Sault stirs the soul, not just your palate
Pam Begre is a restaurateur, sommelier, hotelier, and retailer. But regardless of where she finds herself in, her purpose has always been bigger than the product itself.
Her latest project Restaurant Sault is another deliberate example of her values. “I really want to cultivate opportunities for people. That’s why I’m in hospitality,” she says over dinner one night at the open Brutalist space on the fourth floor of YL Holdings Building in Legazpi Village.
Formerly a law office on one side and a water treatment supplier on the other, Pam and her husband Geronimo “Begs” Begre—both of whom confess to an admitted itch to constantly create and build—decided to take over the entire floor and polish it just enough to get that bare-bones and utilitarian yet almost contemporary art gallery-like vibe.
“And when I saw the trees, I kept looking at them. They spoke to me,” she says. “We tore down the partitions, made it open space. It all just came together.”
If there’s anyone who can turn 400 square meters of expanse and capitalize on its potential for the community, it’s Pam.
At Sault, she serves scale with intimacy, modularity within vastness. The process is akin to creating a new home, too. “A lot of the things you see here are ‘Puwede ba ‘to’ and then my husband would implement it,” she laughs.
With exposed concrete as the canvas, Pam draws from the handmade characters of furnishings and bespoke elements to reinforce Sault’s soul: custom pedestal tables from Ren Marble with a Jose Solon Perfecto sculpture atop, Studio Yakal lights, butter knives found at Legazpi Market, cutlery rests from Begs’ own yard. The surrounding veil of trees and natural light meanwhile project balance and a little spectacle. And like the aged metal door, the design experience is as if it’s been sea-salted, oxidized after being left on the shore.
Fixated on the seasons
Yet what also took shape behind the silent swagger of Sault is Pam’s defiant belief in investing in your own city—no matter how hard, heartbreaking, and heavy the circumstances may be.
Pam’s poise reminded me of a post I came across on TikTok weeks ago from Rhea and Nick, “a late 20s couple who left their corporate life in NYC for a year long trip around the world.” In the video, Rhea realizes that you don’t need to travel to live a full life. That despite the nomadic life they’ve hurled themselves into, it’s only made them appreciate people who stay.
“It’s the people who stay that build the very places we want to travel to. People who stay are the reason there’s a long-standing bakery that you love or a neighborhood with its own sense of identity. They build culture. They preserve the charm… It’s so easy to look at our own hometowns and realities and see them as something to escape from rather than invest in.”
And while it’s a perspective that by no means discourages travel or refuses to acknowledge the privilege of certain demographics, staying and investing in the community like Pam shifts the fabric and collective reality of everyone in the city.
Like Sault, whose name is derived from “the soul of the earth,” Pam’s betting, again, on the soul of Manila. After Celera, Parallel, and Mesy Club, Pam is flexing her chameleonic vision again, creating different spaces for many types of guests—a season-driven European restaurant, a “freaqy” neighborhood lounge, and a soon-to-open bottle shop.
So even if the brief is Brutalist, Sault essentially is the opposite. Pam, her husband Begs, and the star-studded lineup that includes executive chef Raph Dimarucut (a Metiz and Deli by Chele alum), sommelier Ria Quintana, and the rest of the youthful team all give Sault a necessary warmth. The very floor Sault occupies already has an inherent soul, they all just made it visible.
A poetic vision of soulful seasonality
The restaurant also ushers in a new era for Dimarucut, whose impressive resume includes three years at Metiz as well as brief periods working under Eric Vildgaard at three Michelin star Restaurant Jordnær in Gentofte, Copenhagen and Matthew Kammerer at Harbor House Inn in Elk, California.
His vision puts freedom at the heart of their approach. “What we call ‘season-driven European’ is our specific flavor palate and we don’t want to limit ourselves to the possibilities of exploring more off the beaten path,” he says.
The menu is neither overly esoteric nor completely expected. “It’s food that is borderless in essence but is very distinctly European,” summarizes Dimarucut. It may draw on their Nordic influence and Italian training but the outcome is fantastically their own and fabulously Filipino, sourcing from “local purveyors such as Twinkle Floro, Sinaya Seafood, Teraoka Farms, Kai Farms, Mouldy Blooms, and a lot from Cubao Farmer’s Market,” shares Dimarucut.
Together with his team, Dimarucut summons the best of the Philippines and applies the lessons gleaned from his culinary globetrotting, churning out, for example, the familiar pleasures of smoked mussels with a little sweet, savory, and sophisticated jolt from the snap peas mussel foam.
Between the mushroom ragu filling, jus with chicken liver mousse, and olive cream, the lazy ravioli emerges as one of the hardest working plates on the menu. But his breathtaking performances are a couple of big plates layered with emulsions, jus, oils, and sauces traveling from the crunchy tip of the octopus tentacle up its tender arm (complemented by a roasted yeast emulsion) and onto the other main of aged duck breast, burnished and juicy, next to a grilled salad and under a gleaming walnut emulsion.
“We use a lot of sauce because sauce is flavor,” explains Dimarucut who admits becoming passionate about complexity and layers during his time under Metiz’s Stephan Duhesme and Arlo Gregorio. “In my kitchen, the saucier is king. Anyone can cook a good piece of meat but the sauce is a very difficult thing to master.”
Transcending the old ways
Of course, what he brings to the table isn’t limited to guest satisfaction, Dimarucut also aims to make room for a healthy kitchen. Leading a team of 23 people, the soft-spoken chef eschews the hellish fury that’s sometimes beleaguered previous kitchens and instead caresses the environment with enough resolve to create clear boundaries.
“Raph’s mission is he wants to open the healthiest kitchen… a sound work environment,” says Pam. “I like that he’s driven and very talented. We’re all aligned in our purposes.”
So while Sault’s brand of cuisine is anchored by European seasonality, it isn’t far-fetched to think of it as an offshoot of soul food. Enclosed in Pam’s poignant project of substantially giving soul to the community, Dimarucut milks every drop of inspiration to create something that will endure long after the ipil-ipil trees surrounding the building have fallen.
“I believe the flavors speak for themselves sometimes,” he says. “Food tells a story that we ourselves cannot put into words.” And that’s practically giving your soul, isn’t it?
