Fresh from its restaurant blessing, Backyard Kitchen + Brew officially opens this week, eager to fill you with rustic, made-from-scratch honest food. Here's your first look inside the new QC restaurant and its must-try dishes–just how Chef Edward Bugia would cook for you, if he were to host a potluck or cookout in his very own backyard.
Now Open: Backyard Kitchen + Brew
Come Together
"This project is a year in the making, it's probably the longest conceptualized project I am part of," shares the chef. Their space in UP Town Center, nearly 200 square metres, excluding the outdoor area, makes this a really big project, but Ed believes there will be a market for what they are now offering. "It doesn't exist yet, but it used to," he shares. "Before in Katipunan, there were famous places here like Cantina, Tia Maria's, Blues, and a lot of other places. People would drink there, and then they all started closing down." A good watering hole in the neighborhood — serving good food and drink, where you can all come together with friends and kick back — is what they are now offering. "Now, it's high time we take the lead again," the chef, a true-blue Katipunan boy himself, says. "We want to revive the community with a nice watering hole with really good food, and still be family friendly."
Chef Edward Bugia
Chef Ed with some of the partners of Backyard Kitchen + Brew
No frills, no fuss, farm-to-table good food
At Backyard, one can expect rustic 'Chef Ed' food: that would be burgers as he has been feeding us lots of them at BRGR Project, influences on Filipino cuisine (his Pino roots), healthful salads (not vegetarian like Pipino, but still good greens!), and eggs on anything (comfort food cooking just like at Pi Breakfast and Pies). Think of this new restaurant as the chef's cohesive collection of everything he loves to cook and feed Manila foodies.
Inside Backyard: bringing the rustic casual outdoors, indoors
"It's a farm to table concept, meaning we source everything locally," Chef Ed explains. "We get everything locally, but sometimes it's hard to explain that to the customers—they can be like, 'Hey, as long as it's beef, I don't care where it comes from.' But we do, we care." He gets excited as I ask him how he conceptualized the menu for Backyard. "The food here, it's like my tour de force," he begins. "You have a burger here, a really good burger. We have very nice influences from Filipino cuisines. There are salads, and while they're not vegan, we respect our greens. And there's eggs everywhere, you can see Pi there. It's a combination of everything I love cooking, it's like my lovechild," he laughs.
On what really inspired him to conceptualize the menu of Backyard, the chef shares that it was jumpstarted by an evening where he had to cook for his friends. "I said it took me a year to make, but the nice part about this is, I only started really getting what to serve when I had a potluck with a bunch of my foodie friends — other chefs, food writers, food purveyors. So I was thinking, you know what? Our name is 'Backyard.' What would you serve if we had a potluck of foodies and chefs and friends in your backyard? And that's how I approached the concept. So we're going to have really good ribs, really nice chargrilled burgers… I am just so excited to feed everyone."
Tinapa and Quinoa Salad with Honey Balsamic Dressing
For requsite crisp and fresh greens, Backyard offers a couple of Salads (P255 each): Fried Chicken Salad with Sriracha Lime Vinaigrette and Tinapa and Quinoa Salad with Honey Balsamic Dressing. The tinapa and quinoa, drizzled with honey balsamic dressing, is a bowl full of color and texture: tinapa flakes, salted egg, quinoa, cherry tomatoes, mixed greens, kale, alfalfa sprouts, pickled onions. The tinapa and itlog na pula, a great Pinoy breakfast combo, is made crisp and fresh by the chef by serving it as a salad; you have in every forkful a balance of acid, saltiness, earthiness, crunch, and crisp.
They also have soups on their menu like Papaya Coconut Soup (P185) and Baked Potato Soup (P165), the one that intruigued me most is the Sinigang na Batchoy (P195) made with egg noodles, pork offal, egg, kamias broth, fish paste. It was not available during my visit, so I am definitely trooping to the north once more (hopefully with less traffic than this Christmas season) to order it, as Chef Ed's interpretations of local cuisine in Pino always satisfies my palate.
Ciabatta Toasts
Something different to pair with your brews and cocktails would definitely be Backyard's Ciabatta Toasts that you can order in 2 pieces (P255) or 4 pieces (P495). Currently, they are serving it in two flavors: Ciabatta with Whipped Bone Marrow and Pulled Pork, and Ciabatta with Local Duck Pate and Duck Flakes. While the BBQ pulled pork toast–made devilish with a brush of melted whipped bone marrow (!) on the bread–is quite the classic sandwich filling, it was the toast decked with local duck flakes that won me over, every mouthful having a kick of heat with the jalapeno slices, and tamed by a homemade guava jam topping–a delicious jam that tastes like my childhood (toasted pandesal and guava jam!). I hope they will introduce the jam in more dishes, perhaps a fruity dessert?
Ciabatta with Whipped Bone Marrow and Pulled Pork, and Ciabatta with Local Duck Pate and Duck Flakes
Another no-fail food when it comes to bringing people together is pizza, and Backyard has four flavors to choose from, serving them in Garlic Flatbreads. "Pizzas are a crowd pleaser, everyone likes a pizza," Chef Ed shares. "Also, I am all about sharing. It's not like before when I was young that I wanted everything was mine–all my concepts, all my recipes. Now, one of my chefs here said, 'Chef, I have a really good naan bread recipe, what can we do with it?' I said we're not Mediterranean, anong gagawin ko dyan? But he said, 'No chef, masarap siya.' And so we had it, tasted it, and I said, 'May potential 'yan. Can you do a garlic naan?' He made a garlic naan, and I said, let's use that! Let's turn it into a pizza. So that's how it was invented."
