Why the Coquette Pop Up at Casa Buenas Is the Miko Calo Comeback We’ve Been Waiting For
Manila has missed Miko Calo. Not that she’s been entirely gone, but her presence in the city’s fine dining scene has been palpable since her restaurant Metronome closed last year. Although she’s participated in a few pop-ups in Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Paris since then, and participated at some local culinary events and collaborations, none have quite captured the spirit of Metronome until now.
On September 2, 2025, Calo will debut Coquette, her latest dining pop-up at Casa Buenas in Newport World Resorts. While the menu doesn’t strictly adhere to fine dining conventions like Metronome, it still showcases Calo’s imaginative precision and classic technique, marrying her reverence for French haute cuisine and her Filipino heritage. Calo herself describes the pop-up’s shared-plate format as more relaxed and approachable, but make no mistake: Coquette remains an elegant, grown-up experience.
Amidst the elaborate and elegant décor of the Casa Buenas dining room, filled with Filipino flourishes such as lattice work, machuca tiles, wood carving and marquetry, lies Calo’s richly layered cuisine that showcases her breadth and depth–the rustic and the refined, often highlighted simultaneously in a single dish. Shrimp Kinilaw with Mindanao-sourced essentials kabayawa and tabon-tabon is showered in coconut milk, a small pot de foie gras is dotted with confiture made from the seasonal local santol fruit and served with fried country bread, and braised ox tongue is zhuzhed up with calamansi gastrique and accompanied by a smoky, grilled kailan vegetable. Intelligently conceived, every dish at the Coquette pop-up displays the type of creativity and confidence that only comes with experience and maturity.
While there are many standouts, such as the roast duck breast served with a Kapampangan- inspired foie gras sauce that Calo describes as “the bougiest Mang Tomas you’ll ever have,” and the Iberico presa bathed in a glaze of tamarind barbecue sauce, I predict that the fregola, a small, round Sardinian pasta made from semolina, prepared similarly to a risotto with guanciale and a tangy, mildly pungent burro velouté will be the most swooned-after dish.
Another contender for this accolade is found not in the starters or entrée section of the menu but with the side dishes, right between Calo’s signature potato purée and fried bread. The game-changing rice dish is stewed with tuna roe, and is a nod to the chef’s Butuan roots. Inspired by the Visayan inun-unan, a cooking method where dishes are simmered in coconut vinegar, the tuna roe is first stewed in vinegar then aged for a few days before it is finally sauteed with garlic and tomatoes. It is then typically stored in a jar with the oil it has been cooked in. Calo mixes the prepared tuna roe and rice that has been steamed with annatto infused fumet and creates a tasty rice casserole of sorts that can accompany any of the proteins on the menu. The final touch to the process is key: the rice is gratinated under the salamander until the top is crispy and replicates the texture of the much sought-after tutong or socarrat in every rice dish. It is brilliant.
Like the rest of the menu, pastry chef Ginno Hernandez’s dessert offerings draw deeply from both heritage and technique. A standout is the sublime Cloud Nine Chocolate, a playful yet sophisticated creation that showcases chocolate in multiple forms: chocolate sablé, flourless chocolate cake, ganache, nougat, and crèmeux. It’s a nostalgic nod to the childhood Cloud 9 chocolate bar, reimagined and brought to an entirely new level. Also enjoyable is the amaretto sabayon filled with cherries and pistachios, a combination of flavors that is difficult to resist.
Calo’s dishes have always been wine-friendly, and her decision to spotlight the Champagnes of Florence Duchêne, a French-Filipina independent winemaker, at Coquette is an inspired one. As the saying goes, “what grows together, goes together,” and in this case, it’s more about kindred spirits: those who blend the best of France with a deep love for the Philippines. The result is a natural, harmonious pairing.
Through Coquette, Calo returns to the local dining scene not with a reprise, but with a refined reinvention; not to revisit the past, but an exercise in reshaping what comes next. It’s a confident evolution from a chef deeply rooted in where she’s been, and even more certain of where she’s headed.
Casa Buenas, G/F Grand Wing Newport World Resorts, Portwood Street, Newport City, Pasay. +632 79088988 or +639178788312