Weekends out of town are more fun now that Asador Alfonso, open only for the time being on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, is included on your list. Just a little over 70 kilometers away from Metro Manila, it’s a refreshing drive, all of an hour and a half, to the countryside through wide highways flanked by endless fields and up a hilly terrain, along meandering roads, sometimes with breathtaking views of Taal Volcano, via Tagaytay, and then through narrow streets lined thick with trees.

Asador Alfonso, an odd man out in a sleepy neighborhood of gated estates in Alfonso, Cavite, is many things—it’s public yet it’s private, it’s home yet it’s also a destination away from it all, it’s an ultramodern, unconventional, even experimental and offbeat architectural concept in such a familiar, near nostalgic setting as a farmland, replete with chickens, turkeys, and goat in it, it’s a work of art that is meant to be lived in—the Calma family vacation spot, 9.4 hectares, where you can choose to do nothing at all, like looking up at the sky from a sunken lounge at the end of a 25-meter-long pool, or you can do everything, drink, party, or relish a menu curated from a chef’s cherished memories of growing up somewhere between the Asturias and the Basque country on the Bay of Biscay in Spain.

Behind the architectural feat, called “Lava Rock,” is London-trained architect and visual artist Carlo Calma, who says he did it, inspired by Taal Volcano, as a tribute to his father, the civil engineer and contractor Pabling Calma. Mimicking the flow of lava, organic with wood, clear glass, odd shapes, stonework, and soft tones, it is a superstructure made of five parts, including the private family villas, connected only to the main threesided structure, the four-story main dining hall, by the roof, a feat of engineering cascading down to the ground at key points. Only two floors in the main dining hall is accessible to the public. The upper floors are reserved for family use.

At the heart of Lava Rock is fire, as embodied by el asador or the grill, the Spanish roasting house Asador Alfonso, which boasts of one of only two Horno Jumaco Maestro Castellano roasting ovens in Asia. Behind the destination dining concept, which seats up to 70 at the moment, although it’s just the first phase of this dream destination project, is Cantabria-born chef Chele Gonzalez.

On the menu, which he describes, in a nutshell, as very honest, is comfort food brought unpretentiously to the level of luxury, featuring select ingredients imported from Spain or surrounding areas in southwestern Europe. To Chele, who made the Philippines his home over 13 years ago, it is these ingredients, along with the Jumaco & Maestro oven, not to mention the kitchen crew, to be headed by executive chef Rodrigo Osorio, also from Spain, whose wife, Irene Fernandez, serves as maître d’, that make what Asador Alfonso has on offer for the discerning palate possible.

The anchovies in the bread-and-butter starter, for instance, Pan y Mantequilla, is from a special region in Spain and so are the boquerones in Matrimonio where, along with Cantabrian anchovies, they are piled on top of each other with woodfired red peppers. The seasonal asparagus in the snack set Esparrago y Caviar, dressed in creamy celeriac toffee, on the other hand, is brought in from Navarra while the deep-sea prawns Carabineros or scarlet shrimp have been harvested from the Eastern Atlantic or the Mediterranean Sea.

A slow-roasted suckling lamb, free range and exclusively milkfed, is the main dish of the moment. Called Lechazo, it comes already drenched in its own jus, but with stewed potatoes, a sherry-drizzled salad of greens, and more of the jus to pour over it. The crispy skin, to me, is the best part.

The dessert is a lovely memory, Flan de Teresa, a vanilla flan soaked in caramel sauce. Adapted from a family recipe cherished by Chele’s mother, it does punctuate the meal with the luxury of comforting memories.