From Batanes to Manila, with grace and love
Could the Grace Park and Fundacion Pacita collaboration be a reasonable entry point for many Filipinos’ aspirations to visit Batanes?
The short answer is yes.
And not just because you get a chance to win a four-day trip for two to Batanes and stay at Fundacion Pacita. The exploratory menu is enough to evoke the northernmost province of the Philippines in the heart of the capital.
“The dishes I chose were the ones I knew were going to smell like Batanes,” says Patsy Abad, Fundacion Pacita’s Café du Tukon founder and niece of the late artist Pacita Abad. “When they served me the soup during the tasting, I was like, ‘this really smells like Batanes.’ So basically, the ones I grew up with and that I enjoyed having with my family.”
The collaboration also feels driven by memory, nostalgia, legacy, and the idea of taking the past firmly into the present. In 2015, the late iconic chef Margarita Forés visited Batanes for a regional cuisine series with Abad that also became a kind of knowledge exchange in gastronomy.
Amado Forés was “looking back at memories” and one of the most vivid ones was his mom’s 10-day collaboration with Abad almost immediately after her Batanes trip. “My mom learned so much about Batanes cuisine and culture, and also my mom taught them how to make pasta al dente.”
At this moment, 2025 feels like 2015 again. Same feeling. Same energy and spirit. Transcending time and space, but with an experience reminiscent of Margarita’s time in the north, only this time, done according to Amado and Abad’s shared vision.
Into the known
Simply dubbed Re:gions Batanes, the collaboration’s result is a seven-piece collection that is just as sprawling as Batanes’ rolling hills. All five dishes, one dessert, and one drink are grounded in ingredients native to the roughly 18,000-strong province.
Despite the menu’s brevity, every dish is an expression of the unique and rich landscape of Batanes. The aromatic uved soup of banana corm (the thick underground stem), fish, and pork meatballs swimming in a warm, comforting ginger broth is a fitting start to encourage you to chart your own journey.
Crossing over to Italian territory are two pasta dishes that play up more Indigenous ingredients. A giant fragrant lemon called ducban is paired with a dried mahi-mahi (or arayu in the local vernacular) that tastes incredibly alive in a zesty, lemony, and creamy penne pasta. Abad says that they eat the ducban’s white crunchy part as a snack (dipped in vinegar and salt), which you can also try biting into with the slice hanging off the lovely tubho (native Ivatan fern) iced tea.
The puttanesca, meanwhile, is designed to highlight the yuyuno, Batanes’ version of bagoong, which is traditionally fermented in small jars. “It’s a little strong,” warns Abad, explaining its application into the fiery dish as an infusion into olive oil, giving the plate layers of earthy and oceanic brininess.
One of the menu highlights is the day-old hahay, or cured local needlefish, served with crab fat rice and egg. Think danggit but meatier—it’s an onslaught of punchy flavors together with the aligue and your-own-way egg. The menu also features luñis, the signature Ivatan dish resembling adobo but dry and cured in salt, the pork fat rendered, stored in its own lard, cooked to a crisp, and served with turmeric rice.
Luñis is also that one dish Forés thinks encapsulates the spirit of the collaboration. “It’s something that my mom would talk about quite often, the idea of storing it in lard… still making something delicious and resilient from the weather,” he says. That’s what I really like about it.”
AF Hospitality’s pastry chef Chico Orcine rounds out the menu with an abundant dessert plate of deep-fried sweet potato fritters topped with a delicious housemade tablea sorbetes.
Tap into the personal and authentic
As you get to the end, the menu doesn’t just deliver something exceptional to Manila’s diverse customer base. It’s also a clear examination of Ivatan cuisine’s place in Philippine food culture.
“I always say it’s really a cuisine born out of survival because the ingredients we use… or, if you’ve noticed, it’s all fermented, it’s all dried,” explains Abad. “It’s always thinking about what happens during the rainy season. So it’s preparedness in terms of the way we live.”
“I hate using the word resilience, but it’s really part of how resilient we are, because we are prepared for such things,” she adds, taking great pleasure in enjoying both her Kapampangan sawsawans at home and Batanes’ raw, fresh, and direct-from-the source approach.
Whether or not the dishes in this limited-time collaboration are fleeting or, like Batanes, survive to see another day as a regular part of Grace Park’s menu remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure—recreating a collaboration that is as deeply personal as the one 10 years ago, and with the same relatable warmth and respect for ingredients… that’s what puts Re:gions Batanes in the same tier as some of the best recent collaborations in the city.
‘Re:gions Batanes’ dishes are available at both Grace Park One Rockwell and Grace Park Araneta City from Sept. 1 to 30. For updates, follow @graceparkdining and @fundacionpacita on Instagram.
