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USD $1 ā‚± 56.28 0.0000 March 27, 2024
March 26, 2024
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3D Lotto 9PM
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Neil’s Kitchen Alabang: A Southern Gem Deconstructs and Reinvents Filipino Favorites

From its crisp Greek-white facade and quirky interior, one will not assume Chef Neil Ramos' restaurant serves Filipino fare. And deliciously surprised you will be when creative reconstructions of sinigang, kare-kare, and puto bumbong begin to arrive on your table.

From its crisp Greek-white facade and quirky interior, one will not assume Chef Neil Ramos' restaurant serves Filipino fare. And deliciously surprised you will be, when creative reconstructions of sinigang, kare-kare, and puto bumbong begin to arrive on your table.

A Southern Wonderland

The first time experiencing the joy of Neil's Kitchen is like putting yourself in the place of Alice, about to head down through a rabbit hole to discover Wonderland. Make that a very hungry Alice, opening a yellow doorway to step inside a restaurant that makes you curiouser and curiouser just by looking around — a chair is hung on the wall, and along with it, empty frames, books, cages. 'Proceed upstairs for your gastronomical treat,' a sign beckons, as you climb the narrow wooden staircase that spirals up to the second floor.

 

Upstairs, walls are plastered with quotes that true foodies will love, whetting appetites for the feast that is to come. At the farther end of the second level, a bookstore surrounds a long table. Pops of yellow here and there, mason jars hanging from the ceiling re-purposed as ceiling lamps, mismatched chairs–then a quote to make you chuckle: "I enjoy long romantic walks to the fridge." And once you look through their menu, you discover a list of Filipino dishes that are as playful as the restaurant's ambiance.

 
 

Chef Neil Ramos seems to have appeared magically out of nowhere, opening this restaurant in January, to the delight of diners wanting a different kind of experience. But the chef has been around–seven years in fact–in the catering business, and prior to that, ran a bakery. He also has an events place in Silang which serves as venue for many weddings. Chef Neil explains that their frequent need to have space for food tastings they schedule with clients led to the eventual opening of their very first restaurant, located in Westgate, Alabang. Why not open a restaurant that showcases the best that their catering business has to offer, he asked himself.

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Chef Neil Ramos

'Most of the stuff you see here are our customer favorites — there's chicken barbecue, fried chicken, grilled pork belly. The sinigang paella became a later on favorite,' Ramos explains. The food concept for Neil's Kitchen was then finalized, and skewed to highlight a Filipino-centric menu. 'Originally, we were thinking of putting up comfort food. But as we got serious in coming up with food, when you say comfort food, normally for us–it's Filipino. We're Filipino. Then my wife was telling me, why don't you present the food in such a way that it's how you would eat them?' And that is what customers will get when they order their favorites from this restaurant — Filipino food the way the chef himself prefers to eat them at home, which are first taste-tested and approved by his important critics: family.

Fun Filipino Food

Lunch begins with Tokwa't Baboy (P250), and already it becomes promising. It arrives in big chunks, a mountain of fried cubed tofu that matches the generous serving of pork. It's saucy, the sweet pulling just a little stronger than the sour, and all the full-on flavors and textures can easily make you crave for rice. "We also came up with a Tokwa't Chicken, since some people are looking for a healthier alternative, some would lessen the pork and double up on the tofu," the chef tells me. The poultry counterpart is studded with liver, gizzard, and tail — something offal lovers will enjoy.

Tokwa't Baboy

Next to arrive to our table is their showcase dish, one that I've been dreaming of tasting ever since it became highly Instagrammed: Sinigang Paella with Grilled Pork Belly (P350). "I'm kinda weird, I have certain partners with food, pairings," Chef Neil begins. "Before I came up with this paella, what I'd do is get my rice and make it swim in the sinigang soup. But then I'd have to eat it with grilled pork belly. In the catering, we do a lot of international cuisine, and a popular item is always our Paella Valenciana. So I just toyed with the idea, why not make it Pinoy?" The chef and I share the same habit of dumping in rice into our cup of sour broth, but pairing it with smokey, grilled pork was a first for me–and it works wonderfully.

Sinigang Paella with Grilled Pork Belly
 

The liempo's charred characteristic plays off well with every morsel of sinigang paella, soaking with flavor. I have this conditional relationship with rice wherein I decide to only consume more of it, only if it is brimming with flavor (i.e., paella, risotto, sushi rice). Neil's sinigang paella to my tastebuds was like an early birthday present, gift-wrapped and tied up with a silk ribbon. I just had to get more and more of that paella and liempo combination, as it tasted like a delicious reward after a long drive to Alabang.

Another paella to be praised is the Bagoong Paella with Kare-Kare (P395), which mixes the obligatory bagoong sauce for the kare-kare with the rice, each spoonful having enough saline to match the saucy bowl of kare-kare. "And this is how I would eat my kare kare–boneless na, so you just have to mix everything in and eat," shares the chef. But as my love for sinigang is everlasting, I find myself getting seconds of the sinigang paella, while I see my mother getting more servings of the kare-kare.

