored crepes served with matsuhisha dressing and jalapeño emulsion, with sashimi of red lapu-lapu on the side. It felt a bit lost in translation to me. Maybe my mind was still wrapped around the traditional sweet lumpiang ubod of my childhood, which made it hard to reconcile it with a plated raw fish and a tangy salad dressing. But I left nothing on the plate in spite of all my musings.
However the next dish (below) was nothing short of genius. I could not help but be transported to my youth with the combined flavors of green mango and sweetish bagoong. Imagine thin slivers of sashimi-sized cuts of fresh yellow fin tuna, lightly dressed with some yuzu, and topped with a tiny drop of puréed green mango on one side and a tiny disk of crisped-up bagoong (chefs please teach me how you did that!) on the other.
I folded the slice of tuna with my chop stick and popped it straight into my mouth. I left the table, and went into my own happy place. Well I did not leave my seat literally, but it did feel like that. There was much going on in one single bite. To finish the plate we bit into a pickled baby peach, the first time I tasted it in my life. I was floored. It was pure elegance.
I was doubly lucky with the next dish (above). First, I love lobster. Second, I was seated beside Claude Tayag who’s sworn off eating the crustaceans for life. So I had two portions of this perfectly-fried tempura lobsters that came with a braised daikon and miso sinigang soup. I had no complaints. This was followed by an equally indulgent sous vide crispy pata, with a brussel sprout laing given a sweet twist of amazu ponzu.
Our table was screaming for rice, so an array of playful sashimi (above) was ushered in. Aside from having Pinoy flavors on them such as adobo, itlog maalat and the like, the sashimi felt Pinoy because of the generous servings we had. We were all beginning to feel the meal in our tummy.
Capping off the entrées was the all-too familiar kare-kare, this time with a Peruvian twist (above). The traditional kare-kare was infused with a bit of tomato and anticucho spice (a Peruvian stew made usually made with offal spiced with cumin, garlic and other spices).
The piece of short rib I got was sinfully tender, with bits of gelatinous beef tendon gleaming from underneath the rich sauce, which reminded me of kare-kare and mechado. To make the presentation a bit avant-garde, there was a piece of tatami iwashi, or dried fish entwined in a single layer to form a large mat-like sheet — kind of like a banig.
The reference to the Filipino woven mat is appropriate not just because that’s exactly how the tatami iwashi looked like, but also because I was truly satisfied with the meal, and lazing and on a mat would have been a perfect treat.
But the dinner was not yet over.
The dessert, the Nobu style halo-halo (above), was the perfect night cap. Halo-halo is something that became popular in the Philippines during the not-too sweet Japanese occupation of the Philippines, yet today it stands out as one of the country’s most recognized desserts globally.
It seemed like a perfect ending to this interesting dinner. Nothing beats good food and good company. Thank you, chefs, for your stories, there was much more to digest aside from the amazing food you served.
