It was their first day back after a week-long, well deserved Holy Week break, and Team Toyo hit the ground screaming. A Netflix crew was in there shooting promo material for the launch of its Street Food Asia series, which was to be held at the restaurant the next day. Production crew were bumping into magazine crew bumping into kitchen staff. The four Cebuano street food stars of the Netflix show were waiting for their turn to be filmed, while Toyo staff simultaneously prepped for dinner service and the launch.
Things didn’t feel hectic or harried, however—the chefs up front were methodically laying out each fermented fruit, pickled vegetable, and flower petal, while the chefs in the back were firing up sauces. They looked refreshed and eager to be back at work and in each other’s company.
A big part of the team had been with Toyo from the start and even longer, coming in with Jordy Navarra from his tenure at Black Sheep in BGC (2013 to 2015), where he created the Garden Vegetables salad also known as Bahay Kubo, the 18-vegetable dish so closely associated with Toyo it could be its origin dish. The tight-knit team has now grown to 20 members, including the bakers at Panaderya Toyo. While it has always been a favorite of in-the-know diners and food writers, ever since Toyo’s 2018 honor as Miele One to Watch, and 2019’s fulfillment as the only Filipino establishment in the 50 Best Restaurants in Asia, the restaurant has gained new waves of interest and is now booked for months in advance.
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PHOTO: Joseph Pascual
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I first dined at Toyo a few months after it opened, and ordered what would now be considered the Toyo Eatery starter pack: the folk song-inspired salad, the burnt kalabaza soup, and the three-cut pork BBQ. When I tell Michelle Ayuyao, who consults for Toyo, that I would be supping there that evening for the first time since 2016, she looks at me like I’m about to attend confession. “The new tasting menu is so much better,” she says.
Nobody sets out to try a fine-dining tasting menu alone, but as luck would have it, I had a table and some 12 dishes of Toyo goodness to myself. On the printed menu, which designates each course in the most minimal of terms, “snacks,” “silog,” and “buro” for instance, the only sentence printed in red ink is the one requesting that “the entire table participate when ordering the Tasting Menu.” Party of one, done.
While communal dining undoubtedly enhances the whole degustation experience, there are some advantages to eating such an epic meal alone. For one, you can wallow in your own thoughts, memories, and epiphanies without having to share an agreeable opinion with your tablemates. Second, no one will look at you funny if you happen to shed a tear, which I nearly did just minutes into the first course. Even items that I had pre-judged because of the mere familiarity of the ingredients were a damn revelation.
PHOTO: Joseph Pascual
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The ingredients are all those that we encounter on a daily basis. They’re in our refrigerators, on our countertops, or at the local market. The way Navarra puts them together, though, is what makes the difference. The techniques, the creative remixing, the distilling of the essence of a traditional dish, and channeling it into something with extra-dimensional textures and flavors—these are the things that shift this Filipino restaurant into a genre of its own.
The most recognizable dish on the tasting menu would be the “tinola,” mainly because all of the essential elements are present. Sayote, chicken, and ginger, made more visually appealing and bite-sized. The malunggay is infused into an oil while the soup base is thick and flan-like, but it’s unmistakably tinola.
The tortang talong takes a bigger leap, looking more like a mini pizza with a smoky eggplant crust—the taste of char so deep it can hold your secrets—layered alternately with shrimp and crabmeat omelet, and topped with fried leeks and crawfish. This dish has gained traction on social media, however, because of its accompanying condiment—a dollop of banana “catsup,” made from banana vinegar, fermented banana and saba, and ripe bananas, with a touch of tomato to give it a reddish tinge.
A Filipina food technologist named Maria Orosa (also the street in Malate) invented the condiment out of necessity. The Americans introduced the Heinz style of ketchup and got Filipinos hooked, but during WW2 there was a tomato shortage and thus banana ketchup was born. Ketchup actually originated in China as a fermented fish sauce, which the Europeans brought back home with them during the 17th century. Over time, it mutated into the highly processed, sweet and vinegary tomato-based sauce we know, marketed back to the east.
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PHOTO: Joseph Pascual
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But this is what Jordy does, he gets people thinking and talking about things we take for granted. The tortang talong-banana ketchup combo is a uniquely Filipino experience that is reinterpreted in an imaginative and palatable way. Toyo’s other offerings are not necessarily based on specific dishes, but serve to take you on a deep dive of flavors from the country’s extensive coastal regions. Vinegar, sour fruits, and fermented relishes are used to highlight the freshness of an Aklan oyster or a grilled sea bream. In fact, pickling and fermenting are quite a thing at Toyo, and you’ll see jars upon jars of pajo, radishes, anchovies, and monggo soaking in briny liquid.
I ask May Navarra, Toyo’s general manager, how a dish at Toyo is developed. Does it just spring forth from Jordy’s mind? Or is it more of a collaborative effort? “He really focuses on everything around it, from the ingredients, to the flavor profile, to food culture,” May says. “When he has certain details in place, he comes up with a rough idea of how he wants to approach a dish, then he goes over it with his sous chef, JP Cruz. They go over it again and again until they're satisfied, often working on a dish for weeks or months at a time. And even after they’ve finalized something, they’d constantly work with the team on how to make it even better.”