Salted Egg Chicken Skin Garlic Flatbread
And my, how their crisp, thin slices of garlic flatbread pizzas are addicting. True enough, the bread itself is flavorful, with the garlic shining in every bite through and through. But as Salted Egg Chicken Skin (P255) pizza? It was a playful and indulgent treat to eat. The perfectly baked garlic naan–thin, crisp and warm–becomes a delicious terrain of delicious foodstuff we enjoy eating individually: there's egg in the middle, and surrounding it, crispy chicken skin, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh ricotta. My palate usually longs for the tomato sauce of a thin crust pizza, but the velvety, slightly chalky texture of the salted egg sauce, subtly tart and salty, was a delightful change in tone for a unique pizza experience. Other flavors available are Longganisa and Peppers (P255), Duck Flakes and Sriracha (P255), and 4 Cheese and Truffle (P275).
You can also sink your teeth into a couple of sandwiches: Lobster and Prawn Roll (P325) and Backyard Burger (P285). The chef has a burger following, as he's been serving designer 'DIY' burgers at BRGR The Burger Project for years. "My partners, most of them are fans of BRGR," Chef Ed begins. "Some of them were actually endorsers for BRGR of the Month. So they said that we had to have a burger here, but to tweak the recipe, of course." In Backyard, the chef describes their burger as an umami bomb, loaded with homemade sriracha ketchup, parmesan crisp, and served with arugula. My burger, a 100% brisket and chuck pattie served in buttered brioche buns, was cooked perfectly, juicy still, and remaining deliciously pink in the middle, that all the other add-ons (cheddar, parmesan crisp, arugula, onions, tomatoes, roasted garlic mayo, sriracha ketchup) served as willing and able accompaniments of flavors and textures in every mouthful.
Backyard Burger
"I'll serve you my nose to tail pasta, I'm so proud of this one," the chef's eyes light up as the Nose to Tail Fettucini (all the good stuff!) (P275) was being brought to our table. While I take photos of it, he pipes in, "Hey, better eat it while it's still warm!"
Nose to Tail Fettucini (all the good stuff!)
And that, I did, and deeply enjoyed. 'Nose to tail' here refers to all the meaty goodness one might typically overlook to eat, loaded on the pasta–a trio of pork, beef and chicken. "This is so me," Chef Ed shares, "it's something I used to teach my students in culinary school. It's homemade pasta, pressing a really nice pasta is really an art for me. You get the bite just right, but it's really hard to get it al dente when it's fresh. The flavors here are very deep, we braise this for about four hours. It's all the good stuff from all the animals. It's very homey."
It's cool if you're a carnivore for steak, burgers, and sausages; but I recommend meatloving foodies to step up their carnivore cravings by devouring offal and innards–cooked properly, of course. The chef's interpretation of a nose to tail pasta is such a joy to eat: chicken liver, ox tripe, beef brisket, and pork cheek is what comprises the meaty medley. To bring everything together, homemade, home-rolled fettucine, impressively al dente for a handmade pasta, is weaved onto the dish. Holdling everything in place is a rich tomato sauce, with just a touch of cream.
Waffle Breaded Fried Chicken
Another dish that sends us down home the comfort food category is fried chicken, and Backyard has a simple yet stunning take on this. "I was thinking, what would happen if I got waffle batter, take out the liquids, but still retain the waffle taste, and that's what you bread the chicken with?" the chef shares.
The Waffle Breaded Fried Chicken (P305) is waffle-breaded fried chicken thighs, brined first to get that juicy, tender meat game going on. It's topped with maple butter, and comes with some sauteed kale; sriracha ketchup replaces the typical gravy sauce. It also comes with two ciabatta toasts that are brushed with whipped roasted bone marrow–imagine deadly, delicious bone marrow transformed into spreadable whipped butter. While I was tempted to order some rice (fried chicken, rice, and ketchup is a no-fail trio!), the crisp toast with just a hint of bone marrow is a great carb option to pair with the juicy chicken.
Other mains available are Uni Carbonara (P275), Beef Belly with Barley (P325), and Slow Roasted Pork Belly (P275).
Backyard currently offers two desserts, both served warm, gooey, and a la mode–the perfect formula to a decadent, sweet ending. Their Pizzookie (P385, good for sharing) is baked to order, and takes about 8 to 10 minutes to make but definitely is worth waiting for. It's a freshly baked chewy chocolate chip cookie with oatmeal rendered as fine as flour, topped with rock salt and scoops of mantecado ice cream. It's crusty and toasty on the edges, and deliriously soft and gooey in the center.
Pizzookie
And then there's the KitKat Brownie (P185), the popular wafer treat glued together by sticky, chewy, and sweet brownie. A forkful of the warm gooey brownie, paired with a spoonful of mantecado ice cream, dances in sugary glee all around your tastebuds, making you feel like a kid again and forgetting to watch your diet (if you were even planning on counting calories when dining at Backyard).
KitKat Brownie
Backyard Kitchen + Brew is open daily, 11am till late, at the 2nd floor, Phase 2, of UP Town Center (above Recovery Food) in Katipunan. Now on its soft opening operations, it is currently serving its 'first phase' menu of entrees and family meals for sharing. Watch out for their bar chow and cocktail menu, set to roll out by next week. For more information, call (0999)366-6921, Like Backyard on Facebook (/BackyardManila), follow on Twitter and Instagram (@Backyard_MNL).
