Designing Space & Food

When you talk about Azzurro design, you may well be talking about two things: The design of the space and the design of the food. There are two kinds of creativity at work here. The design of the restaurant is based on the simplest of shapes: a cube – high, flat cushions wrapped in gorgeous suede, lattice-backed chairs in black leather, quadrilateral poufs that one can sink in. Then there is the food: simple but complex – a careful planning of the plate that is brought to each diner at a table – a drizzle of cream sauce, a dollop of white chocolate, a circle of olive oil.

The recently opened Azzurro Bistro and Lounge at Sommerset Millennium on Aguirre St. in Legaspi Village, Makati was designed along styles that go beyond clichés. Michelin-star chef Philip Golding, who was a professor at the Center for Culinary Arts (CCA) and who is now involved with the Culinary Education Foundation, has mastered the Filipino palate. With his European training, he has made subtle alterations to Azzurro’s Mediterranean repertoire through the years. If seasons were to be compared with his food, one can say that there’s a definite taste of summer in Philip’s salads, a taste of springtime in the pastas, autumn in the risotto and winter in the tenderloin steaks with mushrooms.

Philip is no stranger to Filipino gourmets, of course. He has been featured many times in media – wearing his toque for different restaurants until four years ago when he joined Azzurro – this chef who has worked with the legendary French chef Paul Bocuse. When asked how important styling the plate is, Philip answered, "There are two things I’ve learned that are very important. First of all, there has to be a wow. People should come in and say, wow, that’s interesting. Then it should be followed by an oomph. Sometimes, you find that with hotel food people are sometimes disappointed – there’s the wow but the taste of the food is not so wow. You have to understand that hotel chefs come here for two years and they don’t get to understand the Filipino palate. Just like me when I first came here, it was a shock. Everything was either very salty or citrusy or very sharp. My wife would eat strawberries with salt instead of sugar, mango with bagoong, stuff like that."

These days, just like interior designers who have rediscovered Filipino materials and given them global appeal, Philip is using more local ingredients and doing wonders with them. Three years ago, he wouldn’t be caught dead using singkamas or kangkong in his dishes, but these humble vegetables now figure prominently in some of his creations, like his duck breast salad.

He has become experimental but at the same time more defined. People know what to expect of him. There are customers who walk in and tell Philip, who’s incidentally at Azzurro every day, to cook for them what’s not on the menu. A few nights before the interview, somebody walked in and said, could you cook us pandan chicken? He’s also cooked modern Indian food for a wedding party.

In a Mediterranean restaurant? Well, why not?

Sheila Romero, who owns the restaurant with Philip Golding and Cory Untalan, says the move from Glorietta Mall to Sommerset Millennium comes at the right time. "With this space, we can already accommodate functions and private parties. Since we started in 1999, we found that people like privacy when they’re dating or doing business lunches or dinners. Here, it’s more quiet and intimate."

That’s where her sister Trisha Bermudez took her cue. When planning the restaurant’s interiors, she had to ask herself: Should Azzurro with its murals of sea and sun stick with the traditional design or totally go in a new direction? After all, the trompe l’oeil had become the restaurant’s signature in more ways than one. (Azzurro means blue in Italian and the name denotes sun and waves, a reflection not only of the cultures bound by the Mediterranean Sea but by similarities in cuisine as well.)

"The trompe l’oeil in the old location was done by German artist Malcolm Golding. I really wished that the mural was on a canvas so we could bring it," says Trisha. It would have been the right time for her to do trompe l’oeil, too, having just taken courses in faux finishes at the New York School of Interior Design. Since they could hardly rip out the walls, Trisha did wood veneer on top of the trompe l’oeil "so if you take the veneer panels out, the trompe l’oeil is still at the back."

That space is now occupied by a Spargo franchise, a mid-range restaurant that popularized the concept of hanging skewers, which is also owned by the Azzurro Group.

Trisha and Sheila decided to depart from the look of the original Azzurro. And what a direction they’ve taken! The new Azzurro is modern, characterized by geometric lines and the luxurious textures of suede, velvet and leather. Abstract artworks by Ivan Acuna give the place color and warmth.

"The inspiration was New York, all the things that I saw there," she says. "Very modern but not stark. It’s cozy, a place that invites you to stay, chat and have drinks. I’ve been to so many restaurants and bars in the States and I kind of picked up things that I liked. My favorite restaurant abroad, Le Colonial, looks so different from this one. It’s a French-Vietnamese restaurant that has both that modern and colonial feel, the British India look."

Trisha played around with the cube shape. The light fixtures on the walls and ceiling are squares, the old chairs from the Glorietta branch had backs with small squares, like latticework, made by Las Palmas in Angeles City. "With commercial projects you have to deal with the materials on hand because of budgetary constraints. That’s the challenge. You have to be flexible and imaginative to make things look fresh," she says. So she had them reupholstered and refinished, from the mid-tone wood that went so well with the traditional look of Azzurro’s murals into black ones that now go so well with the contemporary interiors.

For the bar, she originally wanted the look of APT bar or The Apartment, one of the most happening places abroad, but Azzurro’s market is a little bit more restraint. After all, its location assures them that a bulk of their market would be businessmen and the hotel’s foreign clientele.

Azzurro is Sommerset Millennium’s food outlet, together with the group’s Singapore-Malay restaurant downstairs called Chimes (the wonderful sounds of chimes does relax customers) where breakfast is served daily to hotel guests. Sommerset guests may order room service from either Azzurro or Chimes. Sheila says, "We had to reorient the staff when we moved to the hotel because such a place has its own rules. It’s a different type of service altogether. Sommerset is like the guests’ home, you see them every day. Most of them are long-staying expats that are here from six months to a year, so we have to be flexible and offer them many things from our menus. People like our food because it’s at par with restaurants abroad, such as those in New York and other key cities."

When Azzurro Bistro and Lounge at Sommerset was launched about two weeks ago, the party theme was Black & White. Venetian-inspired masks were given to guests to wear. This month, they’re launching different themes for every day: Tuesday is pop night, Wednesday features acoustic and jazz music, Thursday is the good old ’70s (and who doesn’t like that decade?), Friday is Lush and Lounge featuring chill-out music.

Five years ago, success in the restaurant business was a sure thing. People who had money to invest invested in restaurants simply because Pinoys loved to eat and if there was anything they didn’t feel any guilt about splurging on, it was food. But today, says Sheila, "there are so many new restaurants mushrooming, but there are just as many folding up."

I tell Sheila that about two years ago, I took a balikbayan relative of my husband to Glorietta and treated her to a day at the mall where she went crazy at Beauty Bar (God, all that makeup!) and later we had lunch at Azzurro. When she went back to Australia, she wrote me a very nice note, thanking me profusely for that day and especially the food, saying it was the best she had in the country.

That’s the thing about Azzurro, despite the Spanish, Italian, French and Greek cuisine, and despite a British chef at that, the food is and has always been like an old, familiar love – even when you’re trying it for the first time.

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Azzurro Bistro and Lounge is located at the 2nd floor of Sommerset Millennium, located at Aguirre St., Legaspi Village. From Paseo de Roxas, take Gamboa St., then turn left at Salcedo and left again at Aguirre. Call 889-0569 local 72.