She adds, “So he’s really not the type of chef who can whip up something magical in 10 minutes using only what he sees in the fridge. He has a more philosophical approach and really takes his time thinking about it.”
May knew Jordy in high school, although they didn’t start dating until college. “Food has always been a huge part of our relationship—as seen by the weight we’ve gained in our 14 years together,” she says. When he told her he really wanted to get into cooking, she encouraged him to do everything it takes to learn what he can. This led him to work in the kitchens of The Fat Duck in the U.K. and Bo Innovation in Hong Kong, even if it meant maintaining a long-distance relationship for over a year.
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Jordy’s training in Heston Blumenthal and Alvin Leung’s kitchens eventually led him back to the Philippines. “The reason why I went to work for Alvin at Bo Innovation—” Jordy starts, “back then I couldn’t really afford to go to those restaurants. We went to Hong Kong one time, I went to eat at Alvin’s and I thought it was super cool he was doing this modern new approach to Chinese ingredients. I had never seen anyone apply the new approach to more local, Chinese food. That was the first time I went to eat and understood what someone was trying to do.”
From the extravagance of Black Sheep, Jordy took things down a notch, interior-wise, with Toyo, breathing into the space at the Alley at Karrivin the warmth and community of Filipino dining. Three years on, there’s always a sense of something new happening, thanks to the strong spirit of collaboration. Jordy has been participating in a lot of joint cooking exercises with other chefs in what’s called four-hands or six-hands dinners. He has shared kitchens with the chefs of Masque restaurant in Mumbai, Haku in Hong Kong, Florilege in Tokyo, and the recently closed Hertog Jan in Belgium.
Likewise, he has hosted the chefs from Bangkok’s Suhring, Bali’s Locavore, and Singapore’s Nouri, among others. One thing’s for sure—Jordy is having a ton of fun. “In the kitchen, it can get grinding and tedious,” he says. “Whenever we have these events, it breaks up the monotony. When we get invited to another country, I get to bring some of the team, we learn from other chefs, and everyone brings home a different experience.”
PHOTO: Joseph Pascual
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Despite his seemingly busy travel schedule—in April they took part in the Ubud Food Festival—Jordy feels that he doesn’t travel enough, at least locally. “There’s just a lot out here. Nuances from region to region, which you only fully understand after you go.” He recalls the conversation he had the night before with the Cebuano cooks, when they were trying to pinpoint what makes each region’s cooking different, from the bagoong-heavy cuisine of Ilocos to the paminta-driven food of Batangas. He recounts a visiting chef from California whose parents are from Marawi. She used palapa, a Maranao condiment made from chili, ginger, and sakurab–native white scallions that taste earthier than regular spring onions. “Generally, Filipino food is simple, but that’s when the subtleties come in.”
Shortly after Toyo opened, Margarita Fores introduced Jordy to Richie Manapat, a self-taught baker who had just come back from Melbourne. Richie noticed the lack of a good crusty sourdough at the dinner table and offered to tinker around in the kitchen. He started coming in regularly and helped them get bread out on the table. When the space next door became available, it was a natural move to open an artisan bakery and make Richie head breadmaster.
“The great thing about Jordy, he’s a chef and he focuses on that. For pastries, it’s Sam who does it, and when help was needed with coffee, we got Kalsada to sort it out. For the bar we got a little help from David Ong,” Richie says. “A lot of chefs will tend to try to do everything themselves, and I see them force this on their restaurants and they end up with great food, but bad coffee or bad bread. Jordy is humble in the sense that he knows when to ask for help.” Jordy was very receptive to Richie’s crusade against using bleached flour that Toyo switched all the flour they used for frying, making gravies, and thickening sauces, and even helps Richie spread the word around the industry.
Jacket by Orslow; bandana by Cushman; bracelet by Superior Labor; all at Signet, Power Plant Mall, Makati. PHOTO: Joseph Pascual
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Toyo’s current thrust is about sustainability and closing the loop, and for that they have gotten a composting consultant to help them sort out their waste. From seven bags of trash a day, they have whittled it down to just one. Their kitchen scraps are turned into compost for the Alley’s landscaping—if they’re not already in Richie’s bread. “They use a lot of pumpkin in their uni kalabaza soup, so you get a lot of by-product, which we tried fermenting into the dough,” Richie says, showing me a photo of a tray of pumpkin buns in a gorgeous burnt orange color, an item they plan to roll out soon. He acknowledges that recycling excess food into bread doesn’t sound appetizing, but they’re serious about sustainability, as they are about experimenting and innovating.
Speaking of which: chef Hirowasu Kawate from Florilege, who Jordy cooked with, just sent over a kakigori machine, used for shaving ice. “When we cooked in Tokyo, we made like a halo-halo,” Jordy says. “We’re going to play with the machine today and talk about the game plan later. Something even savory maybe? A cold, savory Pinoy dish, right?” His eyes gleam with the possibilities. I wonder about Filipino diners’ receptiveness to such a “dessert.” But for Toyo, they will be.
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In this story: Produced and styled by Clifford Olanday • Photographs by Joseph Pascual • Interview by Audrey N. Carpio • Grooming by Renen Garcia • Production assistants Roland Mae Tanglao and Ednalyn Magnaye Garcia • Location Toyo Eatery
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