Dineocrat Will Never Tire of Michelin-Starred Olivier Rodriguez's Dinners

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 roll with peaches. Our eyes bugged out with excitement and puzzlement as we tried to figure out the dish we were eating. Both our palates and intellect were stimulated, a good sign of what was to come.

Al dente lobster medallions, warm and tasty, soon came. The coral sauce on the plate had that distinctive but subtle taste of crab fat, rich and delicious. A small rectangle of gazpacho terrine, aspic-like and full of tomato-y flavor, was punctuated with tiny cubes of crunchy vegetables (celery? cucumber?), which created a great contrast to the gelatinous side dish.


The smoked salmon quenelle provided a good salty-smoky interlude. The quenelle was extra-smooth, almost spongy. The thick-looking artichoke cream in which it was half-submerged was actually light when I scooped it with the spoon. The sauce, sparingly and strategically applied, elevated the Jerusalem artichokes, placing the vegetable and cream taste into sharp relief. It's practically a miracle what a few drops of good nutmeg sauce can do.

Cholesterol problems be damned, our next course was another foie gras duo: one topped with steamed and thinly sliced apples, the other pan fried with a sour puree. (See first picture above.) My companion remarked it was one of the best uses of the apple/foie combination she had ever seen. The cardamom-infused sauce on the plate pushed the dish to transcendence. I wanted more.

The Barramundi filet with an olive crust moved us into another realm. Salty, crunch and peppery, the "gratin" of olives was almost like a slightly crunchy second skin on the fish, which is a kind of seabass. On the side and managing to grab our attention from the Barramundi, was an artichoke and cuttlefish fricassee—all crunch, tang, mush—a veritable party in the mouth in itself.

Two small pieces of the most tender beef tenderloin next enticed us. Chef Rodriguez told us later that he and his crew worked on trimming the filets mignons so that diners were left with only the best part. He wasn't lying. The meat was so tender that if I had my eyes and nose closed, I might have mistaken it for fish. I don't exaggerate my dear readers, it was that tender in the mouth. A mustard sabayon and red wine sauce complemented this wonder of a meat preparation well, while the earthy-sweet beet cannelonis could stand on their own.

The dessert became perhaps the highlight of an evening already filled with so many high notes. A muskmelon bavarois, also looking like a tiny canneloni, vanilla-scented and abutting what looked like a small portion of muskmelon sorbet (or perhaps a granita, more precisely), was an inventive and surprising play on textures, aromas and tastes. It summed up the theme of the evening and showcased what made the dinner unique in my eyes and to my palate: cold, minty, sharp, zinging with acid, sweet, crunchy, ever so slightly bitter, subtle in the beginning and finishing with a slap on the face (the good kind of slap). It was like eating a perfectly ripe frozen cantaloupe with silk and sharp Wusthof knives (again, in a good way). I was practically high at this point.

The wine pairings for the night, from Australian producer Kaesler Wines, were a mixed bag: the whites were excellent—clean, elegant Semillon and Viognier—while the reds—too fruity Rhone blends—were a bit overpowering for my taste. Which is not to say I didn't finish them all.

A good trio of cheeses—a Livarot, a blue cheese, and a goat cheese—gave a good sampling of French fromages. I was particularly taken with the goat cheese, as I'm not usually a fan of the sometimes dry and off-putting texture. But the chef's selection was moist and delicious. Tea and some petits fours, which we had to practically beg for from the seemingly overwhelmed staff, closed the night. We patiently waited for the chef as he made the rounds. He was personable and nice, but his passion came out the more I asked him about the food and the more he went into the details of making the dishes.


The preparations were meticulous and inspiring. There were so many layers of aromas and textures that not only did my dining partner and I enjoy decoding the ingredients, we were even happy to be stumped by them. It was an amusing and gastronomically satisfying night which can only be brought on by this kind of cooking. The dinner, in terms of food quality and surprising inventiveness, ranks up there with one of the best dinners of my life at Bouley in New York. Unfortunately, the service marred the experience. I will not go into the painful specifics but will instead use this opportunity to implore the restaurant to match the sublime cuisine next time. Still, it won't stop me and my dinner companion from talking about some of the most excellent dishes we've ever tasted in a long time. And at PhP P2800 (before wine), it was one of the best dinner bargains of my life. The French may gladly die for love, but I would gladly die for their food.