Currently, to taste Philippine cuisine, there is no thirty-six solutions. The A option is to embark on a long-haul flight of about twenty hours, direction Manila, Quezon City or Davao-the three main cities of this southeast Asian archipelago. The B option, much less expensive in carbon footprint and insomnia attacks, is like taking a train ticket, a metro ticket, an electric scooter, and pushing the door of Reyna, the restaurant of Erica Paredes, Sis at 41, rue de Montreuil in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.
Because if there are many ways to discover the culture of a foreign country, taste immersion is still one of the most authentic and accessible. It is here, since the supervision of a narrow platform, at the bottom of a room with a candy pink walls, decorated with gigantic mirrors, that the Filipino chief transmits part of its culinary heritage.
Explosive sensitivity
The change of scenery begins while we sit barely: the guests are given an individual plate which, regardless of the order and the number of dishes ordered, will remain unchanged all evening. A way of going freely in each of the dishes: “The Philippine cuisine is above all a family cuisine, in which the food is exchanged, begins and shares”, explains Erica Paredes.
The map pays tribute to the dishes typical of this country mixed with Spanish, American, Chinese or even Malaysia influences, of which it is from. You have to taste his Hainan Burrata, which is an interpretation inspired by the famous Hainanian chicken rice, very popular in Manila: quite simply a large ball of mozzarella in the heart flowing buried under a mountain of sauces with marked flavors – frosting with soy sauce Sweet, ginger condiment and spicy oil.
You have to be tempted by your Adobo Chicken Wings: the meeting between crisp fried chickens and a active sauce, black like coffee, based on vinegar, garlic and soy sauce. But above all – above all -, you have to share a portion of Bicol Express, which alone encapsulates the essence of Philippine cuisine (both generous, suave and sweet) and the explosive sensitivity of Erica Paredes. It is a barbue net with pearly white flesh that arrives while majesty in a hollow plate, filled to a scented coconut milk sauce.
The smell, bewitching, is familiar: it recalls that of Tom Yum Thai or Currys of coconut chickens in the Indian. The chef incorporated there from Bagoóng, a salted philippin condiment based on fermented fish which brings thickness and a certain Umami flavor. On the surface of the fish, there are a few broken breaks here and there (this calabraise pork sausage with strong spicy power).
The view of its fat which spreads in the sauce by forming a whole network of small orange -red spots makes us irresistibly plunge into it. So the surprise is total: coconut milk and the delicate texture of the barbue caress the palace, while the chilli contained in La’nduja operates its bite. A sensual back and forth, a hot heat, as in the middle of the hot season, under the tropical sun of Manila.