At Brasa Martínez, Chef Luis Martínez Finally Steps Into the Fire

Chef Luis Martínez has had the idea for Brasa Martínez for a while now. “I’ve been trying to open this place for at least six years,” he says. “I knew that I was not ready to open it just yet.”

The admission helps explain why Brasa feels distinct from the concepts that established Martínez’s name in the Philippines: Alma in Siargao, where its relaxed Spanish cooking took shape close to the island’s fishermen and produce before later finding a second home in Poblacion; Terraza Martínez, which brought the sensibility of Alma into a more polished BGC setting; and La Tapería Martínez, which shifted the focus toward tapas, wine, and Spain’s more convivial drinking culture.

Brasa moves beyond such familiar expressions, placing charcoal, seafood, and carefully sourced meats at the center of a decidedly more personal restaurant. “I’m totally out of my comfort zone,” he adds. “When you open a Spanish restaurant here, you try to make the typical tapas or the different dishes that you can find in Spain. But if you take the menu here at Brasa Martínez, I go one step farther.”

Brasa builds its identity around charcoal and wood, drawing inspiration from the grill restaurants of Spain’s Basque Country and from Martínez’s own fascination with cooking over live heat. Fire gives the restaurant its framework, although Martínez avoids treating it as another gimmick.

The Restaurant He Had to Grow Into

Martínez didn’t arrive in the Philippines with the conventional formation of a career chef. “I didn’t study culinary arts when I started my first restaurant,” he says. The years that followed became his education, allowing each concept to develop a different register within his cooking.

Alma remains the most relaxed expression of this evolution. Martínez describes it as a restaurant that encourages guests “to just chill, slow down, and enjoy the moment.” Its food has become more elevated since the first location opened, he notes, though it retains the looseness and ease that defined the concept from the beginning.

Brasa asks for something more exacting of him. “This place is more on the higher end of the spectrum,” he says. Fire especially exposes the quality of an ingredient and the cook’s judgment with unusual clarity. There are fewer elaborate constructions behind which either can hide.

While charcoal-grilled beef forms an important part of the menu, seafood, in particular, is even more pronounced. “I think I learned how to cook fish more than meat,” he says. “Maybe because, in Alma, I was in front of the ocean, and I was always in contact with a fisherman. I did so many trials with the fresh fish there.”

Those years near the water taught him to pay attention to the differences between species, cuts, and levels of heat. Brasa now gives that knowledge a more refined platform, so to speak. The menu includes favorites like turbot, red bream, marbled sole, bluefin tuna belly, dry-aged lapu-lapu, and king crab, much of it sourced from Japan and Spain. “All the fish I’m getting is from Japan and Spain, all fresh fish. It can be very expensive, but it’s the best quality I can find.”

His preference isn’t limited to prestige ingredients either. Seafood suits the logic of charcoal because it demands this kind of responsiveness. A cook has to manage the speed of the heat while preserving moisture, texture, and the fish’s own character. Brasa turns that tension into one of its clearest expressions of character, bringing together a technique Martínez loves and the ingredients he understands most intuitively.

Notes on the Menu

Brasa’s menu moves between cold starters, hot tapas, vegetables, rice dishes, grilled seafood, and substantial cuts of meat. Its pleasures are often indulgent, though the better combinations use acidity, texture, or smoke to keep things from being too predictable.

There’s a reason huevos rotos has earned a reputation in Spain as a reliable hangover cure. Brasa dresses the dish for Rockwell, piling an organic fried egg, jamón Ibérico, and herring pearls over a crisp potato nest. Broken eggs are usually gloriously unkempt food, the sort of thing that tastes best when the yolk has escaped its borders and the potatoes have surrendered beneath it. Break the yolk, pull the ham through it, and let the salty pearls interrupt the richness before the whole thing grows too pleased with itself.

The lobster paella arrives with all the discretion of a ceremonial entrance. There’s fresh lobster, prawns, saffron, fried egg, and herring pearls—a roster that might make a more modest pan of rice quietly excuse itself from the table. Yet paella ultimately lives or dies by what happens beneath the seafood. The rice absorbs the lobster’s sweetness, develops enough toasted depth to justify the wait, and keeps every expensive garnish from becoming a distraction.

The Ibérico pork presa takes a somewhat nuttier route. Presa is one of those cuts that makes pork seem unfairly underestimated. Marbled but still structured, it carries the sweetness of the animal without collapsing into softness. Brasa surrounds it with truffle mashed potato, mushrooms, shallots, and jus, a collection of earthy accompaniments that threatens to turn the plate into a woodland-themed package.

Likewise, the U.S. wagyu flank is a more direct demonstration of Brasa’s confidence in the grill (Martínez counts charcoal-grilled beef among his personal favorites). Its pleasure lies in the resistance of the grain, the dark mineral flavor released as you chew, and the blackened edges where beef meets charcoal.

Dessert brings a necessary change in temperature and tone. As a matter of fact, the limoncello tiramisu leans toward brightness. Mascarpone provides the familiar plushness, but lemon curd and limoncello syrup cut through it with enough acidity to wake the table up again. The oat crumble is important, giving the dessert a little friction and preventing it from becoming a soft yellow cloud. It may borrow tiramisu’s architecture, but its spirit belongs closer to, let’s say, the Amalfi Coast than the espresso bar.

Brasa Martínez is located on the Ground Floor of Joya Lofts & Towers, Joya Drive, Rockwell Center, Makati City.