Best of the Best 2026: Food and Drink

We ate very well this year. We had elegant tasting menus, spontaneous dinners that started with cocktails, bread definitely worth the carbs, and more than a few bottles of wine that kept us out much longer than planned. We watched chefs play with fire, ingredients, and flavors from across Asia, and happily made the drive when a good meal took us out of the city.

For our Best of the Best, we chose new discoveries and old friends, a long lunch, a drink after work, and an evening when dinner was the main event.

We included a bakery, a whisky bar, and restaurants that gave us some of our favorite meals of the year. These are the places we go back to. Again and again.

Best of the Best: Josh Boutwood at Helm

Josh Boutwood keeps us wondering what he will serve next, and we revel in it. At Helm, his latest menu, Single Ingredient, takes one ingredient and explores it in several different forms. Pumpkin, for example, appears as custard, purée, XO sauce, seed oil, and even a lacto-fermented syrup, while the beef course pairs dry-aged A5 WagyuWagyuA Japanese beef breed celebrated for intense marbling that creates a buttery, melt-in-the-mouth texture, graded on a scale where A5 is the highest. Wagyu is a luxury dining staple prizedGo to Wagyu Glossary with bone marrow purée and a sauce made with beef bones.

And then there is Josh himself. From behind the counter, he talks us through the food with his trademark dry wit, clearly enjoying the occasional joke as much as the serious business of cooking. That sense of fun carries through the meal, whether the techniques are simple or complex. Josh Boutwood and Helm are our Best of the Best because after all these years, they continue to surprise us.

Worth the Trip: Asador Alfonso

The drive to Alfonso, Cavite ends with a long, languid, exceptional meal that makes the distance worthwhile. At Asador Alfonso, Spanish cooking follows the traditions of the asador, with fire and roasting playing a central role.

The Heritage and Journey tasting menus upstairs move through seafood, rice, vegetables, and meat. Cochinillo emerges from the asador with crisp skin and tender meat, while slow-roasted lechazo, or suckling lamb, shows why this centuries-old Spanish method remains so compelling.

Downstairs, the Alfonso Roasting Room offers a more relaxed à la carte menu meant for sharing, with traditional dishes such as pulpo a la plancha, fabada de marisco, rabo de vaca, and cochinillo.

Take your time.

Asia on a Plate: Celera

At Celera, it can be difficult to pinpoint where one cuisine ends and another begins.

Chefs Nicco Santos and Quenee Vilar move in, out, and around flavors and techniques from across Asia, sometimes combining several of them in a single dish. Beef tartare with bone marrow comes on a crisp ohba leaf, while duck and chicken tsukune are served with strawberries, egg miso, and citrus kosho. Elsewhere on the menu, you might encounter laksa, rendang, sambal, mala, tausi, and other flavors.

There’s a lot happening on a Celera plate, and we love every single bite.

Playing With Fire: Kong

You can see exactly what Kong’s kitchen is up to: woks going at full blast, meat cooking over charcoal, and chefs Gerard “Gezza” d’Ombrille and John Baquir right in the middle of it all.

We loved the Shandong chicken. It takes five days before it reaches the table, including brining and dry-aging before it is roasted and fried, leaving the skin crisp and the meat juicy. Vinegar and garlic are all it needs alongside.

There is serious cooking going on, but Kong doesn’t take itself too seriously. Dinner is lively and made for sharing, with a wine list that makes another bottle dangerously easy to consider.

Table Hopping: Levanto

Six restaurants in a central Makati building present us with a rather nice problem: Where do we eat first? There’s Brontë, chef Wade Watson’s Australian steakhouse; Hakka for Japanese; and Tadhana, where chef Frances Tariga serves her Filipino tasting menu. Next door, Taglish, also by Frances, loosens things up with its seafood and steakhouse menu.

Then there is Mireia, where self-taught chef Mark Dee has come a long way from serving guests in his own home. His private dining concept now has a restaurant of its own, and we still think about his crab pasta. And when dinner is over, there’s Tasting Room for wine.

The sensible thing would be to choose one restaurant and stay there. But where’s the fun in that? Have a drink in one place, dinner somewhere else, then finish with a glass of wine at the next.

Or do what we did: We kept coming back until we had eaten our way around the fourth floor.

Power Dining: M

At M, you’ll know practically everyone in the dining room. Chef Tom Bascon has made it a favorite of Manila’s business and social set, equally suited to the ladies who lunch and investment bankers celebrating a deal. It’s one of the city’s favorite places to see, be seen, and eat very well.

