So new yet so fab

A new look and a new menu are Old Manila’s latest come-ons. And the ingredients for the fabulous visual and gastronomic experience at The Peninsula Manila’s premier resto were cooked up by no less than Filipina artist and STAR columnist Impy Pilapil and Belgian specialty chef Nicolas De Visch.

The east meets west flavor is all over. Seats are wrapped in buff-colored fabric silkscreened with images of people from colonial to contemporary Manila.

Plate liners and vases in distressed metal while fashioned by traditional craftsmen, are fashioned along very sleek lines. De Visch’s new dishes fuse the classic occidental cuisine he is very familiar with, with popular favorites from the orient. Think salmon wrapped in nori or empanada with orange and carrot vinaigrette.

Impy’s paintings meanwhile, with their bold application of bright hues, mirror both the Fauvists’ love for color and the festive tones of local fiestas.

It took friends Impy and Peninsula Manila’s PR manager-F&B Mariano Garchitorena to whip up the plan for the restaurant’s new interiors. "The idea was to give the restaurant a more modern feel and transform it into a sort of restaurant-gallery, a very popular trend these days. After Impy, we shall invite other artists to show their works here," says Garchitorena. "By the way, all the artworks are for sale," he adds. Centerpiece of the new look is a three-panel glass relief by Impy. The piece is yet another product of the artist’s fascination with water. The large-scale work that dominates the dining hall is punctuated with bursts of brilliant bubbles and prismatic colors, usually seen when light strikes through water. These strokes of color gracefully travel across the composition like waves do out in the open sea.

The water theme blends very well with the restaurant’s latest offerings as chef De Visch is partial to fish and seafood dishes. Like an artist who knows his material, fish is best suited to this chef’s style. "Fish has always been a main part of my work. I come from Belgium where we have lots of fresh fish. It is always very easy to be creative with fish," he says. "You can add everything to fish but not meat. For example, I can add meat sauce to fish but not fish sauce to meat. Then there is also the freedom for the decoration – the freedom to give unique forms to a fillet or a whole fish. With meat, if you have tenderloin, it’s always round."

De Visch’s creativity with fish and seafood dishes is mirrored in these inspired concoctions: Pan-fired spicy Australian Murray cod with squid ink linguini and curry sauce, nage of baby sole and fennel seed, bok choy and crab tortellini, grilled lobster, Granny Smith apple and curry sauce, onion Bajhi and coriander pasta and lemon grass skewer tiger prawns with oriental risotto.

It must be added, however, that De Visch is just as good when it comes to meat and poultry. Roast breast of guinea fowl with Chinese chard and cabbage, lime and wasabi jus, pan-fried veal tenderloin and orange infused polenta, carrot and ginger sauce and galette of pigeon with sauteed sprouts, sesame and soya reduction are but some of the meat and poultry dishes he does with relish.

De Visch admits that aside from the glass relief, Impy’s paintings are another source of inspiration for him.

For these artworks, Impy opted for bold splashes of color all over the canvas with images associated with Manila outlined in white. Thus, one makes out subtle suggestions of a calesa, a church or the walls of Intramuros through the color fields.

The pieces reflect the very clean and precise lines characteristic of Impy’s prints and serigraphs. It will be recalled that as an artist, she started out doing prints. From here, she moved on to serigraphs where textures began to emerge. What followed was a transition from two- to three- dimensional works.

The shift to glass for art material was inevitable. "I have always been fascinated by water and to achieve its transparency, the ideal material, of course, is glass," she says.

Chef De Visch matches the brilliant hues of Impy’s works in his food presentations. For pigments, he relies on natural, edible ingredients that he mixes with some cornstarch to achieve the consistency of gouache. "For red I can use chili; for green, the chlorophyll in leafy vegetables; for orange, I can use turmeric and squid ink for black," he says.

With this palette, De Visch replicates Impy’s color splashes on the dinner plates, creating fantastic backdrops for his savory dishes.

Another way chef De Visch incorporates color to a dish is by using food products that are already infused with color. For instance, instead of the usual spaghetti, he uses tri-color pasta. Chef De Visch considers color as very important in the presentation of food and he never fails to make full use of the natural colors found in every ingredient. "In salmon, for example, the skin is green, the meat either orange or pink," he says.

De Visch's desserts are just as colorful. His rosewater candied fruits on passion fruit sorbet and iced bitter chocolate are a composition brimming with a variety of shades, not to mention textures. Ditto for the soft ice of champagne on strawberry jus and cacao crisp.

Of course, it must be mentioned that all the dishes taste as yummy as they look.