At Home with Rikki & Beng Dee: Kitchen bliss and dining in

It comes as no surprise to see that there are three kitchens and three dining rooms in the home of restaurateurs Rikki and Beng Dee. You would expect no fewer from a couple who has been in the restaurant business for 23 years and practically all their married life. 

In their startlingly modern house designed by Andy Locsin, Rikki took over the reins when it came to designing the kitchens, particularly the “dirty” kitchen (it’s really not so dirty), an industrial space that can accommodate chefs and their line cooks with its huge prep table, and 10 stove burners, including a high-pressure one, and grills. 

“This is our main kitchen; we use this every day for every meal,” Rikki explains. “I designed it and had it built to restaurant standards. When we have a big party, we just ask the chefs to come here, they don’t have to bring their gadgets and other stuff because our kitchen is complete.”

The second kitchen, right next to the main dining room and separated by black sliding glass walls, is Beng’s kitchen.

“Air-conditioned kailangan yan,” says Rikki and then adds, “Bihira na nga siyang mag-luto, demanding pa.”

“Gusto ko may ambience,” Beng reasons.

What does she like to cook?

“Magaling siyang mag-instant noodles. The temperature is perfect; it’s not too hot, it’s ready to eat when it gets to your table!” teases Rikki. 

The truth is Beng is the cook between the two of them. Rikki admits he doesn’t cook — but he loves to eat and to conceptualize restaurants, to visualize dishes…and then he asks Beng to implement all this.

Beng laughs and says, “I cook Chinese and Filipino food in the dirty kitchen. When I’m in the clean kitchen, I do pasta. Here it’s all light cooking and finishing — tossing the salad or mixing the pasta with the sauce — that’s why it’s right next to the dining room.”

Beng also cooks oyster cakes in the clean kitchen, a favorite of the four Dee children. She cooks it only when everybody is already seated and ready to eat, and from the pan it goes straight to the plate — an easy, safe thing to do when your stovetop is infrared and shuts off by itself when the pan is lifted.

“We love to eat,” says Rikki. “We enjoy eating all around Asia, especially in the hawkers’ centers of Singapore and Taipei where their food is better, more flavorful than restaurant food.”

The main dining room next to the clean kitchen is the formal room where they entertain. It can seat up to 24 when the two long, glass tables are detached from each other. Next to it is the lanai with its round table for eight, which Rikki had custom made.

“We’re a Chinese family, so we have to have a round table — but a modern one,” he says. “I hate passing the food during a meal so I insisted on a modern lazy susan, which is embedded within the table. This is where we eat every day — al fresco.”

The lanai is bounded by a pool on one side and waterfall on the other, giving the family the relaxing sight and sound of water.

“When we eat in the house, it’s always outside here in the lanai; when we dine out in a restaurant, I want to be inside because we’re always al fresco at home,” says Rikki.

The third kitchen is a “kitchenette” located in the guest house on the third floor. This part could very well be a house within a house as it has its own living room, dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms. It’s where guests stay, where the kids have their sleepovers, where the family watches DVDs on weekends (when both Beng and Rikki are too tired to go out of town with the kids). It functions independently from the house and is equipped with its own generator set so the family can retreat here during brownouts.

The roof deck is covered with artificial grass and the guesthouse has wonderful views of Ayala Avenue’s skyline on one side and Bonifacio Global City on the other side. When the weather permits, parties are held here, and guests come away saying they want their roofs flattened, too, to build such a deck.

Modern Outside, Warm Inside

In the restaurant business, which is inarguably one of the most competitive businesses with a market that doesn’t expand that much but rather moves from one new place to another, the Dees have admirably survived and flourished. What started out as a small restaurant on Pasay Road has expanded into a chain of fast-food outlets (which Beng handles) and restaurants (which Rikki co-owns) that include Kai, Ebun, Mangan, Kitchen, Krokodile Grille, and the latest two brands — La Mesa (at TriNoma, SM Mall of Asia and SM Megamall) and Mesa (at Greenbelt 5).

What’s their secret? “It’s being able to adapt in times of crisis. We’re hands-on, we know what’s happening. We’ve gone through several crises in our 20-plus years,” says Rikki. “We have reengineered, reformatted and reinvented five or six times already. The first few years we made a lot of mistakes. Constantly we have to outdo ourselves.” 

Another secret is traveling. The couple loves to travel to keep up with new food concepts, discover old recipes, and explore new places.

Travel has also afforded this hardworking couple the chance to explore their design side. They never stay in big hotel chains when traveling, but pick boutique hotels, and rather than stay in one hotel for several nights, they go from one hotel to another.

On a trip to Rome, the couple saw the Richard Meier-designed Ara Pacis Museum, a building embroiled in Italian politics and design controversy, and they loved it. They wanted something like that for their house.

“I like the feeling of a gallery, a modern museum structure. I like Richard Meier’s structures, his use of travertine and white concrete and glass,” Rikki says. 

So when it came to choosing an architect for their new house, they chose Andy Locsin. “His firm’s designs are mostly modern Asian and use a lot of wood, but Andy personally is a modernist. So I insisted that the exterior would be modern and the inside would be warm, to use wood, because the tendency of modern structures is that they are very cold inside.”

Oh, and what a modern structure Locsin designed for them! The house is made of glass and concrete and steel, awash in natural light in the daytime and lit dramatically at night, a cantilevered master bedroom, huge swinging wooden doors, acoustically treated and leather-padded walls in the home theater and game room, doors that mask as walls, a pool that’s attached to the side of the house, flowing water inside and out, a green roof deck, and a front lawn that’s planted to bamboo trees.

Rikki and Beng love the idea of seemingly floating objects, starting with a staircase that dramatically greets the visitor upon entrance, looking like each wooden step was simply inserted into the wall; the bed in the master bedroom also floats, as do the buffet tables in the dining room, and the counters in Beng’s kitchen.

Travertine is also used more extensively this time compared with their previous residence because, as Rikki points out, prices have dropped for this stone. The flooring on the ground floor is travertine, which they left in its natural state, and for the second floor it’s ipil wood varnished black. 

For furniture pieces, Rikki chose modern iconic pieces by Le Corbusier, Noguchi, Eileen Grey, Philippe Starck, Capellini, and Gaetano Pesce. These are pieces, he says, that will outlive him, to be handed down to their children.

In a house that’s filled with sun, such a lightness of being and an overflow of space, it’s easy to imagine all these generations gathered around food and warmth.