Chefs cook for charity
August 21, 2003 | 12:00am
Nothing could stop him from coming home to cook. Not even a New York blackout. Nobu executive chef Ricky Estrellado was about to leave New York when the blackout hit. When he got to the airport the next day, it took him three hours to get his bags checked in, another three hours of wait at the gate, and three hours more on the plane before the passengers were finally let out and told to come back the next day. "FAA has rules about people working for more than 15 hours because it causes overfatigue and they obviously won’t have that when they’re operating a plane," he explains.
With the city still dark the next day, he finally got on the same plane for the second time — and guess what? All the passengers had for the 14 hours of flight to the stopover in Japan were muffins and fruit juices because there the airport kitchens weren’t functioning due to the blackout. "We got restaurant vouchers for Narita, but that was 14 hours later," he laughs at the experience now.
Oh, the things one would go through to cook! Ricky grins when he says it couldn’t have been any other way. After all, he and his friends were cooking for charity, for children at that. No blackout, no American-Canadian row over whose fault the blackout was could stop him from coming home. No, sir, he would have walked all the way to JFK Airport if that’s what it took.
The charity dinner, set for Aug. 25, 26 and 27, is organized by Kai restaurant and ABS-CBN Foundation. It’s a redux of the Nobu dinner held in 2001, which was organized by Asia Society-Philippines headed by Doris Magsaysay Ho to raise funds for abused children. This time, Kai restaurant — which is co-owned by Ricco Ocampo, Rikki Dee and Doris Ho, among other partners — takes the lead, along with ABS-CBN Foundation, headed by Gina Lopez as managing director. All proceeds from the dinner will go to the Bantay Bata 163 Children’s Village Project, which will house more than 200 abused children. At present, six of the 10 residential cottages have been built with 80 children and 30 staff members as occupants. The fundraising event hopes to raise enough money to complete the remaining cottages.
There is an exciting difference between the first fundraising event and the upcoming one. While it will be the same chefs cooking, the food will be entirely different. Ricky says that the first one had a Nobu menu, while the second one will have a menu all their own. "I was proud of the first event, of course, because it showed people what we could do. But I think I’ll be prouder next week because I know this is our food. I still work for Nobu, but the dishes we’re doing for the event are the group’s, not his food."
Cooking alongside Ricky are his former associates at Nobu, New York — Gilbert Pangilinan and Mike Yap, who now run Kai in Greenbelt 2; Pierre Angeli Dee, now working at Susanna Foo restaurant in Philadelphia; and Rex Soriano, who recently joined a newly opened restaurant in Los Angeles. All the chefs are graduates of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, except for Ricky who finished at the New York Restaurant School.
The P5,000 per plate event is highlighted by a nine-course dinner starting with lobster tail sunomono in citrus shell, a seaweed and cucumber salad, which Ricky explains is traditionally done with vegetable or shrimp or crab instead of lobster. This is followed by sichimi-crusted hamachi with mixed greens and maple-ponzu vinaigrette; seared foie gras over anago, red miso-barbecue sauce; grilled seafood sampler, which includes uzu-marinated octopus, prawn with coconut-wasabi sauce; Chilean seabass with sweet, spicy sesame sauce; yamamomo granite; tempura tasting plate, which includes kaki age with scallop, curry-panko chicken katsu, and soft-shelled crab; Kobe beef pad thai; shishita shark’s fin soup; and coconut rice pudding maki, a bittersweet Valhrona chocolate wrapper with fresh fruit filling.
How did they develop the menu when two of the chefs are in Manila, one in LA, another in Philadelphia and Ricky in New York? For one, they burn the lines between Manila and the US. He explains that when he and Pierre would meet to try new restaurants in Philadelphia, they would study the dishes and experiment with their own recipes. "It’s just two hours’ drive from New York, so napag-uusapan namin over a meal. Let’s say we eat in a Thai restaurant, we’d think of how we can do our version of this food. It’s back and forth kuwentuhan, then we’d call Gilbert and Rex."
Ricky says they hope to have around 300 guests for the three-night event, to be held at Kai, which seats about a hundred. "The last one we had about 120 per night, and we added a third night because of the demand. We were working with St. Benilde students then; this time we have a trained kitchen staff at Kai."
Cooking is a non-stop learning experience, he says, and he likes being a mentor to young chefs. A lot of them go back to tell him that the chefs they worked for after Ricky were nothing like him. Ricky doesn’t throw pots and pans in the kitchen when a screw-up happens. He doesn’t curse his staff the way other chefs do. He says that the stereotypical chef throwing a tantrum in the kitchen is often true — his Japanese mentor was like that, too. "He was a great teacher, and I learned from him, but I didn’t want to imbibe his attitude towards his people. Pati nga si Nobu namura niya eh. In school, you never have that kind of experience because even if they’re chefs, they’re your teachers. In the real world, they’re your boss, they can yell at you, curse at you and you can get fired."
