NYC’s Best New Restaurant is Reimagining Filipino Cuisine
“What we’re doing here at Tadhana is we’re reimagining what Filipino food can be.” Bon Appétit spends a day on the line with Chef Frances Tariga, owner of Tadhana in New York City. Tariga spent 21 years learning the modernistic techniques she applies to her menus and is reinventing the wheel when it comes to traditional Filipino cuisine.
Transcript
00:00What we're doing here at Tadhana is we're reimagining what Filipino food can be.
00:04It took me 21 years to learn this modernist technique and now I'm bringing it here to
00:09Tadhana. I've opened a lot of restaurants in the city, I've worked for the royal family,
00:14but this time it's all me. Being the sole owner of Tadhana, it's a lot of anxiety,
00:20just because there's 12 people relying on me. You have to be able to jump in anywhere,
00:25from dish pit, to prep, to getting a liquor license. I gotta make this work. Tadhana means
00:31by fate or destiny. After 21 years, all my experiences just led me all to this.
00:41Hey guys, I'm Frances Tariga. I'm the chef owner here at Tadhana. Let's go to work.
00:47Hey! These are a small dining area. This used to be a coffee shop. It's like really,
00:53really not built for a fine dining restaurant, but you know what? We make things happen. Normally,
00:58I'm the first person here, but Chef Mark beats me sometimes, you know? We like to come early so
01:04that we can check all the equipment. We're electric only, so if one equipment is not
01:09working, it's really going to affect our service. Hello, Chef. It's not just like checking the
01:15equipment. It's basically my first walkthrough, checking what happened last night. Did they
01:19clean this? Did they not? The closing team made sure that they even cleaned the gasket last night.
01:25This is what health departments check, the gaskets. If your gaskets are like moldy, that's a five
01:32points. You're about to get a beat, basically. So this is our freezer. It's really a house freezer.
01:40It's gonna change soon, okay? We have money now, right Chef? We call that balling in the hood.
01:46We don't have a walk-in, so everything is prepped fresh daily.
01:50So it's 10 a.m. right now. Yama Seafood is here, so let's get our fish.
01:59Hey, Nobu. Yo. There's dog shit here, watch out. Our fish, normally we order it from Japan just
02:05because it's very similar from what we have in the Philippines. Hiramasa and Jikin Medai
02:10from Shizuoka and Hiramasa from Nagasaki in Japan. It just got delivered today? Yes. Hey,
02:16okay. You see how Japanese people wrap their fish? Very good. We got the Hiramasa. You can
02:22find the Hiramasa in the U.S., but the quality is different. You see this technique that they do?
02:27Hikijime. They remove the nerve of the fish. You bleed it out properly so they're not fighting,
02:32so the meat stays intact, everything is firm. A lot of the domestic fish in America, when they're
02:38caught, they just kind of catch it in a net and just kind of throw it in a barrel and let it
02:41suffocate to death. As opposed to here, you can fly fish from thousands of miles away,
02:46but it's in better condition than fish that was caught domestically. Facts. This was caught over
02:50the weekend, and then my partners in Japan shipped it over, and then we received it this morning.
02:55Now this fish is special because it's a new company that's using AI robotics to do the
03:00Japanese hikijime technique without humans, and obviously you can see the meat quality,
03:04it's pristine, it's white. Chef, this is for you. This is the Jikin Medai for our R&D. This is for
03:10our next menu rollout for August. So invoice. Oh my god, expensive! Just kidding. The total is $366
03:18for three fish. It's around 10 30 now, so we gotta start butchering the fish right away.
03:27Nobu delivers in most of the Michelin stars in the city. We really trust that guy. A lot of New
03:33York chefs trust that guy. This is what we use for our Ceviche. I'm gonna scale it. So what we're
03:38gonna do is the suki-biki technique. It's more gentler in the fish, plus we don't have a lot of
03:43space to scale it because it gets too messy. So what we do is we remove the scale just like this.
03:49It removes the pocket that the scales are in. I did this Japanese technique when I was doing
03:53omakase. There's 120 omakase in the city. You have to be somewhat different from what everyone else
04:00is doing, right? Now I like to teach myself a lot because New York kitchens are cutthroat. So we
04:06make sure that we ourselves handle the products like this, especially expensive fish. This fish is
04:13around $160, but after yield, this will cost like $320. So you can only use 50% of the fish because
04:21you just want the filet. So the dish that this comes with, we call it Kinilaw. Kinilaw means
04:27to cook the fish in vinegar in Tagalog. It's basically a Ceviche. The vinaigrette is inside
04:32the sphere. When you bite this, the flavor is going to explode. So when you're fileting fish,
04:37especially with this kind of fish, you got to use a fileting knife, the deba. Deba is a Japanese
04:43chef knife that is like one side bevel. I'm a lefty, so it needs to be a lefty deba. This is a
04:50life changer. You use a deba, it literally just slides in and you get a perfect cut filet. As a
04:56female chef, a lot of people doubt you already just because you're a female, right? So like I
05:02made sure that I learned all these techniques. I used to work for the royal family. I used to be
05:07a private chef for the princes of UAE. I worked in corporate for 20 years before I'm like more
05:13carefree just because that's not my money. Now it's like this is my livelihood. This is my career.
