When it’s lunchtime, and you’re invited to dine on French food at a restaurant called Old Manila, you willingly go along, even if the situation is a bit puzzling at first. Modern French fare by way of Old Manila?
All soon becomes clear. Patrice Martineau, the chef de cuisine of Peter, a restaurant-bar in The Peninsula Tokyo, is guest chef at The Peninsula Manila for a week, and he’s here not only to give Manila diners at taste of Peter’s hip cuisine, but also to mark the fact that The Peninsula is finally debuting in Europe in 2013.
“We’re opening in Paris next year on Avenue Kléber, in a Beaux Arts building built in 1854 where the Treaty of Vietnam was signed,” says Mariano Garchitorena, The Pen’s public relations director. “We’re the last major hotel chain to open there,” he admits, attributing the long wait to finding the right location, “and transferring that preferred kind of hospitality to France.”
The storied building, which opened in 1908 as the Majestic Hotel and is but a few steps away from the Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe, will retain its magnificent façade but will be gutted and completely rebuilt from the inside out. Knowing the hotel’s brand of service and luxury, however, we’re sure it will be a Cinderella transformation.
Before The Peninsula Paris opens, however, you can taste what’s been shaking up classic French cuisine in “Les Saveurs de France,” a weeklong food promotion at Old Manila.
“The new trend in the last 10 years is to cook with no cream or butter,” says chef Martineau. “Instead you use the natural moisture of the vegetables, for example.”
While that might sound like good news to health-conscious eaters who regard rich, fatty food as so “old school,” others might be thinking, “Sacrebleu! No cream or butter? And you call that French food?”
But Martineau, who looks like a prime advocate for healthy eating with his fit runner’s physique (he runs the Tokyo Marathon every year), is such a creative, inspired chef that he had us convinced from first course to last.
To wit, his amuse bouche was a Tomato Degustation — tomato served three ways: as a cold soup, tiny panini sandwiching sun-dried tomatoes, and au naturel with the stems on. The flavors were pure, razor-sharp and brought me back to Italy, where ruby-red, sweet-as-sugar tomatoes are plentiful, used abundantly and yet manage to be objects of reverence at the same time.
Next came marinated scallops beautifully arranged around a chunk of spiced watermelon, soon to be doused with a crimson citrus broth that Martineau pours from a little pot. It’s not a soup, he clarifies, but spiced watermelon juice with wasabi. I later asked him what Philippine ingredient inspired him most and he answered, “Mango.” You’ll taste that inspiration here via the accompanying mango-passion fruit chutney. Again, the flavors are very fresh, very clean, very light. I’m starting to sense a theme here.
The fish course is a Tasmanian salmon confit with caramelized fresh fig, lettuce mousseline, crispy potato and a smoked salmon salad. This is salmon two ways, and I fell in love with the confit — the skin brushed with a translucent tempura batter then seared to a perfect crunch. The salmon salad was rather assertively seasoned, but then nicely offset by the sweetness of the figs (also from Australia).
Chef Martineau has a special fondness for this dish: “I like the activity of creating food that’s light, nicely presented, and don’t use cream or butter,” he says.
Well, maybe he uses just a little cream. In the main course, Champagne-poached French heritage red label chicken with a celery trio and mushroom fricassee, the chicken is cooked in a Champagne called Deutz made especially for The Peninsula … and cream!
Devoid of bones and skin, and left quivering and vulnerable, I’ve never tasted chicken this fine, with a texture you could cut through with a spoon. The chef prepares it sous-vide-style — putting the breasts in a plastic bag and cooking them at 60 degrees for one hour — but he’s also working with a top-drawer ingredient: red-label free-range chicken from Lyon, ranked and categorized as the French do their wines. “It’s the best chicken you can have,” Martineau says, and I heartily agree.
With 20 years of experience in the kitchen, Martineau, who hails from the Champagne region of France, started as a pastry chef at first. He had a sweet tooth so naturally he was drawn to spinning his own sugary confections. But after a few years he found “flour and eggs very limiting,” and so wanted to expand his repertoire.
After learning of his background as a pastry chef, of course we were eager to try his dessert, an apple-citrus Vacherin with Granny Smith apple gelée, cider reduction and Calvados Chantilly cream. The snowy-white disc of meringue shattered under my spoon, adding crisp bits to the cream underneath. With the Japanese citrus yuzu in the gelée on top, it’s a pitch-perfect balance of tart and sweet, crunchy and pillow-soft — an exquisite dessert you can’t miss.
Martineau’s five years in Japan have obviously influenced his cooking. The Peninsula Tokyo is located in the vibrant Ginza district, and he says the Japanese and their culture inspire him. They, in turn, love to try new things, and are understandably flattered when he uses indigenous ingredients like yuzu and wasabi.
By now, even if I was the slightest bit tipsy from the white wines, I realized that I had journeyed through France, the US, Australia and Japan through what I had been served on the plate. Not bad for one lunch at Old Manila.
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“Les Saveurs de France” is ongoing until Saturday, June 30, at Old Manila in The Peninsula Manila. Chef Patrice Martineau will also be holding a wine-pairing dinner tonight with a five-course menu, and a Peninsula Academy cooking class on June 30. For inquiries or reservations, call The Peninsula Manila at 887-2888, e-mail diningpmn@peninsula.com or visit Peninsula.com.