And then there’s the cheese soufflé, which we order every time. The uni spaghetti and the dry-aged ribeye are favorites too. There’s a serious wine list, courtesy of Premium Wine Exchange downstairs.

The Italian Job: Osteria Antica

Ana Lorenzana de Ocampo, best known for Wildflour, has a good sense of what we love to eat. At Osteria Antica, she turns her attention to Italy, a country she and her family have traveled through and eaten their way around over the years.

Handmade pastas and pizzas from the wood-fired oven make up a big chunk of the menu, alongside seafood and meat dishes.

We also love the restaurant itself, with its beautiful interiors and warm, lively atmosphere. It all makes Osteria Antica one of our favorite places for a family lunch or dinner.

Worth the Carbs: Panaderya Toyo

We tried to stay away, but we couldn’t. Potpot Pandesal, Leche Pan, Pan de Coco, Pinipig Loaf, and bichos filled or flavored with everything from saba to cheese make choosing difficult. The breads are sourdough-based; the flavors are Filipino. There is always something familiar, and usually something else we haven’t tried yet. We go in for one piece and somehow leave with a bagful. Get those maintenance meds and get another bag.

The Long Game: Sala

Colin Mackay has been feeding us since our grunge days in Malate in the ’90s, and later, when we became grownups in Makati. Nearly three decades later, Colin is still doing what has kept people coming back: serving excellent food in a room where dinner still feels like dinner.

We take pleasure in a sit-down meal at a properly set table, ordering a bottle of wine, and settling in for the evening. On our last visit, we had a wonderful pappardelle with duck, followed by a perfectly cooked steak, of course. And we saved room for dessert, even if we’re now all watching our sugar.

Next Gen: Antonio’s at PGA Cars

For decades, dining at Antonio’s meant a drive to Tagaytay and a long meal at Tonyboy Escalante’s celebrated restaurant. Today, there’s an Escalante looking after Antonio’s in Manila too.

Tonyboy’s son Basti has taken on the family’s Manila restaurants, including Antonio’s at PGA Cars. Longtime Antonio’s diners will recognize the excellent ingredients and warm service that have kept families returning to Tagaytay for years.

The two settings couldn’t be more different. In Tagaytay, you arrive at a sprawling property filled with plants and gardens. In the city, you dine above some of the world’s most beautiful cars. Somehow, Antonio’s looks very good in both.

We’re still happy to make the drive to Tagaytay, but it’s good to know there’s an Antonio’s much closer to home.

Raising the Bar: Ayà

You may have come to Ayà for drinks and then happily found yourself staying for dinner. From the team behind Hapag, the bar injects a lot of fun into Filipino flavors, both in its cocktails and its dishes. Start with the Kamias Margarita and Guava Spritz, then make your way through Okoy and Pearls, with baby shrimp and vegetable fritters, pinakurat sour cream, chives, and ikura; Pares Toast, with Pan de Kalinga sourdough and beef-and-tendon pares jus; and Mushroom Dinakdakan Toast.

A cocktail will call for a small plate, and then the plate, another drink, and another, and another. Before you know it, it’s closing time.

Top Shelf: The Whisky Library

Where to get a stiff drink in Manila? At The Whisky Library, the problem is deciding which one.

The shelves are lined with bottles from Scotland, Japan, Ireland, the United States, and elsewhere, with familiar labels alongside whiskies you may be encountering for the first time. It’s a haven for serious whisky drinkers, but you don’t need to know your Speyside from your Islay to enjoy yourself. The bartenders know the collection and are happy to point you toward something that suits what you like.

And unlike most libraries, you don’t have to keep your voice down.

One For the Road: Toma Toma

At Toma Toma, the brainchild of mixologist Arcadius Rybak skillfully puts Filipino ingredients behind the bar, with lambanog, local honey, fruit, and salt finding their way into the cocktails in delicious and surprising ways; it’s almost impossible to know which ingredient is the star. The opening food menu was developed with Metiz chef Stephan Duhesme, with the kitchen now headed by Paolo de Guzman.

There’s prawn lumpia, chicken balls with the flavors of tinola, skewers cooked over fire, and pompano with brown butter and calamansi. It’s food with techniques that reference the ihaw-ihaw and pulutan culture that pervades Filipino drinking culture and traditional Filipino flavors, but dressed a little differently, and delightfully.

This article originally appeared in Robb Report Philippines Best of the Best Issue, October 2026. See the full list of Best of the Best awardees.