A memorable Singaporean-Filipino tasting menu
Jordy Navarra of Toyo Eatery, hailed as the best restaurant in the Philippines for five consecutive years and running, and LG Han, whose Labyrinth restaurant in Singapore deservedly bagged a Michelin star, have been good friends for close to a decade now. Their solid friendship is not solely built on the fact that they’re both restaurateurs, but also on how they operate their businesses with the same values—a shared passion for representing their respective countries, a deliberate and genuine intent to involve the community, and a real commitment to sustainable sourcing.
It just makes perfect sense to have them doing collaborations because their principles are in sync. They recognize this too, and that’s why they have cooked together a total of 10 times all over Asia, including in Singapore, Taiwan, Bangkok, and Hong Kong.
Their most recent collaboration, held in Manila Sept. 14, was not like the previous ones, they both admit. And it’s because another chef, who also espouses the same principles in food, joined the duo.
“This was most special because we cooked with JP Cruz, not as my sous chef, but JP with his own ideas, technique, and style,” says Navarra. “We were able to collaborate on ideas that we’ve been talking about since the beginning. LG has been one of the chefs who takes a similar approach as us, where he’s as passionate about Singaporean cuisine and heritage, the same way we are about Filipino food and culture.”
Apart from this, the Labyrinth team, which has been to Manila six times for gastronomic events, also did two collaborations in a single day. “Our Har Har Chicken collaboration with Toyo offered a fun, casual, and accessible dining experience, which echoes Jordy’s ethos that good food can be accessible to everyone in an informal setting,” says Han.
They started getting orders for their sandwich made of fried prawn paste chicken thigh (har cheong gai), lettuce, tomatoes, and sriracha mayo-slathered Panaderya Toyo leche pan bun at 1 p.m., and sold out all 120 units in just a few hours.
Impressive repertoire
By 8 p.m., the three chefs were ready to roll out their eight-course dinner, more than half of which was collaborative creations. The meal started with three small bites: an oyster tortang talong with banana catsup, a deep-flavored chicken broth with spring onions, and the Ramly burger, a reimagined take on the classic Malaysian street food composed of beef tartare wrapped in a delicate egg crepe, wedged in a tomato meringue “burger bun.”
It was followed by a fun and interactive for-sharing dish in the form of a yusheng-kinilaw hybrid. The traditional Chinese fish salad tossed during Chinese New Year included Inatô’s yellowtail fish with local vegetables, peanuts, sansho pepper, and Labyrinth-style dressing with plum sauce, honey, peanut oil, sesame oil, and grilled pork cheek, which also came from the Inatô kitchen.
There was a fruit salad with fried battered prawns, nata de coco, a fishball and a mango-kiat-kiat sauce, as well as a bowl of peanut and cashew kare-kare dip with bagoong seasoned with dried scallops. It came with a small array of savories such as pork satay, burong mangga, pork tongue wrapped in soybean, and a pechay roll stuffed with eggplant and kamangeg, all ready to be dunked in the rich copper-hued sauce.
The impressive repertoire continued with a wedge of black cod cloaked with a tamarillo relish and batitis; buntaa made with local blue swimmer crab accessorized with Labyrinth’s heritage chili crab sauce and crispies; and a whimsical take on the popular Hainanese chicken. It was presented as a chicken rice donabe with local ginger and shio kombu, cooked with tinawon rice, served with local chicken breast stuffed with chicken farce, achar “taco,” and a trio of grandma’s sauces by Han. It came with Inatô’s chicken tsukune skewer and Toyo’s clam soup.
The meal was capped off with a cereal and salted egg prawn dessert, an inventive take on the iconic Singaporean cereal prawn dish. It was complemented with caramelized oatmeal ice cream spiked with a 20-year-old Shaoxing wine, warabi mochi, goji berries soaked in an eight-year-old Shaoxing wine, salted egg espuma, and Labyrinth’s branded cereal box filled with puffed rice, sakura ebi and curry leaves, and stir-fried oats.
“The success of this collaboration can be attributed to our strong friendships and previous collaborative experiences,” says LG. “Collaborating with JP and Jordy on a shared menu was a truly enriching experience. The intimate setting of Inatô allowed me to personally interact with guests and introduce them to our dishes—how Singaporean and Philippine cultures can cross sensibly and be even more delicious when put together!”
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