Manila Has Emerged As Asia’s New Culinary Hot Spot Thanks to These 4 Restaurants

Creative young chefs are remaking the Philippine capital's food scene.

On my first visit to Toyo Eatery, the fine-dining restaurant in Makati­ — one of the 16 cities that make up Manila’s larger metro area — it had just been recognized on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. I’d heard of chef Jordy Navarra’s whimsical takes on classic Filipino dishes, and it didn’t take long for him to make good on this reputation and transport me to my childhood in Manila.

For the salad course, Navarra created a dish in which dehydrated eggplant “ash,” meant to mimic soil, was crowned with layers of 18 different farm-fresh plants, including peanuts, ginger, tomatoes, and green beans. These were the very same ingredients that I, along with all Filipino children, sang about in the folk song “Bahay Kubo,” which means “stilt house” in the Tagalog language and describes a modest home surrounded by a fertile garden in which anything can grow. I almost asked my server to join me in singing a few lines. But while this reference point is familiar to every Filipino, the dish itself was entirely new. A mosaic of textures created by an unexpected mix of ingredients, the Bahay Kubo salad has become a Navarra trademark.

That was 2018. “No one was really doing what we were doing here in Manila,” Navarra said of the dining scene six years ago. A lot has changed since then, both for Toyo Eatery and the Philippine capital overall. The Bahay Kubo salad is no longer available, but another signature dish on Navarra’s ever-evolving menu is sabaw at mais (broth and corn), which combines a rich, plant-based stock made mostly from vegetable trimmings, subtly sweet corn from the Quezon province, and asin tultul, an unusual rock salt seasoned with coconut milk from Guimaras Island. This is Navarra’s more focused vision for Toyo Eatery: dishes that “introduce the different farmers we work with, along with a flavor profile of the Philippine terroir.”

In the last decade or so, I’ve made it a personal mission to get back to the Philippines at least once a year. Since I currently live in the U.S., a big focus of these trips is reacquainting myself with my old hometown and its expanding culinary scene. One thing that always strikes me when I go back is how bold Filipino food is. If a dish is meant to be salty or sour or sweet, I will know at first bite.

One spot that caught my attention is Metiz, an industrial-chic restaurant located not 100 feet from Toyo Eatery. Prior to its opening in autumn 2019, French-Filipino chef Stephan Duhesme cooked at restaurants all over the world, including stints in Colombia and New York City. Duhesme told me he and his team are cooking for Pinoys (which is what we Filipinos call ourselves), filtering that global perspective through a distinctly Filipino lens. “I try to understand what we consider to be delicious,” he said.

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One thing is certain, we love rice; we eat it at every meal. So I couldn’t get enough of Duhesme’s bowl of rice cooked with aligé, or crab fat. To really amplify the crab’s briny richness, Duhesme emulsified the dish with smoked egg yolk, which gave it a creamy, umami quality. “We like playing with rice because it’s so versatile,” Duhesme added. “But we always make sure it’s comforting.”

When I choose to eat Filipino food, it’s because I want to taste the flavors of my culture. But what’s exciting about these new restaurants and chefs is that, while they’re finding new ways to prepare Filipino dishes, many of the flavors remain familiar.

On another trip, I tried Thirdy Dolatre and John Kevin Navoa’s Hapag, which recently relocated from its original Quezon City location to a larger venue in Makati’s Rockwell development. At Hapag, which means “table,” Dolatre and Navoa explore all the possibilities of the Philippine kitchen. Hapag is, according to Dolatre, “a place where guests can truly feel at home and connected to their roots.” OPM (Original Pilipino Music) floats softly out of the speakers, and they even encourage guests to eat some courses with their hands.

I was thrilled when the duo turned the familiar on its head, as they did with their shrimpy take on kwek kwek, a street-food staple of battered and fried quail eggs. The orange-red exterior (annatto powder is added to the batter) was classic, but once I cut into their version, I immediately realized that it had been transformed into a shrimp-cake-covered Scotch egg.

I also tried a noodle dish called palabok, which was inspired by the noodles from Jollibee, the homegrown fast-food chain. Palabok is typically characterized by an orange-colored sauce, thanks, once again, to annatto powder. Hapag’s is a lot less orange and a lot more artisanal than Jollibee’s: homemade rice noodles are tossed in a sauce of prawn heads and miso made with gamet, a dried seaweed with a deep, unusual flavor. Smoked fish flakes and crushed pork rinds add texture. Did either of these dishes need to be given a fine-dining upgrade? Not at all, but there’s still a lot of joy — and many fantastic meals — to be had when you see talented Filipinos having fun and reimagining the limits of our cuisine.

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Another frontier Filipinos are looking to conquer is wine. A small but mighty movement has formed to bring natural wine to Metro Manila. One of the pioneers is Joey Osmeña, who launched Bombvinos Bodega, an import business, in Makati in 2020. Its wine bar — a loft-like two-floor space decorated with sculptural wall mirrors and lantern chandeliers and personalized with books and candles hand-picked by Osmeña and his friends — opened in 2023. The drinks menu is categorized by easy-to-understand labels such as “fun and fruity” sparkling and “interesting, juicy, and wild” reds.

There’s also a food menu created by Don Baldosano, the young chef behind Linamnam, a modern Filipino restaurant in Parañaque. For his consulting gig here, he developed shareable plates that are, by name, identifiably Pinoy, like the rich and addictive tocino — cured pork belly traditionally served with garlic fried rice for breakfast. It paired perfectly with a skin-contact Sauvignon Blanc from Chile that I picked from the “bright and citrusy” orange section. “We’re honored to have piqued people’s curiosity enough to visit,” Osmeña said. And that’s pretty much my approach to eating out in Manila. So far, my curiosity has been deliciously rewarded.

A version of this story first appeared in the September 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Mealtime in Manila."

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