Is plant-based cuisine finally entering the mainstream?
The Westin Manila, which reopened March 6 in Ortigas Center, recently held a demo class and wine-pairing dinner revolving around plant-based cuisine, and is including plant-based dishes on its regular menu at its Seasonal Tastes buffet outlet.
“The Westin is very focused on wellbeing,” says general manager Alex Dietzsch. “We have the Westin Heavenly Beds, which provide exceptional sleep comfort, but it also includes ‘Eat Well.’”
“To showcase how progressive the Eat Well program is, we try to invite culinary professionals in the country,” adds Westin executive chef Rej Casanova. “We have one of the specialists who’s really focusing on wellness — in this case, plant-based.”
For the first collaboration in their CuiScene series, The Westin invited plant-based guru Mimi Vergara-Tupas from Davao.
“I’ve known Mimi from way, way back — we started in the same hotel industry,” says Westin’s marketing and communications manager Meghann Hernandez, “and then she went on to retail and I was surprised later on that she's now into plant-based.”
Mimi Vergara-Tupas is the founder, creative director and recipe developer for Clean Café, Made Simple, Fast Fresh, and Soul Kitchen. “We are a food group from Davao and we call ourselves The Neighborhood Lifestyle Group,” she says. “Plant-based is not just a part-time thing for us, it's not just seasonal, it's really at the core of what we do. We actually serve about 500 customers a day in all of our four core food brands and six locations around Davao, all of which are plant-powered food.”
Tupas began this food empire with a bottle of green juice she made so that her kids would have something healthy to drink for school. “I would do this so passionately every day that at night, when everybody was asleep, I would take my juicer, put it on my kitchen counter, wash my vegetables and peel them all by myself so that in the morning I have something to serve them. And I would post this on social media, people would take notice and they started ordering. I really did not have any intentions of selling, but I was just having so much fun doing what I wanted to do that I started accepting orders.”
Soon their clients were looking for salads and other kinds of healthy food, so Mimi’s husband, Jun Tupas, who now heads their finance and business development, started looking for a commercial space.
“That was 10 years ago,” Mimi recalls, “and in that little store we had, we saw a lot of healthy transformations of the customers that we were serving every day, and hearing all these stories that they were having our food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. They’d sign up for 21-day meal plans.”
This huge responsibility spurred Mimi to go to Bali and earn her Raw Vegan Chef certification, “and it was there that I really immersed myself in all the healing and abundant healthy food choices on the island. I wanted to bring that similar experience to Davao.”
It was also at that time that the Tupases’ son, Uno, went to Hua Hin, Thailand, to earn his plant-based certification.
With all that plant-based expertise in the family, the Tupases have four food brands under their name, all of which serve plant-powered food. “Up until now I still get overwhelmed thinking about how this landed us on Tatler’s list of restaurants and in Esquire’s 100 Best,” says Mimi, “and if I may borrow the words of Asia's Best Female Chef Gaita Forés, how she was blown away by our food. So this really overwhelms me, because it's something that began from our home and now we're sharing it with Manila and we’re really so excited to show you what our food is all about.”
Dietzsch gave the plant-based menu to The Westin’s sommelier and she paired the dishes with biodynamic wines.
“Biodynamic wines are not yet so popular here but back in Europe where I'm from, this has already been a trend,” notes Dietzsch. “These wines basically have less chemicals and are more sustainable, more focused on preserving the grape itself and treating it with natural ingredients.”
The first course was Mushroom Paté, a dish Mimi said she was very proud of. “The base is wild mushrooms that we made into a paté. Back in our hometown, we make our own vegan butter (from coconut, plant oils and nut milk). The usual things we indulge in, like butter and dairy, we made plant-based.”
This was truly a standout, as was the next dish, Buttered Cabbage.
“Cabbage is usually an accessory to Filipino dishes; just one of the sides of our sabaw,” notes Uno, who’s culinary director and GM of The Neighborhood Lifestyle Group. “So we made cabbage the highlight of this dish: we elevated it with our plant-based bagna cauda, an Italian sauce usually made with anchovies and capers. We made a plant-based version of that, and added some walnut ash.”
Uno was classically trained in French cuisine, so he used to love butter and eggs. When he tried a plant-based diet, eating mostly Clean Café food, he lost almost 100 pounds within six months!
