Asia’s Best Chef 2016 takes her turn as featured chef at Amorita’s culinary program BEats
We’re all of the world now, even those among us who have not had a single page in their passports stamped. No one lives under a rock anymore, even those whose only experience of the world is marathoning Down to Earth with Zac Efron on Netflix.
Travel was also a main dish when Margarita Forés, Asia’s Best Chef 2016, took her turn as featured chef for Bohol Eats (BEats), a culinary program whipped up by Amorita Resort in Panglao that’s designed ultimately to make Bohol a food destination.
The project aims to showcase the plethora of ingredients, techniques, and practices native to or available in the province and, later on, as the program expanded, to introduce the people behind its food and beverage industry to the same by inviting handpicked chefs from Manila who, in turn, are given the opportunity to discover what Bohol and the Boholanos have to bring to the table.
In its eighth edition—a lucky number, Margarita said—BEats, let’s just say, has gone one step closer to being international, although the two previous editions, the sixth being a nod to South American cuisine and the seventh featuring British-Filipino chef Josh Boutwood, have begun to open up the program to the larger world of cuisine.
Whatever Margarita does, she always makes a point of putting Pinoy, whether technique or ingredient, whether tradition or innovation, in its place in the world in terms of flavors, presentation, and narrative.
At the five-course special she prepared for BEats, she applied this globalist principle in the interest of Bohol’s distinct ingredients, putting, for instance, Panglao’s renowned salawaki or fresh sea urchin with some from Japan or Italian cheese with Bohol’s famed kalamay sa bao. The chef, whose family hails from Bacolod, also threw in some stuff from Negros “because I’m Ilonggo,” as she explained.
The result was, to put it simply, a dinner worth remembering made even more divine because part of the proceeds from this BEats edition was going directly to the relief and rehabilitation of Bohol in the interest of Boholanos hurt by Typhoon Odette, particularly the farmers and the fisherfolk and the food producers and artisans whose livelihoods are crucial to Bohol gastronomy.
In the eighth edition of BEats, there were too many highlights for a meal no more than five courses. Each item on the menu was, in fact, a highlight. The experience was decidedly love at first bite, an expression perfect at Amorita, not only because its name is a Spanish term of endearment that translates to “little darling,” but also because Margarita’s turn at BEats coincided with the Valentine weekend and the 98-room luxury resort’s 15th anniversary.
Served during the cocktail warmup featuring imaginative Don Papa rum concoctions on the edge of the clifftop resort overlooking Bohol Sea and Alona Beach were ikura and fiocco di prosciutto (fish roe and dry-cured ham) with chive mousse on broas from Bohol and an okoy (shrimp broth and alamang) on a Parmigiano and coconut vinegar maionese.
At Saffron, the main dining hall at Amorita, Bohol and Japanese sea urchin with lardo di Colonnata or herb cured silky fat from forest nut-fed Tuscan pigs, Parmigiano Reggiano cream, and Biasong vinaigrette further stirred up our appetites.
Next was Bohol Crab and First Press Coconut Milk Passato, a creamy soup made for each of us 80 or more diners to finish to the very last drop. It came with crabmeat kinilaw salad with onion atchara on Dumaguete gamet nori, which on its own proved to be such a treat.
What followed was takla. Seasonally abundant in Bohol, it is as sought after as diwal or angel wings clam is in Iloilo, especially as, even among chefs, it has yet to be decided whether takla is some kind of crayfish or the pistol or snapping shrimp. On Margarita’s menu, it was served up in a pasta dish with waterspinach, Bicol biti fish maw, baby crab, pansit-pansitan or pepper elder, and kalamansi cream.
Whatever Margarita does, she always makes a point of putting Pinoy, whether technique or ingredient, whether tradition or innovation, in its place in the world in terms of flavors, presentation, and narrative.
The idea behind the main dish, The Ocean & Earth Duetto, was a clever combination of Bohol White Marlin dressed in pork fat and pork belly drenched in Bohol Tsokolate fish-collagen pilpil. The duet came with green and purple kamote tops, porcini, and Negros Tingib polenta.
To bring the dinner to a sweet finish, Margarita explored the Bohol kalamay, enriching it further with peanut millefoglie, latik and Peanut Kisses crumble, mascarpone foam, and cadena de amor.
Margarita, who was knighted into the Order of the Star of Italy in 2018, has been recognized to have raised, through her restaurant concepts like Cibo and Lusso, the profile of Italian cuisine among the Filipinos, but the other side of this coin is that, by doing so, she has also elevated food in the Philippines to a level equal in sophistication as that of Italy.
In cooking, as in life in general, timing is everything. From this dinner at Amorita, the crown property of the hospitality group One-Of Collection, the eighth edition of BEats featuring Margarita Forés, held on Valentine weekend during which the number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines as well as the rest of the world had begun to dramatically drop, I feel I have emerged from over two years of suspended animation. And I left my “little darling” in Bohol the next day feeling as though I could finally say that all was right in the world—again.
Behind Bohol Eats is the team that, along with the rest of the management and staff of Amorita, has won “Best Service” twice for the resort in the Conde Nast Johansens Excellence Awards—One-Of Collection chief operating officer Lyba Godio, Amorita Resort general manager Leeds Trompeta, the resorts executive chef Greg Villalon, and marketing chief Kata Agmata. Follow Amorita Resort www.facebook.com/AmoritaResort on Facebook and @amoritaresortbohol Instagram. www.amoritaresort.com