First Taste: Tadhana Manila Is Chef Frances Tariga’s Long-Awaited Homecoming

Tadhana is a Filipino word that means fate or destiny, which is either a heavy thing to name a restaurant after or exactly the right one. Sitting through Chef Frances Tariga’s 14-course opening menu in Manila this month, it feels like the latter.

Tariga’s path back to Manila is, by any measure, a circuitous one. Born and raised in the city, she left for Dubai after culinary school, spent a year at the world’s first seven-star hotel, then moved into the private kitchen of the UAE royal family, traveling the world as their chef. From there came New York, first as private chef to Dubai’s U.N. ambassador, cooking royal events at the Waldorf Astoria, the Metropolitan Club, and The Plaza, then into the volume restaurants of the Meatpacking District: Buddakan, Catch, Megu.

Along the way she competed on “Chopped,” “Beat Bobby Flay,” “Top Chef,” and most recently won Morimoto’s “Sushi Master.” She built a vegan program for an entire hospitality group, opened four concepts as culinary director, and somewhere in all of it, started Tadhana in New York—a Filipino tasting menu that found its audience far from home. This month, she opens the Manila chapter.

The 14-course menu reads like an index of Filipino ingredients pushed to see how far they’ll go. From the get-go, I thoroughly enjoyed the Binatog (in the form a small tart) and Pa-Kwan amuse bouche (made to look like a little cartoon mushroom), both an ode to Tariga’s vegan wife. Kwek kwek—the beloved street food of battered quail eggs—arrives as an annatto tee cup with smoked ikura and bagsik dust, its spirit intact, its execution immaculate. Ensalada is an homage to ensaladang talong, a vegetal, savory bite sandwiched between crimped spiced lavash.

Sinuglaw becomes a frame for wagyu, tomato nata, and egg yolk jam. Sinigang sa bayabas trades the usual souring agents for batuan, with maya maya and whipped gabi absorbing the broth’s particular tartness.

The Ginat-an course is a perfectly balanced coconut custard, seafood velouté, and squash. It’s a comforting bowl, and then some, what with chunks of blue crab and kaluga caviar.

Tariga’s laminated cornbread, appearing midway the service, is something Tadhana could sell off-menu. Tocilog is translated as a squab dish (of course the sweet-salty tandem works, and the squab was perfectly cooked) with silog furikake and pinakurat kosho. The Inihaw at Gulay course sealed the deal for me: slices of Iberico secreto over pickled pakbet vegetables, banana mole, and a hit of wasabi.

This is what won me over: Filipinos who grew up on the dishes she references don’t make for an easy audience, and Tariga knows it. She doesn’t try to outwit the memory—she honors it, but then moves it forward by very calculated degrees (no gimmicks) and with the best ingredients because, why be boring? (“Why use any pork cut when I can use Iberico secreto?” she says.) But that restraint in execution, which is what I imagine is a difficult thing to pull off when showing off is part of the trade, balanced by the generosity in the use of ingredients and an exuberance through the dining room is the most telling thing about her as a cook. She is cooking ingredients she loves, from a country she loves, with the full weight of a career spent cooking almost everything else. (One small misfire: the faux grass lining the basket of the gorgeous and delicious petit fours reads as the kind of decorative gesture the rest of the meal has no need for. Everything else trusts the food to carry itself. It does.)

There are moments through the opening tasting menu at Tadhana Manila when Tariga appears at the table to present a course with ceremony but also to crack a joke. The room is white-tablecloth, the service solicitous but warm, the glassware serious—and she is laughing. And us all, along with her. It sets the tone for what Tadhana actually is: a homecoming that has been a long time coming, and one its chef is visibly delighted to be having. So are we.

Tadhana is located at 389 Jupiter St., Makati 1209, at Le Reserve, the top floor of the Levanto Building. For reservations, click here.

Photos by Kim Santos