The Good Life: Editors’ Picks of the Week

In every The Good Life: Editors’ Picks column, we round up our editors’ favorites—restaurants, cocktails, experiences, exhibits, and everything in between.

This week’s list is centered on Old Manila, which has always been The Peninsula Manila’s most storied table. The Michelin-selected restaurant, with its Art Deco interiors and cream, gray, and black motifs, remains one of the most elegant dining rooms in the city.

Yvette Fernandez, Chief of Editorial Content

Old Manila and The Peninsula Manila have been part of our collective memory for the last 50 years. I remember how our uncle and aunt took us there for dinner when we were in our pre-teens so we could practice our table manners at a fine dining restaurant. 

To this day, no matter how often we dine elsewhere, my heart still flutters when we’re at Old Manila.

The menu has gone through various iterations with different chefs, and the current one is an excellent one.

I enjoyed the roasted French pigeon breast and confit leg with beetroot, berries, argan oil, and hibiscus in a sansho pepper jus.

I’m really not a dessert person, but how could I resist the classic floating island with local citrus and crisp hazelnut praliné, set in a pool of crème Anglaise and the pretty little meringues that made up the vacherin?

Alicia Colby Sy, Lifestyle Editor

Like many, I tend to look back at Old Manila with a great bit of  nostalgia and fondness. I’ve seen it through many iterations and reinventions of itself , and I must say the recent meal I had there is my favorite in recent memory. The menu, while grounded in French technique, is fresh and I already know that another visit must happen soon.

Standout appetizers  for me include the Le Poireau,  slow-cooked leeks with black truffle dressing, celeriac, and poached quail egg with parmintiere soup and morel mushroom.

Another one is the L’Oreiller pate en croute  made with duck magret, iberico pork, foie gras, black trumpet mushrooms and dried fruit and nuts. The bouillabaisse was also quite enjoyable.

I was very much in a “meat mood” and thought the Le Boeuf dish was perfectly executed. A 180-day  grain-fed seared piece of Omugi beef , served with pomme Anna, was delightful, and satiated my craving for a nice piece of red meat.

While I thought the dessert selection was delicious (and I sampled my fair share of offerings!), the must-order for me will always be chocolate profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with a silky chocolate sauce.  As a last course, I think it’s actually the perfect “French Exit!”

Kimberly Rocha-Delgado, Digital Editor

There are restaurants that you go to for food, and others you go to for feeling, but Old Manila delivers both reliably. There is something about the room and its being tucked inside the Peninsula that makes the outside world recede completely—a quality I have found myself valuing more and more of late. Through the years, it has been an easy go-to for anniversaries, milestones, and even for turning ordinary Tuesday evenings into something special.

The reassuring thing is that the cooking continues to justify the occasion. A modest leek is given star treatment in Le Poireau, accompanied by black truffle dressing, celeriac, quail egg, and morels; a blue crab bisque from the Visayas arrives with Oscietra caviar and Isigny crème fraîche.

Another favorite is La Saint-Jacques: confit scallops brightened with poached William pear, pomelo, osmanthus, and citrus hollandaise.

I’ve already decided on when my next visit will be, as well as who’ll be my companion (my niece, to celebrate her graduation)—but what to order next time is proving a far more difficult decision!

For reservations, call +63 2 8887 2888. Visit the website and browse their menus here.