For Just The Way My ____ Made It, Po & Pilar is asking chefs to leave their usual signatures behind. The restaurant’s new takeover series invites guests to build a menu around someone who shaped their appetite, memory, and, of course, way of seeing food. Bruce Ricketts opens the series with a four-course dinner centered around some time-honored Cantonese favorites. At its core, his Just The Way I Made It For My Dad concept is about cooking the kind of meals he wishes he could make for his father now. “It’s my memories with my dad on different occasions, compiled into a four-course meal,” says Ricketts. “These are dishes we both love and that I wish I could prepare for him now that I know how to cook.” That relationship gives the dinner its emotional vantage point. Before Ricketts became one of Manila’s defining modern Japanese chefs, he trained first..