Bagoong Paella with Kare-Kare
 

And when I spy another sinigang dish on their menu, the Sinigang Noodle Soup (P325) in their merienda specials, I knew I just had to try it. "This is merienda size?!" I ask the server, as they bring me a huge bowl of soup. It looked like a heavyweight ramen, and if it were an afternoon snack, maybe for one customer who skipped eating lunch. I pick up my spoon so I can tinker around the bowl, and proceeded to hunt down the noodles — every time I'd lift my spoon, it would reveal even more chunks of meat. "This one, panlaban natin sa ramen," the chef says, "the pork is chashu style and cooked in sinigang broth for a long time, and then grilled." I think I may have found a sinigang magician in Chef Neil, as he expertly pulls tricks here and there with the paella and now the noodle soup so wonderfully, all I can do is to happily eat everything and lick my plate (and bowl) clean.

Sinigang Noodle Soup
 

"I've been eating these weird pairings for a long time, even the poached salmon — I eat it with garlic fried rice," Chef Neil explains, about his other popular dish, Poached Salmon in Vinegar and Garlic (Paksiw) (P695). "Then the sauce of the paksiw trickles down on the rice. I just thought of paksiw na bangus belly, but when I was conceptualizing for the restaurant, and we decided to uplift and upgrade certain ingredients for certain types of Filipino food." Replacing the milkfish belly is another fatty fish, and it is an excellent uplifting of a traditional dish simmered in vinegar. The "pinasosyal na paksiw" is served like a donburi, a big bowl of rice topped with the salmon paksiw, egg, and thinly sliced pickled ginger. Break the egg, slice the salmon, and mix everything in like a bibimbap, and you will discover so much happiness in a bowl.

Poached Salmon in Vinegar and Garlic (Paksiw)
 

Already satisfied with this brand of fun Filipino food that Neil's Kitchen is known for, we are in an even more playful treat when two desserts arrive: the Fried Suman, Mangga & Chocnut (P250) and Puto Bungbong with Buco Jelly and Toasted Coconut (P250). Oohs and ahhs commenced, followed right after by a quick photoshoot because they were just so beautiful not to Instagram. At Neil's Kitchen, I realized, devouring with your eyes is as delicious as whetting your appetite with their food.

Fried Suman, Mangga & Chocnut

Chef Neil's take on the classic mangga't suman combination is again, his personal preference when eating the dish. "When I eat suman, I have the suman fried in butter, then I put in sugar. I never eat the suman straight from its wrapper." The mango and suman Pinoy merienda a la Neil Ramos is added with another perennial favorite, chocnut, that serves as a crumbled topping. The slice of mango is replaced by a luscious block of mango jelly, made from scratch by using pureed mango. "It takes a lot of mangoes just to create a block, so you can say it's like double mango," says the chef. The double mango block, with every spoonful of fried suman with crumbled chocnut was so comforting, I may just have found my new way of eating mangga't suman, and it's all the way in this restaurant.

Found all the way in this restaurant, too, is the sexiest thing ever to happen to puto bumbong. Neil's Kitchen serves it on a shallow bowl, four pieces of the most velvety smooth purple sticky rice swimming in butter. On top of the puto bumbong, buco jelly. And on top of that, a disc of toasted coconut. "Wow," exclaim to myself, or maybe to the heavens, as I took a big spoonful, making sure I have the proper ratio of butter-puto bumbong-buco-coconut in one fell swoop. "Wow," I exclaim again, this time to the chef. He laughs, and explains that this particular dessert was the most difficult to master, as puto bumbong is his all time favorite kakanin. "I didn't want to touch it too much, for me I am a puto bumbong purist. And when I eat it, I eat three orders, like twelve pieces in one plate," he shares, "and I load it with butter and sugar and coconut." For the restaurant, he decided to reinvent it with fresh buco, cooked first to make it last longer, then gelatinized it with coco cream. What you get is a buttery sticky rice dish with three kinds of buco on top: buco jelly that is torched before being served, and a disc with two kinds of coconut–toasted coconut and freshly grated coconut, sweetened with muscovado sugar. A stunning, sweet sensation of textures and flavors.

Puto Bungbong with Buco Jelly and Toasted Coconut
 

Armed with a menu boasting of sinigang paella that was an instant sensation, beautifully plated desserts as luscious as they are photogenic, and with more inspired dishes to come (entrees, a sandwich line, and a really wicked yet risky take on the classic halo-halo that I am eager to try soon), Neil's Kitchen truly is a southern gem, a restaurant that gives customers enough reason to drive all the way to Alabang. "I like the description that I am getting about my food," Chef Neil shares with a smile, "to simplify it, what I did was I deconstructed and reconstructed, without sacrificing the essence of the food." What a delicious wonderland it is to take a gastronomical trip in his restaurant and I hope the chef's creative spark burns even brighter, to introduce more plates of flavors and ingredients that marry the familiar and the novel in one's palate.

Neil's Kitchen is located beside Bugsy's in Westgate Filinvest, Alabang, Muntinlupa. The restaurant is open daily from 11am to 9pm. E-mail neils.kitchen@yahoo.com for your catering inquiries. Like their Facebook page (/neilskitchen.bonellis) and follow on Instagram (@neilskitchen).

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