Chef Josh Boutwood on Closing Savage and Looking Forward to the Future

In case you were curious, yes, Josh Boutwood watches the TV series The Bear. The acclaimed chef behind some of Manila’s most popular upscale restaurants like Helm, Test Kitchen, and Ember, is actually a few episodes deep into season 3 when I sit down with him at the farewell gathering of his other restaurant, Savage. 

“Season one was very stressful for me to watch,” he says. “Very true to life. You know how when you watch an MMA fight and your body tenses, that was season one for me. I wasn’t even fighting, I was just in a perpetual state of tense. 

Chef Josh Boutwood behind the kitchen at Savage

“Season two was a lot more calm,” he adds. “In season three, there’s an episode where there’s this massive argument in the kitchen between Carmy and Cousin (Richie). My blood was boiling while I was watching it. It was so real that I felt like I can have one of those arguments with one of my cooks.” 

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Fortunately for the people he works with—and maybe for himself as well—Boutwood is a lot more chill in the kitchen now. Most people see him when he engages in the usual pleasantries with diners at his restaurants; he’s open, gregarious, and gracious when accepting compliments. But even with his staff the chef says he’s quite composed. While the concept of each of his own restaurants actually dictates the personality he assumes while he’s working at that kitchen, Boutwood today is generally mild-mannered and soft-spoken.

Savage's Famous Deviled Eggs

“Savage is probably the most energetic of the concepts,” he says. “I don’t necessarily curse, but my energies are a lot more elevated. At Helm, I’m a lot more grounded, and a lot more calm and graceful. I whisper there. I don’t speak. Test kitchen is kind of in-between the two. And at Ember, I don’t really need to speak much there. Everybody knows what they’re doing so it’s very rare that I have to speak.” 

Farewell to Savage

After six years, the time has come to say goodbye to Savage. The inventive concept restaurant—a return of sorts to when man had nothing but an open fire to cook his food—is closing its doors, but not for long.  

“It’s time for Savage to relocate, evolve, and ultimately turn into a restaurant that invigorates us with inspiration and creativity,” Boutwood says of the reasons behind Savage’s closure. “That's it in a nutshell.” 

Orange Roughy

But even before Savage at Arya Residence’s The Plaza permanently shuttered, there was already an announcement that it would rise again sooner than we realize. It was simply relocating to a new address. The new and improved Savage is set to welcome diners new and returning before the end of the year not far from its old location. 

“We’re going to add a lot of new items on the menu, but the core items that defined Savage’s DNA will remain, like the Deviled Eggs, the Tuna Collar, the Barramundi, the steaks, they’ll remain.”

Beef and Pork Sausages

As fate would have had it, Savage isn’t the only opening with Chef Josh’s name all over it this year. A brand-new restaurant is in the works and will tickle the palates of Boutwood devotees soon enough. The chef has kept mum about the details, but managed to let slip that it will open “up north.” 

And as if running four, soon-to-be-five, restaurants isn’t already taxing enough, and will surely overwhelm any regular mortal being, Boutwood’s job as consultant for the Bistro Group also has him overseeing the menus of 23 restaurant concepts and nearly 200 stores nationwide, plus one new restaurant concept coming very soon.

The Savage team

“I recently got this sleep tracker band, which tells me that I’m currently sleeping about five hours a night,” he says while showing me the electronic band around his arm. “Like yesterday, I slept five hours and 36 minutes, but I should’ve gotten nine hours and 37 minutes based on my activity. 

“So since I’ve gotten this, I don’t know how I’m actually able to continue. But, in actuality, I just enjoy what I do. I just keep pushing myself to keep going. I like having the stress, the pressure; it excites me that every day, there’s always going to be something different. I can always be in a different restaurant, but I think it takes a mad person to do what I do. So obviously, that’s giving you the answer that I’m mad.”

Full-on fashionista

Boutwood does fill his days with things other than food. Like photography and golf, a new activity he’s taken up that reminds him somewhat of his job as a chef in the way it continuously requires him to challenge himself to get better. 

“It’s my new obsession,” he says. “I’m absolutely in love with it at the moment. I play golf every Monday.

“Also, when you see me, I’m always wearing white (chef’s uniform) and blue (apron). I don’t wear any other color combination. But when I’m on the golf course, I go all out. I’m the most flamboyant, full-on fashionista. Like I’m going to Paris Fashion Week on a Monday to go play golf. And then, come Tuesday, it’s back to blue and white.”

Boutwood’s schedule doesn’t even count the times that he does pop-ups or he’s commissioned to do private corporate events. But chatting with the chef on a Sunday evening, just after service feeding maybe 30 or 40 people on the last night of one of his “babies,” I get no sense of exhaustion or a desire to just hightail it out of there and crawl into bed. On the contrary, he takes time to chat with nearly everyone there, making sure to give them his full undivided attention, with a beer in hand and hearty laughs every few minutes. It’s the picture of a chef fueled by purpose and still giddy with excitement each time he suits up to go to work, years since he started doing what he does. Clearly he’s still inspired and it shows. 

Chef Josh Boutwood expects to welcome guests to the new Savage later in 2024

“I’m excited about Savage’s relocation because that’s going to fill up the inspiration jar,” he says. “When you open a restaurant, that jar is full, because you’re inspired by it. And over time, you withdraw from that jar. But because there’s nothing new that happens around you in this location, nothing is getting deposited. When you’re traveling, you see something interesting, you deposit in the jar. And if you’re here, every day, you’re just withdrawing. And it eventually gets on empty.

“A car can’t run on just fumes. Much like creation, creativity can’t run on just the bare minimum. So having a new location, we start again with a brand-new job. And it’s up to us how we define how big this jar is. We get to this restaurant, and how beautiful we make it and how energetic we make it, because at the end of the day, energy is the most important thing in a restaurant. And that’s going to fill up the jar with creativity. And then, we will withdraw as necessary.”