Collaborative dinners present an opportunity for chefs to learn from each other, bringing in their signature dishes or techniques and broadening their culinary horizon in the process.
But it takes more than skill and innovation for a four-hands dinner to be truly memorable. It requires humility and moving out of one’s comfort zone – both for the host chef and the guest chef.
Samira by Chele Gonzalez, the flagship restaurant of Anya Resort Tagaytay, opened the year with an impressive seven-course menu created by Chef Gonzalez in collaboration with Chef Josh Boutwood.
“Chele and I, we have known each other for many years, and having the opportunity for a collaboration, I jumped at it. Because Samira has an open fire, my logical thought was to bring Ember’s mentality here,” Boutwood told Manila Standard Cravings in an interview during the one-night only four-hands dinner.
Ember, of course, is Boutwood’s playful and unconventional restaurant in Makati that elevates the use of fire in cooking.
“We are very similar in a sense that Chele has strong roots to Spanish cuisine, and myself I mostly focus on a multicultural cuisine, but the amalgamation between the two is very similar – respecting the ingredients and the delicateness of the fire and using the correct cooking process,” he said.
“Collabation is an opportunity to share ideas, ethos and mentality, but it is also a humbling experience, especially if I am coming to a location outside of my restaurant and work with an amazing team,” Boutwood added.
For Gonzalez, Ember’s concept “matched very well” with Samira’s own thought process.
“Our food is not complicated. It is just good food created in a contemporary manner,” Gonzalez said in a separate interview.
“Samira has a fresh and modern approach. Usually, the starters are the creative part but for the main course, I like to be more straightforward and bring out the best of the ingredients that people can enjoy,” he added.
The two chefs worked together on two items in the seven-course menu: the Standish oyster with caviar and Yuzu gel and the Iberico pork chuleta with burnt red cabbage and wild mustard.
Gonzales described the oyster dish as “fresh and bright,” – pairing well with the salt air margarita with passion fruit foam.
Both chefs likewise touted the Iberico dish as the showstopper of the night, and one that would be added in Samira’s regular menu.
“The Iberico is a wonderful pork, paired with the fresh mustard we made with local mustasa, the beef jus and the burnt cabbage. It is a dish that represents both Chele’s mentality and my mentality in terms of the balancing of ingredients – sour, sweet, umami – no more than three of those flavor profiles in a dish,” Boutwood said.
Aside from the oysters, the appetizer trio included a carabao mango tart filled with smoked tuna and pickled ginger, as well as a foie gras mousse with cream cheese and pineapple confit waffle.
For the main dishes, there was the adlai porridge with mushroom and Comte cheese, the charcoal grilled octopus with black ink breadcrumbs and homemade aioli, the delicately cooked sea bass paired with burnt cauliflower, and (my favorite dish) the Tasmanian trout tartare with dill, fried capers, apple, and crème fraiche split with dill oil.
For dessert, guests were treated to a cheese ice cream with grilled strawberries and lime meringue chips as well as a dark chocolate cremeux with caramelized white chocolate sauce.
And while guests were all pleasantly surprised with the formidable lineup of dishes prepared by the two chefs, one particular diner was equally unprepared for the seven-course culinary journey.
“They sent me the menu just over the weekend,” said Santi Elizalde, president and CEO of Roxaco Land and Anya Resort Tagaytay. “This is also a surprise to me!”
“One-night only four-hands dinners like this collaboration between Chef Chele and Chef Josh will be part of our Culinary Collections at Anya,” Elizalde added.