Italian beyond pasta

The absence of a fine Italian restaurant in their Alabang neighborhood prompted Gia Villarica-Suarez and her Italian brother-in-law, Antonio Reina, to conceptualize Bravo! Alabang.

When the Alabang Festival Mall was being built, Gia’s family saw the opportunity to open the first of "a series of cozy and intimate, yet fun and trendy" Italian restaurants in the country. Bravo! Alabang was inaugurated in December 1998. Eleven months later, Bravo! Malate opened its doors in the trendiest, hippest part of town.

Bravo! Malate is a casual, not-so-modestly priced, yet totally gratifying experience. The waiters are polite and attentive, qualities hard to find these days even in upscale establishments.

Bravo! caters to "a certain group of people with a certain lifestyle, a group of people who likes eating well", Gia says.

Located strategically at the corner of J. Nakpil and Adriatico Streets, it is one block away from the once graceful but now neglected Remedios Circle.

Julio Nakpil Street is the new site for cool cafés, bars, bistros and shops. The clear glass paneling of Bravo! Malate gives one a good view of young night owls who populate the area. Inside Bravo! Malate, one savors its eclectic interior design. Its lighting is perfect, unlike a nearby extremely lit French bistro, or what pretends to be one. One settles inside Bravo! Malate to relish a fine meal, savor a drink and forget momentarily the cares of a tough world outside. One visits Bravo! Malate to satisfy the palate, not to "see and be seen". Most important, Bravo! Malate does not intimidate those who want to have a date with themselves and delight in a feast all alone.

The management and staff of the two Bravo! restaurants painstakingly ensure the ingredients and food preparation meet exacting standards, Gia assures. The Merry Cooks Inc. on Zobel Roxas St. which serves as the commissary and central kitchen of the two Bravo! branches is where all imported ingredients from Italy such as artichokes, tomatoes, anchovies, extra virgin olive oil, meats like salami, bologna, prosciutto and even wine are stored. Every day, the Merry Cooks supplies Bravo! branches with fresh pizza dough, pasta sauces and fresh ingredients.

"We maintain a central kitchen so that we can keep the high quality of food in both branches," Gia says. "Maintaining the standard of food quality does not only mean following recipes every step of the way. It is also ensuring that ingredients are fresh and are of the best quality available. You cannot go wrong if you use the best ingredients."

Beyond the ingredients, Milan-born Reina comes to Manila every weekend to check on the central kitchen and to dine at the two branches. Reina, who is now Cebu-based and runs an export company there, married Gia’s sister Karen, who is the proprietor of Tropical Spa in Boracay. "But I have to say that our chefs in the two branches are very well-trained," Gia beams. Italian Tiziano Cavallini, once master chef of Bravo! Alabang, trained the two chefs.

Bravo! Malate’s little known secret is its gnocco fritto with pepperonata, fluffy thin slices of bread that can be dipped in the pepperonata sauce. You have to ask for it though because it is not listed in the four-page menu. Gia explains that the gnocco fritto is made from scratch and thus takes a while to prepare.

For antipasti, we tried granchio alla veneziana (crabs from Venice). The crabmeat was sweet and rendered tangy by the fresh tomatoes, lemon and extra virgin olive oil. Davao’s malasugue (white marlin) served with black olives and extra virgin oil was glorious in its reincarnation as carpaccio di pesce. This is one of the rare items in the menu that uses locally sourced ingredients as its main component. The last of the antipasti was a mollusk delight called cozze e vongole al sugo di pomodoro. My notes written in between bites say the clams and mussels in tomato and garlic were "very, very good."

The gran antipasto misto enables one to taste a sampling of the wide array of Merry Cooks’ cold cuts. But when you order it, make sure to leave room for the other dishes. It has salame, salame piccante, parma, speck, salsiccia calabrese, provolone, asiago, giant olives and mortadella. It is grand as grand can be.

Bravo! is famous for its le pizze (pizza). Cheese-lovers, I mean genuine cheese-lovers, will be floored by the truly gooey toppings of combined mozzarella, parmigiano, gorgonzola and cream cheese. Quattro formaggi (four cheeses) is a veritable rarity in Metro Manila’s mushrooming pizza industry. It is definitely a standout.

Le pizze mediterranea is a good counterpoint to le pizze quattro formaggi. Its tomato, black olives, capers, garlic, anchovies, rosemary, pepper and mozzarella take away the after-taste of the four cheeses.

Authentic as they can be, Bravo! pizzas are thin-crust and their toppings are not an amalgamation of ingredients that tend to overwhelm each other. A caveat: if you are expecting pizza as those in local or American chains, you will be deeply disappointed.

Now we get to the real eating, as if all that wasn’t enough to send us into gluttonous delight–the primi piatti, literally "first plate" or main course.

Risotto bravo is a hit among rice-loving Filipinos. Its balls of slightly crunchy rice are stuffed with Italian sausages with wine and tomato. The risotto dishes correct the misimpression that Italian fare is only pasta and pizza. The menu also lists risotto del gondoliere (with seafood wine combination) and risotto ai funghi porcini (with porcini mushrooms and cream).

From southern Italy, we sampled spaghetti ai gamberi. This is a minimalist spaghetti, with ingredients composed only of shrimps, extra virgin olive oil, tomato and tons of garlic. Minimum ingredients with maximum flavor.

Northern Italy was served on our table via cannelloni alla sorrentina. Typical of northern Italian dishes, it is a creamy pasta dish with parma, spinach, ricotta and béchamel.

But there was more. The secondi piatti came via a huge plate of a dish called spadellata di mare al vino bianco, which was yes, as big as its name. It is a plate of full of mussels, clams, shrimps, squid and fresh mushrooms in white wine. By the time we got to dessert, I could hardly touch my torta al formaggio (cheesecake). But it was too good not to take even a bite.

Unfortunately, the food sampling was a luncheon, which meant skipping anything with alcohol because I had to report for work eventually. But on other occasions when I went to Bravo! Malate incognito to have a date with myself, I sampled their cabernet, merlot and valpolicella, all of which get high marks. Since I am a red wine drinker, I cannot make recommendations on the whites, but the following are listed: chardonnay, pinot veneto, sauvignon, soave, tocai friulano and verdicchio.

Completing the red wine roster are barbera d’alba, barbera vilide, bardolino, chianti, dolcetto, refosco, rosso piceno, sangiovese and solenga rosso. For lovers of spumante (sparkling wine), there is pinot brut, malvasia and prosecco venezia giulia.

Find Italy in Malate–it’s definitely worth a Bravo!