Ninyo is deliciously yours
MANILA, Philippines - It’s usually after a meal that a restaurant becomes personal to you, when you answer the comment sheet you’ve drawn up in your head, checking off “Yes” or “No” on whether you’ll come back to it.
That Ninyo sits unassumingly amid a cluster of gated houses—the scholastic strip of Katipunan Avenue; all that stands between the restaurant and the behemoth school grounds of Ateneo de Manila—already makes you feel privy to a place that, already with its name, intimates its being “yours.” So that as soon as you’ve located its signage like you would the house number of someone you’re visiting for the first time, crossed its stone-and-wood slab path walk, and treaded upon a partially transparent veranda that reveals a koi pond just beneath, you’ll wonder how a space baring the embellishments of a private hideaway could be so accommodating.
It gets more personal considering Ninyo Fusion Cuisine & Wine Lounge began as In-Yo, born from Chef Niño Laus’s partnering with an ex-girlfriend who also held a degree in hotel and restaurant management. The natural recourse after a breakup was the decision to retreat to family and forge on in providing quite the culinary retreat to visitors—even if the restaurant could have once been a different kind of retreat. “We wanted to turn it into a spa before, when no one was arriving. It looked like it anyway,” Chef Niño admits of Ninyo’s first few months of operation.
“Until a food critic came in. And another. And wala na, that was the start,” says Carla Laus.
Off The Eatin’ Track
As staid as the term “fusion” has become, becoming a drop-word in dining that connotes pretense and the promise of being underwhelmed, Ninyo has managed to skim off its triteness and raise the heat on the concept once more. You could expect this of its 29-year-old chef, who’s been known to play with his food. Notable stints at the Century Park Sheraton Hotel, Kai, and Parallax 45 may have aroused the exuberance and sense of rediscovery evident in Chef Niño’s reinvigorating French culinary classics by shuttling them through an Eastern route (and vice-versa)—Oysters Rockefeller topped with ebiko (red caviar); the richness of duck leg confit parried by an edamame risi bisi; honey-glazed grilled salmon with sweet citrus miso, the paste similarly used to marinate a rack of lamb that’s startlingly complemented by wasabi mashed potatoes. Even an English snack staple like fish and chips gets displaced from convention by the whimsical, Japanese-style threading of potatoes and the combination of nori (seaweed) with dory, the former encrusting the latter. All evidence that with the boldness of finding new sensations in typical European and Asian fare, balance is of great import to the chef.
“I do matching. Unagi is meant to be served with something sweet. What’s sweet? So I thought of cotton candy,” Chef Niño shares of the cloud of butterscotch floss he decided to lay upon a fillet of pili-topped barbecued eel; the fantastical idea finding its way from his head to the bed of Oborio sushi rice it rests artfully upon. “I thought of making sauces into flosses, so I looked for a cotton candy machine to make my idea work. For example, I wanted to make a teriyaki cotton candy—that’s fun, right? I wanted to be innovative in the way that it’s modern.”
“Sauces into flosses,” Carla repeats delightedly, admiring her brother’s clever improvisation, the rampancy of which has made for a Special Chef’s Menu every Monday, taste-triumphant innovations from the kitchen going beyond the usual chef’s recommendation. Accompanying the re-imagined dishes is the siblings’ flourish in offering them, such as in Ninyo’s degustation menus, playful both with their presentation and to diners’ palates.
There was a recent seven-courser for Father’s Day, inspired by The Godfather, with an “Italian skew that still imbibes the Asian-European fusion”; good fathers treated to an inventive dish like the crab ravioli with a cunningly criminal twist of rich and tangy uni-yuzu sauce. And as a tribute to Ninyo’s French connection, Carla rhapsodizes about the Bastille Day (July 14) menu: “It’s probably the biggest holiday in France, so being a big French-Japanese fusion restaurant, we wanted to do a special degustation for that particular day.
“But it’ll go on for an entire week. It’ll be more French-skewed, of course, and we’ll pair it with wines,” she continues, fingers wrapped around the glass of Sangiovese she’s picked out for us, subdued as it is for a midday libation. A recent transplant from Vietnam, the former advertising executive does more toasts now than pitches, being the resident oeno-and audiophile at the upstairs wine lounge. “Ninyo is very much family-run. While my mom is always there handling operations and my brother’s handling the kitchen, I’m handling the alcohol,” Carla laughs, a little more than satisfied by the 100-or-so wines she’s stocked the lounge’s cellar with — from varietals that accommodate more serious swillers (Bordeaux to Valpolicella) to bottles given a party-hardy punch by Christian Audigier, lord of the Ed Hardy label. The varied selection in intoxication mixes well with the fusion of sound that enlivens the compact space, so that whether Barbie Almalbis is at the mic or the boys of Radioactive Sago Project have brought the sax and guitars out, your sensory engagement is heightened by that accompaniment of choice vino.
“The lounge is really more a place for steady nights out—if you really want a nice conversation with people that you’re close to over glasses…bottles of wine,” says Carla, who, as a singer-on-the-side for her all-girl band The Marshas, has enriched Ninyo’s live lineup with an assortment of musician friends, as well as the occasional stand-up comedy act.
Dishing On A Citi Secret
Lying back on one of the lounge’s woven chairs amid interiors that constitute tropical modern rest house, maybe even clinking glasses with a new acquaintance out on the balcony from a shared appreciation for the easy atmosphere, it’s almost as if you’d arrived at Ninyo with a private dinner party invitation rather than a reservation—the Lauses as your hosts, of course. “What our guests like is it being cozy and intimate,” says Carla, mentioning the restaurant’s inclusion in insider cuisine companion Manila’s Best Kept Restaurant Secrets and disclosing their hesitance in taking up offers to branch out in malls. “We’re still open but in some place that isn’t super-commercialized, so we can somehow transfer the charm and beauty we have here to a location that’s more accessible.”
The charm is what has indeed made Ninyo a gourmet getaway for celebrities and politicians looking to relish food that, as with the ambience, is itself a spectacle. Carla also cites the oft-preferred option of dining behind the curtains in one of Ninyo’s private gazebos, the night air and trickle of fountain water within earshot inciting many a popped question. “A lot of people (decide to) get married here. The fact that you bring someone to a place like this—it means something special,” she muses.
While bites of the sweet chili sauce-drizzled, alfalfa-topped fried spring roll are good flavorful ground between sips of wine, the Citi allows for more discovery by granting 25 percent off on the seven-course Bastille Degustation until July 21. It’s indication that the foremost card company is set on putting more value in the drinking and dining experience, Ninyo among 1,000 restaurants Citibank has partnered with in offering a little something extra in the realm of fine eats.
“It’s the first time a company is bold enough to do this—we want to be the first, being the leader in the credit card industry. Our Best Practice sharing is our edge over competitors,” says Martha Aguila, vice president of Citi’s Cards business group, of the dining privileges program that draws its rewards from a study in dining habits of a million of Citibank’s cardholders. From the success of the Gourmet Pleasures Program in Singapore, it is now a cross-border campaign that includes exclusive deals in 5,000 top dining establishments across the Asia-Pacific region; they guarantee that if cardholders to spot a better offer from another card company they will reimbursed for the Citi deal’s difference in cost.
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Ninyo Fusion Cuisine & Wine Lounge is located at 66 Esteban Abada Street, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Citibank’s Dining Privileges Programs runs until June 30, 2011. For more information, log on to http://www.citiworldprivileges.com/