So even if I’m not the biggest fan of watercress, I was eager to tuck into the Watercress Shot, a creamy soup featuring fresh watercress, buckwheat groats, truffle paste and a Shimeji mushroom confit.
“Watercress is usually used as a health shot,” Uno notes. “It's very nutrient-dense and healthy, very high in potassium. And it's a very good antioxidant, so with the more luxurious ingredients, I hope it elevates the flavors of the watercress.”
It certainly did, imbuing the soup with so much umami and texture, courtesy of the crunchy little groat balls.
The biodynamic wine paired with the three starters was La Mazel Cuvée Charbonniéres 2018, a bubbly chardonnay so sweet it tasted like a dessert wine.
Next came Tomato Panzanella Salad, an Italian-inspired dish Uno said was also an ode to sustainability. “We use tomatoes that are close to overripe and day-old bread, so this dish actually gets a lot of compliments from our guests at Made Simple, because they always question us if there's pork skin in the dish,” he says. “They find that the bread’s texture and flavors are akin to pork skin.”
Indeed, the bread’s robust crunch, golden-brown color and rich flavor reminded me of chicharon, so this was a feat of culinary camouflage.
Le Mazel Cuvée Larmande 2018, a bracing Syrah from France, cut the Panzanella’s richness nicely.
The next dish was Burnt Tomatoes, in which heirloom cherry tomatoes are caramelized and accompanied by plant-based ricotta, a seed cracker and paprika oil — a truly lovely creation.
The chosen wine paired, Henri Milan Le Grand Blanc 2018, a Grenache Blanc blend from France, had a mineral quality that was an ideal complement to the tomatoes.
The main course consisted of mushrooms prepared three ways. First was Mushroom Scallops, “inspired because one of the hardest things for us to give up is seafood,” says Uno. “And I love scallops. So I came up with the mushroom scallop dish to satiate the desire for seafood.”
Second was an Enoki Bouquet marinated with tamari and deep-fried, with a plant-based garlic aioli underneath, seasoned with black lava salt. This visually striking dish reminded me of a “blooming onion” except done with mushrooms, with a surprising, nori-like flavor.
The final plate was listed as “Wild Mushrooms” on the menu but Uno said it was actually forest mushrooms. “There's a mix of Portobello, Shimeji, Enoki, and shiitake sautéed.” Served with walnut ash, Persillade (parsley) sauce and plant-based ricotta, Uno said this dish was inspired after he took a hike to a very secluded waterfall. “This dish describes the lushness of the forests in Mindanao,” he says, as evident in the 3D garden of mushrooms and micro-greens on our plates.
Henri Milan Brut Nature Rosé 2019, a Grenache Noir from France, was a fitting counterpoint to the meatiness of all the mushrooms.
Dessert was Rosemary Olive Oil Cake, which Mimi said reminds her so much of family, Christmas and celebrations. “It also best describes me as a dessert: subtle flavors, I'd like to think it's sophisticated, but yeah, I hope you find the hints of rosemary, lemon, and most especially olive oil, and it's a fully plant-based dessert. I’m proud to say we made it without any eggs.”
It was a lovely, heartwarming and stomach-filling finish to the Tupases’ plant-based menu.
Plant-based buffet
The Westin Manila plans to incorporate many of Uno’s dishes into Seasonal Tastes’ lunch buffet: the watercress soup; mushroom-Adlai salad with beetroots and candied walnuts; a tempeh-mushroom grain bowl with lemon-garlic tahini; pesto pizza; an Asian salad with fish tofu, sambal matah and Asian dressing; roasted tofu and vegetable skewers with cauliflower rice and Tzatziki sauce; and the Rosemary Olive Oil Cake for dessert.
By the time we’d finished this feast, the Tupases had managed to bust another myth about plant-based cuisine, and how it’s not filling. I was ready to bust at the seams.
“It's our chance to show that we shouldn't be afraid of vegetables,” says Mimi. “We've been raised to believe that vegetables are to be feared, right? But for me, there are no bad vegetables; maybe there's just bad cooks?” she laughs.
No chance of that at The Westin Manila.
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The plant-based buffet dishes will be available at Westin’s Seasonal Tastes restaurant until July 31. The Westin Manila is located at San Miguel Avenue corner Lourdes Drive, Ortigas Center East, Mandaluyong City, tel. 8256-2020.
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