Inayà Series: Chef friends cooking together
It’s not the first time that Ross Magnaye of Melbourne restaurant Serai and Thirdy Dolatre and Kevin Navoa of Hapag have cooked in a kitchen together. Even so, the team, which served multiple courses to a total of 90 guests over lunch and dinner in Ayà, was still noteworthy and memorable.
“This is my fourth collaboration with the Hapag boys,” says Davao-born Australian chef Magnaye. “We did try to collaborate before the COVID lockdowns happened, but this one is even more special because I now have Serai (opened June 2022) and the guys have a new space at Balmori Suites and a new concept upstairs, Ayà (opened just this year). It is super special because it’s in my home country, the Philippines.”
It also came as the much anticipated maiden event of the Inayà Series, a string of chef collaborations to be held in either Hapag or Ayà. The next is scheduled in November, featuring August Restaurant, considered the top restaurant not just in Jakarta but the whole of Indonesia, according to Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024 list.
The friendship among the chefs goes way back. “I met Ross in Dewakan in 2016, and we’ve been friends since then,” says Navoa. “At this point, cooking together is our excuse to see each other. We’ve done this together outside Manila, and it makes sense to finally do it back home. Ross is set to visit his family in Davao and will make a detour just to come and cook with us and see what Manila is like now.”
Seamless menu
They know each other’s food all too well, such that it took no time for them to create the menu. “We wanted to make dishes for a super fun collaboration with no frills, keeping everything fun, relaxed and easygoing. It was easy making our menu. It took all of five minutes. Nav and Thirdy know my style of food and my flavors. We have great synergy,” says Magnaye.
“We thought about dishes we had already done together and tried to make them more in the style of Serai and Ayà, using a lot of local ingredients. We tried to make both styles shine—Ayà is pretty, light and delicious, while Serai is fiery, bold and rich.”
The end result was a pretty seamless menu, showcasing Filipino flavors in a unique, different light.
The first course, the McScallop, is a Serai signature dish that was also hailed as Australia TimeOut Magazine’s Dish of the Year for 2022. A Red Horse-battered Hokkaido scallop was slathered with a crab fat aioli, topped with atsara, then sandwiched in between bonete buns.
It was accompanied by another solid snack in the form of a sweet potato hash brown cloaked in a cashew sauce, then crowned with a smoked and cured Margra lamb kiniing.
Naughty and rich
A pair of small plates followed, both of which hit it out of the park: lightly poached shrimps in pinakurat namjim cradled in either saba banana chips or chicharon; and yellowfin tuna lubricated with pares jus, smoked latik bone marrow, and lasuna chimichurri on pan de kalinga.
Then came the heartier fare, which guests per table got to enjoy family-style. A tender-as-butter grilled octopus with longganisa sauce, Rangers Valley Black Tyde cube roll with spicy piyanggang jus and pineapple palapa and tocino-glazed cabbage wedge with gamet fruitcake. It acted as worthy viand next to a bowl of farmer’s herb rice and burong mangga and La Trinidad strawberries.
“As for the dessert, I wanted to make it super naughty and rich. When you eat it, you would say, F**k! That’s epic!,” claims Magnaye.
“I have always had a fascination with doing desserts with caviar because it’s so bougie. My initial idea was to do a leche flan, but Thirdy suggested a maja blanca instead. I said, great, let’s do it with a cheesy mornay, a brown butter ice cream, which we serve at Serai a lot, and of course, Kaluga caviar.”
Diners who opted for a wine pairing got to enjoy the meal with Champagne Jean Vesselle Brut Reserve, Mosel Clean Slate 2021 Riesling, Calvez Bobinet “Piak!” Rouge 2023, and a coconut Negroni with lambanog.
Hapag and Aya are at the 7/F The Balmori Suites, Hidalgo Drive, Rockwell Center, Makati; tel. +63917-8885757.
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