He’s had 15 Filipinos working for him at Nobu since he started.
Ricky Estrellado started at Nobu New York nine years ago. Back then he was the prep guy — peeling potatoes, opening oysters, etc., doing the job nobody wanted to do but every neophyte had to. From preparation, he went to making the sauces, then working the salads. "I didn’t know the managers and owners were watching us, and they saw that I was all over the restaurant and doing a good job. When the prep person quit, I was put there again because I was the only one willing to do it and able to make the sauces at the same time."
One time, the general manager came down to the basement and asked Ricky, "What are you doing there?" Ricky relates, "I said they told me to come down here and he said, ‘You’re the best cook upstairs, go back up.’ I didn’t even know he knew me by name. A few months later, they fired the chef and I replaced him even though the others had more experience than I did."
Today Ricky is executive chef at both Nobu Next Door and Nobu New York. With him at the helm, he’s hired about 15 Filipino chefs since he started. He has cooked for celebrities and politicians, from Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz to Woody Allen and Soon Yi Previn, from Hillary and Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky (on separate occasions, naturally), from Madonna to Denzel Washington, from New York City Mayors Rudolf Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg.
The story goes that two days after Norah Jones won her eight Grammys, she ate at Nobu and nobody recognized her until she got the check. "She had one of the worst tables in the restaurant," he says laughing. "The next time she came, she was with Harvey Keitel, VIP table na."
Roberto Benigni, right after he won his Oscars for Best Actor and Best Foreign Picture in LA, was at Nobu New York, where he stood on top of the table and the diners gave him a standing ovation.
Ricky lets out a boyish grin and says, "Hanggang ngayon starstruck pa rin ako. Anybody who’s anybody would have been to Nobu at least once in their lifetime."
He’s also cooked off-site for private parties and fund-raising events at the most beautiful homes in New York.
Does he want to follow in the footsteps of his boss, chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa (who has actor Robert De Niro and Tribeca Grill owner Drew Nieporent as his partners), who now has his own line of sauces, cookbooks and soon dinnerware collection? "I want to prove myself first," Ricky says.
Yet his ultimate dream remains "to make Filipino cuisine known abroad." But first, he must make a difference right here. According to Ricco Ocampo, Kai means "gathering" in Japanese. It’s a wonderful suggestion that when 300 people gather together, they can make a difference in abused children’s lives.
To make reservations for the Kai for Kids fundraising dinner on Aug. 25, 26 and 27, call Loralee Baron at 757-5209, 757-5210 or 0917-8151023. The event will be held at Kai restaurant in Greenbelt 2, Ayala Center, Makati City.
With the city still dark the next day, he finally got on the same plane for the second time — and guess what? All the passengers had for the 14 hours of flight to the stopover in Japan were muffins and fruit juices because there the airport kitchens weren’t functioning due to the blackout. "We got restaurant vouchers for Narita, but that was 14 hours later," he laughs at the experience now.
Oh, the things one would go through to cook! Ricky grins when he says it couldn’t have been any other way. After all, he and his friends were cooking for charity, for children at that. No blackout, no American-Canadian row over whose fault the blackout was could stop him from coming home. No, sir, he would have walked all the way to JFK Airport if that’s what it took.
The charity dinner, set for Aug. 25, 26 and 27, is organized by Kai restaurant and ABS-CBN Foundation. It’s a redux of the Nobu dinner held in 2001, which was organized by Asia Society-Philippines headed by Doris Magsaysay Ho to raise funds for abused children. This time, Kai restaurant — which is co-owned by Ricco Ocampo, Rikki Dee and Doris Ho, among other partners — takes the lead, along with ABS-CBN Foundation, headed by Gina Lopez as managing director. All proceeds from the dinner will go to the Bantay Bata 163 Children’s Village Project, which will house more than 200 abused children. At present, six of the 10 residential cottages have been built with 80 children and 30 staff members as occupants. The fundraising event hopes to raise enough money to complete the remaining cottages.
There is an exciting difference between the first fundraising event and the upcoming one. While it will be the same chefs cooking, the food will be entirely different. Ricky says that the first one had a Nobu menu, while the second one will have a menu all their own. "I was proud of the first event, of course, because it showed people what we could do. But I think I’ll be prouder next week because I know this is our food. I still work for Nobu, but the dishes we’re doing for the event are the group’s, not his food."
Cooking alongside Ricky are his former associates at Nobu, New York — Gilbert Pangilinan and Mike Yap, who now run Kai in Greenbelt 2; Pierre Angeli Dee, now working at Susanna Foo restaurant in Philadelphia; and Rex Soriano, who recently joined a newly opened restaurant in Los Angeles. All the chefs are graduates of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, except for Ricky who finished at the New York Restaurant School.
