dine•o•crat

Chef Olivier Rodriguez, a French chef who's received Michelin stars for his work at many restaurants around the world, most recently at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo , is on a special stint at the Mandarin Oriental Manila through October 23, 2010. I and my dining companion visited The Tivoli , the posh restaurant inside the hotel, to find out if all the ado about the chef was indeed about something. Our judgment: his cooking is something else! I'll spare you the details of the events leading up to this dinner—how I learned about it, what I wore, etc.—and get right to the food. My friend and I both ordered the delicious-sounding 7-course degustation, or tasting menu. I tend to like these tasting menus better because I get to sample a wide range of the chef's repertoire. We were both glad we did. The night began with a rather complex amuse bouche of chocolate foie gras "truffle," foie gras custard with tamarind and ginger topped with a milk foam, and a wafer

I crave Chinese food. I mean, more than most food. I wasn't always conscious of that fact till my be-Rei Kawakubo'ed foodie friend pointed it out. We had been going to several Chinese restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area by that point pretty much regularly. By the grace of our imaginative hairdresser, I was a blond, she a redhead. Over tender bits of pork belly with preserved vegetables and pan-fried noodles, she mentioned she found Chinese food more of a comfort food than traditional Filipino food. I flipped my blond shag and stared at her blankly. It wasn't until much later when I went back to my regular dark hair (with anime blue highlights) that I realized the truth of what she had said. Chinese food can be more comforting and evocative than Filipino food, at least to this Filipino. The former has a sharpness of taste that the latter lacks. Though both could be arguably complex, depending on the dish, the variety of Chinese cuisine is indisputable. Dim sum alone

The French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine wrote in verse of his dream lover as someone who is "never quite the same ... nor wholly different" ( " Mon rêve familier "). A cheese expert from France, interviewed by Jeffrey Steingarten , used the same line to describe Camembert , the great and legendary unpasteurized raw-milk cheese. He used it to describe its complexity, how the cheese would taste a bit different each time, but somehow the quality of it is also the same as you might remember it. I thought the same might apply to rice porridge, or "lugaw" in Tagalog, "lelut" in Kapampangan. Sure it's sometimes bland, but there are so many varieties and regional differences that a version of this ubiquitous and satisfying comfort food is bound to hit your Proustian g-spot. The right one, for me, releases an orgasmic torrent of memories. But even the blandest lugaw provides enough of a quickie, even as Chinese congee, because the texture and sme

Here's what Wikipedia says about soufflés : "A soufflé is a light, fluffy, baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savory main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé is the past participle of the French verb souffler which means 'to blow up' or more loosely 'puff up'—an apt description of what happens to this combination of custard and egg whites." If you put it that way, it sounds easy, not to mention clinical. But making a "soft-peak meringue" is no small feat. The one time I tried to make it, it took two people and a large Kitchenaid mixer to get it right. In a restaurant setting, making soufflés takes a special touch that needs to happen not only once, but hundreds of times—consistently. And as a diner, you have a duty to pronounce it correctly: it's "soo-flay," not "soo-full." (Someone I knew used to say the latter; he's been, as soc

I first read about Terry Selection , a Spanish restaurant and gourmet deli, in a book called " Manila's Best Kept Restaurant Secrets ." At the time, I had just moved to Manila and was looking for a variety of restaurants that served international cuisine, including Spanish. I had already eaten at a Spanish restaurant in Quezon City (what I call the country's entertainment hub) and had been somewhat disappointed. Terry's, owned by Juan Carlos de Terry, seemed promising enough. I had my first meal there recently. It's probably too early to write a full review, but here's a peek at the food I had. The meal was satisfying, if a bit heavy. The main plate was a gamey Rioja-braised oxtail, a taste which I normally shun, but it seemed appropriate for the night and the glass of cabernet-tempranillo blend wine I had with it--tannic and fruity--complemented the dish well. I went to the branch in Makati on Pasong Tamo, which I think is the original one, though there a

Buffets were my nightmares. Seriously. My first experiences of them were back in the late 80's, in the form of American all-you-can-eat chains and the Vegas strip. Thoughts of these fluorescent-bathed establishments deliver to my mind plates of dark-edged lettuce, grease-laden meatballs and all-you-can-eat spaghetti with dubious meat sauce. Little did I know back then that these were merely temporary outposts for the 250-pound men and women on the express road to 500 pounds. But even Vegas has upped the ante of dining, upgrading its hotels to dizzyingly ostentatious luxury and, consequently its amenities to match, including its buffets and more formal sit-down restaurants. When I went back to Manila for good, one of the first places my family took me to was the strikingly modern Sofitel Manila , which houses the Spiral buffet restaurant (and a small casino). After several more visits, my nightmares, I could honestly say, are gone. Even after having eaten at the new-Vegas buffets,

I'm new here in Manila, having moved back after 22 years of being away, so I've had limited experiences with the wine scene. I've had enough encounters with it, however, to give it an initial assessment of moribund, at least compared to what I had access to in California. In my first month here, I visited several wine and liquor places in Quezon City, the entertainment hub of the Philippines. Wines were displayed in sweltering heat, in stores with no air-conditioning, unless you count an oscillating fan sadly recirculating the air as A/C. Blame it on the country's status as a developing economy. Or blame it on the lack of a wine-drinking community. Or on the fact that this is a beer-drinking culture schizophrenically married to a very Catholic view of the world. In one of the very first fine-dining establishments I visited with a decent wine list, my server turned out to be a teetotaler, so I couldn't really ask her for a wine recommendation for my ribeye. "Sir

Aubergine , the French restaurant in Bonifacio Global City , is the kind of fine dining place that attracts certain food writers if only for its location. Above a McDonald's in what is basically a strip mall, it could be missed if you were merely driving around or were distracted by the smell of French fries. Or you might detect it in the corner of your eye on the way to St. Luke's Medical Center across the street or as you're loading your car with hardware from the Home Depot kitty-corner to it. It's strangely situated enough to provide an opening paragraph for a writer desperate for an angle. But its quirk ends with its exterior. Once you enter its doors, the establishment's darkly modern interior announces the restaurant's mission as a purveyor of serious cuisine or that its designer is absolutely in love with dark wood. The slightly surly or merely baffled maitre d' offered me a seat immediately after I declared I was dining alone. I didn't even

The Bazaar by the Spanish-born chef José Andrés in the SLS Hotel is the proverbial "place to see and be seen" in Beverly Hills. One quickly loses count of the number of Italian and German supercars coming and going at the entrance to the hotel. Inside, the eclectic jumble of a decor, vaguely organized into different art- or culinary-themed areas, would give a minimalist a conniption. As part of the blue-splate special crowd (in by 5:30pm, in bed by 9pm), I found the place deserted, hence the practically unobstructed views of the place. On some tables ( left ), in the bar area called Bar Centro, circular projections of old movies would play. In the Moss Room, the main art area/gallery/store, some t-shirts. This one ( pictured right ) says, in the simplest postmodern ironic way, "photography is not allowed." There's also a patisserie, a place to buy, among the enormous variety, small $6 cupcakes. (Admittedly, they were exquisitely delicious cupcakes, as I