Also being organized is Singa-Pob, a two-weekend takeover of select establishments within Poblacion, Makati’s prime nightlife neighborhood, by Singapore’s Employees Only, Republic, Sago House, The Elephant Room, and Tippling Club.
Hello, Singapore! Hello, Manila!
Or how we can benefit from getting to know each other better over a collaboration meal, such as the multi-course dinner recently prepared by Kevin Wong of Singapore’s Seroja and our very own Josh Boutwood
of Manila’s Helm
Jun 8, 2023 02:38 AM
At a glance
When food expert Angelo Comsti, in his desire to bring together chefs young and old, established and emerging, came up with a personal passion project called Asian Culinary Exchange (ACE), it was in fact only a logical move in his pursuit of what’s in store for Filipino food.
Angelo’s been scouring the 7,641 islands of the Philippines to come up with such books as From Our Table To Yours: A Collection of Filipino Heirloom Recipes & Family Memories, Fuss-Free Filipino Food: Quick and Easy Dishes for Everyday Cooking, and Also Filipino: 75 Regional Dishes I Never Had Growing Up, which won the bronze in the 2021 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards.
In a bid to make its presence stronger among Filipinos now that international travel is back, Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has picked up Angelo’s crusade, making his pet project ACE the marquee activity for its 2023 campaign “Serve It, Singapore!” The campaign has in store a slew of dining experiences straight from Singapore for Filipino foodies, as well as for those curious as to why in 2022, based on activity bookings from travel platform Klook, Singapore was the top destination for Filipino travelers, with a record of 380,000 arrivals last year.
With STB’s involvement, what Angelo began in 2018 levels up on its multi-cultural explorations. “We are excited to launch our exciting 2023 line up of Singaporean gastronomic experiences that reimagine Singapore’s diverse culinary landscape in new and unexpected ways,” said STB’s executive director for Southeast Asia John Conceicao, who flew in to Manila in mid-April to launch the campaign. “From chef collaborations to bar takeovers, we’re delighted to share these unique food stories to surely whet the appetites of Filipino foodies and we look forward to welcoming them to Singapore to bite into more.”
The launch pad was the new location of Helm at The Shops at Ayala Triangle Gardens in Makati City, featuring the first of this year’s chef collaborations—Singapore’s Kevin Wong and our very own, Filipino British chef and restaurateur Josh Boutwood, representing their respective restaurants Seroja and Helm.
Josh, as we know, has long established himself as a key figure in modern Philippine dining. A pioneer in produce-driven cooking in the Philippines, he has such popular dining concepts as Helm, Savage, The Test Kitchen, and Ember up his sleeve, not to mention the wide variety of restaurants under the Bistro Group, of which he is corporate chef.
Kevin Wong, on the other hand, is the chef behind Seroja, a hot new restaurant in Singapore. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Kevin who, like Josh, has heretofore spent a nomadic life, working for the most part of the last 14 years at Michelin-starred restaurants in the US and France. Seroja, the Malay word for “lotus flower,” brings this 29-year-old, considered one of 100 World’s Best Chefs by the Best Chef Awards, back home. To him, the restaurant, which highlights spices and herbs native to the region, is a homage to the diverse cuisine of the Malay Archipelago, as well as a return to the flavors of his grandmother’s cooking he enjoyed growing up on a street named Jalan Seroja in Port Klang, Malaysia.
The result was one of the most exciting meals I’ve had this year. A quartet of appetizers got us started—fish and chips, a prawn sambal tartlet with leek floss, razor clams in a bitter bean croustade, and a buckwheat and onion tart with raw beef and horseradish. A chawanmushi of lemongrass and mussels rounded up the starter set, which did open up our palates for more.
Working together proved seamless for Josh and Kevin. In each other these two chefs found more similarities—such as the same design feel of their dining spaces, or “even the same plates,” cried Kevin—than differences. Chill was the word each used to describe the other.
We moved on to a duck dish with soursop and black pepper and beef percik, for which Josh and Kevin collaborated on a trio of side dishes, called lauk pauk in Malay, of sweet potato with sorghum or broomcorn cereals and sambal, daikon or radish with beef tendons, and rice with dry-aged beef.
Next was a signature dish attributed to Kevin, a blue-fin tuna with caviar and tamarind, served almost alongside a dish that was Josh’s signature, seabass with Jerusalem artichoke and Japanese kelp, otherwise known as kombu. Immediately following were Josh’s egg with barley and kale and Kevin’s scallop dish prepared with an Indian spice blend called podi and kesum, an herb native to Asia more commonly known as Cambodian mint or Vietnamese cilantro.
For a perfect finish, we were served Josh’s take on Kinder Surprise, which he simply called Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate, as well as coconut ice cream with pine nuts, and a good cup of Tanzanian brew.
It was, as I lamented, a pity that, due to logistical concerns, this four-hands dinner could be no more than a one-night-only affair in the Philippines, but well, there’s always Helm in Manila and there’s always Seroja in Singapore. Plus, as STB has promised, it was only the beginning.
There’s also Angelo and ACE to keep the ball rolling.
Lined up for 2023 are more collaborations between chefs of our own and those behind Singapore’s top restaurants, such as NAE:UM, Small’s, and Labyrinth.
There is so much the Philippines and Singapore can share with each other.
The Philippines, for instance, is a wonderland of unique ingredients as well as a treasury of culinary techniques and traditions that date back to pre-colonial history, all the way back to centuries before European conquistadores discovered Song Dynasty historian Zhao Rugua’s Zhua Fan Zhi, roughly translated as Records of Foreign People or unjustly (by the West) as A Description of Barbarians, in which they found drawings and descriptions of sophisticated cooking implements, vessels, and utensils, not to mention weapons, attributed to what would later be called the Philippines.
Singapore, on the other hand, can teach us Filipinos about how to make the most of our God-given riches. For a city state short of natural resources, it has become green enough to deserve the moniker “garden city,” with such things as tree-planting and park development programs in place. It has also become the hub of Asian literature and arts and also now a gastronomic capital in the region. Singapore is a small nation that has become so big. It is a young nation that has acquired so much wisdom, especially in claiming its place in the world.
It’s good to know each other a lot better now and over a sumptuous dinner like this, courtesy of culinary geniuses like Kevin and Josh.
www.joshboutwood.net | seroja.sg/ | www.visitsingapore.com