The P5,000 per plate event is highlighted by a nine-course dinner starting with lobster tail sunomono in citrus shell, a seaweed and cucumber salad, which Ricky explains is traditionally done with vegetable or shrimp or crab instead of lobster. This is followed by sichimi-crusted hamachi with mixed greens and maple-ponzu vinaigrette; seared foie gras over anago, red miso-barbecue sauce; grilled seafood sampler, which includes uzu-marinated octopus, prawn with coconut-wasabi sauce; Chilean seabass with sweet, spicy sesame sauce; yamamomo granite; tempura tasting plate, which includes kaki age with scallop, curry-panko chicken katsu, and soft-shelled crab; Kobe beef pad thai; shishita shark’s fin soup; and coconut rice pudding maki, a bittersweet Valhrona chocolate wrapper with fresh fruit filling.
How did they develop the menu when two of the chefs are in Manila, one in LA, another in Philadelphia and Ricky in New York? For one, they burn the lines between Manila and the US. He explains that when he and Pierre would meet to try new restaurants in Philadelphia, they would study the dishes and experiment with their own recipes. "It’s just two hours’ drive from New York, so napag-uusapan namin over a meal. Let’s say we eat in a Thai restaurant, we’d think of how we can do our version of this food. It’s back and forth kuwentuhan, then we’d call Gilbert and Rex."
Ricky says they hope to have around 300 guests for the three-night event, to be held at Kai, which seats about a hundred. "The last one we had about 120 per night, and we added a third night because of the demand. We were working with St. Benilde students then; this time we have a trained kitchen staff at Kai."
Cooking is a non-stop learning experience, he says, and he likes being a mentor to young chefs. A lot of them go back to tell him that the chefs they worked for after Ricky were nothing like him. Ricky doesn’t throw pots and pans in the kitchen when a screw-up happens. He doesn’t curse his staff the way other chefs do. He says that the stereotypical chef throwing a tantrum in the kitchen is often true — his Japanese mentor was like that, too. "He was a great teacher, and I learned from him, but I didn’t want to imbibe his attitude towards his people. Pati nga si Nobu namura niya eh. In school, you never have that kind of experience because even if they’re chefs, they’re your teachers. In the real world, they’re your boss, they can yell at you, curse at you and you can get fired."
He’s had 15 Filipinos working for him at Nobu since he started.
Ricky Estrellado started at Nobu New York nine years ago. Back then he was the prep guy — peeling potatoes, opening oysters, etc., doing the job nobody wanted to do but every neophyte had to. From preparation, he went to making the sauces, then working the salads. "I didn’t know the managers and owners were watching us, and they saw that I was all over the restaurant and doing a good job. When the prep person quit, I was put there again because I was the only one willing to do it and able to make the sauces at the same time."
One time, the general manager came down to the basement and asked Ricky, "What are you doing there?" Ricky relates, "I said they told me to come down here and he said, ‘You’re the best cook upstairs, go back up.’ I didn’t even know he knew me by name. A few months later, they fired the chef and I replaced him even though the others had more experience than I did."
Today Ricky is executive chef at both Nobu Next Door and Nobu New York. With him at the helm, he’s hired about 15 Filipino chefs since he started. He has cooked for celebrities and politicians, from Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz to Woody Allen and Soon Yi Previn, from Hillary and Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky (on separate occasions, naturally), from Madonna to Denzel Washington, from New York City Mayors Rudolf Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg.
The story goes that two days after Norah Jones won her eight Grammys, she ate at Nobu and nobody recognized her until she got the check. "She had one of the worst tables in the restaurant," he says laughing. "The next time she came, she was with Harvey Keitel, VIP table na."
Roberto Benigni, right after he won his Oscars for Best Actor and Best Foreign Picture in LA, was at Nobu New York, where he stood on top of the table and the diners gave him a standing ovation.
Ricky lets out a boyish grin and says, "Hanggang ngayon starstruck pa rin ako. Anybody who’s anybody would have been to Nobu at least once in their lifetime."
He’s also cooked off-site for private parties and fund-raising events at the most beautiful homes in New York.
Does he want to follow in the footsteps of his boss, chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa (who has actor Robert De Niro and Tribeca Grill owner Drew Nieporent as his partners), who now has his own line of sauces, cookbooks and soon dinnerware collection? "I want to prove myself first," Ricky says.
Yet his ultimate dream remains "to make Filipino cuisine known abroad." But first, he must make a difference right here. According to Ricco Ocampo, Kai means "gathering" in Japanese. It’s a wonderful suggestion that when 300 people gather together, they can make a difference in abused children’s lives.
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