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I’m all for trying out new things, and dining at Chef Laudico’s Bistro Filipino was a rather out-of-character experience. Those who know me well know that I am a very pedestrian eater – literally and figuratively. Good food is low on my priority list and I’m not at all picky about what I eat; four-course meals at a fancy restaurant and fishballs at the corner are all the same to me (I’ll admit that I’m not too crazy about fish or vegetables though). Because I don’t really think about food all that much, I don’t really know what makes good food good beyond “I like how it tastes” and “I don’t like how it tastes.” Don’t ask me why I write for a food blog.

Last night, Orbit took bloggers for a dinner out at Chef Laudico’s Bistro Filipino as part of their 7,100 Tastes of the Philippines. We were all in for a seven-course meal of modern Filipino cuisine. At first, I didn’t quite understand what “modern Filipino cuisine” meant. What’s wrong with good old traditional Filipino food and why is there a need to “modernize” it? I asked this question to Chef Myrna Segismundo and Chef Roland Laudico and from what I gathered, they’re all about infusing their own personalities into Filipino dishes, making it their own, and using only the best cooking practices while doing so. Every single ingredient (except for the Wagyu beef) is native to the Philippines and they used Filipino cooking techniques but with a twist.

I started out my meal with a glass of delicious duhat wine that tasted a lot like red wine with a hint of berry.

The moment I saw our appetizers, I knew I was in for an evening of unusual food. We had crispy lumpia cone filled with chorizo, prawns, and heart of palm topped with spicy sinamak sorbet; crunchy smoked milk fish balls stuffed with fresh mozzarella; and spicy sisig baskets in mini crispy rice baskets with quail’s egg and crispy pork rind.

Chef Laudico explains to us our next course: a trio of rich soup samplers derived from classic Filipino favorites like adobo and nilagang baka.

From left to right: adobo shittake mushroom puree topped with creamy garlic foam drizzled with white truffle oil; oven-roasted pumpkin and eggplant puree garnished with crispy okra and a dollop of shrimp paste cream; and a beef consomme garnished with fresh corn, carrots, and potato croquette stuffed with beef and cabbage. I liked the beef consomme best; it was an interesting twist to nilagang baka, one of my favorite Filipino dishes of all time, and unlike the other two it was lighter and less rich. According to Phoebe, it takes hours to make consomme because they really get the clear part of the soup at the bottom of the pan.

Then we had a salad, again by Chef Laudico. This was a mesclun salad tossed in dijon shrimp paste vinaigrette topped with dried, ripe, and green mangos, tomatoes, and cashew-crusted kesong puti. The vinaigrette was surprisingly spicy but it went well with the mangos on the salad. It left a rather pleasant, tingly sensation inside my mouth too.

And now we take an intermezzo before the main course!

Tamarind Granite

Our intermezzo was a tamarind granite that helped cleanse our palates.

Chef Myrna talks about the two main courses she prepared for us – a seafood dish and a meat dish.

Seafood Course

Our seafood course was a lapu-lapu and prawns in coco-lambanog sauce, coriander asparagus and fennel cherry tomato sofrito, and brown rice with sun-dried mangoes. I didn’t eat all of it because I’m not very fond of fish, even though this one was really fresh. I felt bad when I heard Phoebe murmur that this must have taken hours to prepare.

Meat Course

I enjoyed the meat dish more: crusted wagyu beef fillet with cashew-humba sauce, vegetable barbecue, and sweet potato mash. Sweet potato is basically kamote, a local root crop. I was surprised to find that the meat was a little sweet, but it the flavors complemented the kamote well.

Cheese Course

After our main courses, we had a short cheese course to cleanse our palates once more: kesong puti with guava confit and galletas. My pedestrian tastes found the combination of cheese and guava a little weird, so I ate each separately.

And finally, dessert! We had small slices of mango canonigo (top) and pili sans rival (below). The canonigo was topped with mango bits and came with a sweet coco jam sauce. The pili sans rival was a heavenly, buttery concoction that had a cripsy texture to complement the marshmallowy softness of the canonigo.

In between meals, of course, we had lots of Orbit with Xylitol gum to chew on to prepare our taste buds for the next delicious course.

Chef Laudico’s Bistro Filipino serves excellent, world-class food but it’s honestly not a place I would find myself dining regularly in. While I do appreciate the fact that the chefs really took time to prepare the dishes using the best culinary practices, I feel more comfortable in informal places that serve my Filipino food with lots and lots of grease.

Contact Bistro Filipino

For reservations contact
(632) 856-0634
(632) 856 -0541

Website: cheflaudico.com.ph
Email: cheflaudico@yahoo.com

Address: Ground Floor, Net 2 Ericsson Building, 3rd Avenue
Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

Tags: filipino cuisine