One hot chef, six foodies & a dream at Felix

The word is on everybody’s lips. On food lovers’ lips, that is. There is a new restaurant in Greenbelt 5 called Felix and it is oh so good.

How can it not be good? The chef is FlorabelCo, that culinary  won-der  woman with the Midas touch. All the restaurants she has opened — from Florabel at The Podium to Ten Titas and SumoSan, to Floring’s in TriNoma — are the current faves of Manila’s gourmets and gourmands.

When Florabel partners with Ben Chan — the highly respected retailer behind the Bench group of stores, who is likewise gifted with the Midas touch and who happens to have a taste for good food — you get a double winner.

And when Florabel and Ben invite more foodies to join in, namely, Philippine showbiz royalty (they’re kitchen royalty as well) Richard Gomez and Lucy Torres, Bench executives Virgilio and Nene Lim, and architect Miguel Pastor — well, you get the picture. Excellent cuisine, reasonable prices, loving service and a design vision.

“I am the best customer any restaurant can have,” laughs Ben, who admits that he hardly eats at home. Always eager to try new dishes here and abroad, and always in search of a good place to entertain visiting foreign partners or business associates, he probably thought: “I might as well open a resto serving food that I like.”

Florabel was the likely partner for such a resto in Ben’s mind. “Florabel is a family friend. She was the high school classmate of my niece Kristine Lim, and that early, I saw her passion for cooking. I would often challenge her to whip up some dishes and she would eagerly concoct recipes and come up with interesting surprises. For a delicious appetizer, Florabel tinged the tips of prawn tempura with crab aligue. For a healthy, yummy soup, she used malunggay leaves sparked by egg white and some secret spices,” Ben explains.

The food industry knows Florabel Co as one of Le Souflle’s hot chefs for eight years. Florabel made the South Beach Diet the du jour miracle slimmer for Manila’s cosmopolitan set.

“Straight from her hotel and restaurant management course at UST, we hired Florabel after apprenticing with us,” says Jessie Sincioco, Le Souflle’s big boss, who saw her potential. “She was a very dedicated, very responsible kitchen team member and a very good leader as well.”

What made Richard and Lucy join in? “Lucy dreams of having a small hotel or a bed-and-breakfast inn in some magical place. Whenever we both dream, she would mention that. One day, Ben Chan asked us if we would be interested in putting up a restaurant together with Florabel Co, Miguel Pastor and the Lim family. We said ‘yes’ right away since we all love to eat together,” Richard narrates.

“Richard and I really love to eat out. Our credit card bill each month is 80 percent food,” says Lucy. “When Ben invited us to join, we did not even think twice. We knew we were in good company. I really like Florabel as a person. She is always pleasant, always smiling, and her love for her craft is always evident. Honestly, I wonder how she does everything all at the same time — operating many restaurants and being hands-on in all of them.”

“Yes, we all share one common passion — food. We originally conceptualized Felix as an Asian bistro. We wanted to create a modern family dining hall that exudes the same homey warmth when you’re dining in your friend’s cosmopolitan abode,” explains Miguel who designed the interiors for Felix.

For Felix, Miguel combined wood with fuchsia glass, bronze mirrors and a distinct wallpaper pattern to lend an atmosphere of casual home dining. He used horizontal planters with malvarosa, an angel fern grown in Laguna, as seat dividers. “This is to make you feel like you’re dining in the garden. We wanted to bring Greenbelt 5’s marvelous landscape inside Felix,” adds Miguel.

Outside, Miguel used tiny shrubs to border the 40-seater al fresco dining area of Felix using coffee-colored wicker chairs. An exterior bar is set at the center and soon Felix will be serving oysters and champagne for those who want to enjoy early evening cocktails.

“Filipinos have become more sophisticated and adventurous when it comes to eating, but at the end of the day, they will always look for comfort food,” declares Florabel.

“And they will always go for reasonably priced food,” explain Virgilio and Nene. “Good pricing is very important.”

How important is ambience? “No amount of hype and buzz will succeed if the food isn’t great. There is no substitute for good food coupled with the right atmosphere, which should be relaxed and friendly,” Ben clarifies.

So what the group did was hold a series of food-tasting sessions, sampling some 50 dishes at a time. They wrote down their comments and gave Florabel suggestions based on some dishes they have relished on trips abroad.

“We are very spontaneous foodies. We go where our feet and appetites will take us,” says Lucy. “We are the type who will try anything.”

“I remember taking Lucy to Saint Michel in Paris during our honeymoon to try out the best frog legs ever, only to find out she doesn’t like them because these reminded her of the frog she dissected for her biology class. Too bad I was the only one who got a kick out of frog legs,” says Richard.

Lucy declares: “Richard is the real cook at home. He grew up watching his Lola Kelly cook in the kitchen. He is so talented in the kitchen. Juliana and I feel like princesses when Richard gets up in the middle of the night to make us hotel-quality omelets with bacon and onion leek, fried rice or panini with cheese and Parma ham. He even bakes cupcakes, pudding or meringue for no occasion at all. He is a real sweetheart.”

Yes, Richard may as well be our very own Bobby Flay. “Yes, I have been using the griller a lot lately to try out dishes inspired by Bobby Flay. I love preparing food for family and friends. I love doing pasta and a variety of other dishes, and I really go to the deli and S&R, my favorite grocery, to get special ingredients for recipes I want to try at home,” says a proudly beaming Richard.

Diners can be sure that Felix ‘s final menu is “the best of the best, a collection of favorites straight from the hearts and appetites of real foodies,” smiles Lucy.

The choices at Felix come from the kitchen genius Florabel, whose culinary adventures in other places, from Hong Kong to France to Greece, are somehow reflected in her menu. Fact is, most of the dishes at Felix are named after cities.

If Ben had his way, one dish at Felix would probably be named Milan, where his favorite haunt and dream shopping-dining place, Corso Como, is located. “We love everything in Corso Como. Like fashion, food never sleeps, and this is one destination we never miss whenever we’re in Milan. One can shop at Corso Como, drink outside or have a fantastic, unforgettable dinner. You can discover vintage pieces, hard-to-find music and art books, and check out art exhibits, all at Corso Como. This is one place where fashion and style are combined with food and ambience. This has inspired us to search beyond our own expertise,” Ben and Miguel declare.

“Greenbelt 5 is probably the closest answer we’ve got to Milan’s Corso Como,” explains Ben. “The branding of Greenbelt 5 as the place for high-heeled fashion habitués to shop, combined with the regular business dining crowd, means you have a captured lifestyle market this side of town. I wouldn’t have passed this opportunity of coming up with a new concept that would give the best synergy to fashion. Not every fashion brand has plunged into this with the same ambition. Felix, for example, is more matter-of-fact than part of a business strategy. Felix is a response to what we thought would do well in Greenbelt.”

Yes, Felix is doing well. Thanks to one hot chef and six passionate foodies. And their dreams.