05:19This is actually everything for me now. There's no room for mistake. I'm actually just freeing
05:24the meat from the bone. This is right now 80 bucks. This is the quarter. Right now I'm going
05:30to pass this on to our cook so he can portion this. We're moving on to our chicken wing. So we call
05:36this inasal na relienong pakpak, meaning it's a stuffed chicken wing. We stuff it with our Filipino
05:43meatloaf we call embutido. It's a festive sausage in the Philippines. It's like brown pork, green peas,
05:49golden raisins, and then of course our secret ingredient. This is a very stereotype Filipino.
05:56Tender juicy hot dog. We don't have Nathan's in the Philippines. So how do you stuff chicken wing?
06:02It's a lot. Also Chef Mark's gonna help me. First you just need to cut the joint. This goes to family
06:08meal. This one is what we're gonna stuff. What we're gonna do is we're gonna make sure to remove
06:13the bones. You push it. Push it down like that and then you break it. So this is now empty inside,
06:20ready to be stuffed. What I'm doing is not really traditional. I'm combining two traditional
06:26Filipino dishes into one. You can't find this anywhere. It complements each other. We do a lot
06:31of modernist technique. The aunties always say, I can cook that at home. This is not just an easy
06:37thing that you can do like on the fly. This is what Filipino food can be. It doesn't have to be
06:43traditional all the time. Sometimes I'm a no emotion bitch, but I think you gotta really have a tough
06:48skin also to be in this industry. I first started cooking when I was a kid. My dad's a police officer
06:54that loves to cook. When I came out, you know, when you have a police officer dad, their mindset
07:00is different. They look down on you already. But like when I'm cooking with him, it's different.
07:04Like I feel like there's no judgment. I feel like I was trying to please my dad. He explained to me
07:10the why. Why are we doing this? He passed away a long time ago, but before he died, he said like,
07:15that f*****g lesbian is good. No, he said that in Tagalog though.
07:20It's already noon. I need to move on to my next prep, which is the duck egg custard.
07:25I'm going to give this to Chef Mark so I can do the next job. Chef.
07:33Around this time, a lot of our teams are coming in. We want to get ahead of the game because
07:38we don't have a lot of time. So I'm going to do this for them. So first the egg needs to
07:42have that pointed part up. Balut means it's an 18 days duck embryo. They're fertilized them
07:50basically. They check it in the light. If the embryo is full, that becomes balut. If the embryo
07:57is not full, that becomes penoy. Penoy is the younger version of balut. That's like the undeveloped
08:04embryo. So that's why it's custardy. We re-imagine penoy basically. How is it going to be more for
08:11like American audience? So we're doing the duck egg custard. It's basically like a chawanmushi.
08:16We steam it and then we finish it with mushroom veloute, shallots, golden osetra caviar,
08:22and pickled jicama. We get that violent reaction. It's like, oh, this is not balut. Like ate,
08:28come on. Like we can't serve like, you know, embryo with beak and feathers. Like that's not
08:34really palatable. That's part of my spiel here. Like, all right, guys, relax. You're not on
08:39Fear Factor. You're on Tadhana. Everyone laugh. First, we're going to crack the eggs. This tool
08:45is basically cracking the egg in a perfect form. It's just sending the vibration around the
08:51perimeter so it breaks. Throw it in there. Empty the shell out. And then we're going to soak it in
08:57this vinegar water solution to remove the membrane inside the duck egg. It's a chewy texture. So we
09:04don't want that. People call us fine dining. So we're trying to be up that standard. You got to
09:09make sure all these little details. Now I'm going to pass it to my sous chef and he's going to do
09:14our custard. I mean, I can't do everything. You know, you got to trust your people basically.
09:19I'm a big freaking micromanager. So used to that, you know, like working in corporate,
09:25working in a volume restaurant, you really got to micromanage people. I managed 300 employees
09:31and I don't want that. Being an owner now, you got to really empower them. You got to let them
09:36do the job. You got to trust them. There's going to be a lot of mistake, a lot of expensive mistake,
09:42but you know what? It's part of like growing. So we have this custard from yesterday. If you do it
09:48the day before, it blends well and then the custard is like softer. All right, so I'm just putting
09:54aluminum foil here because we're going to put it in the steamer. Once it's soaked, it just peels
09:59off. Voila. This is the whole membranes. Duck egg is more like sturdy with the custard. It's more
10:06thicker and it holds better. Now we're going to send it so there's no sharp edges. Yep. Michelin
10:12guide, I'm calling you out. Come here. People ask us, oh, where are you guys buy your eggshell? I'm
10:18like, bitch, we make it in-house. Chef Ralph, can you wash the eggshell so we can add the custard?
10:23Tonight we're going to do two seating, so 48. We're always fully booked and we only book 21
10:30days in advance. So better get your reservation now. Hey. This mix, we pass it at least three
10:38times in a chinois in order to get the silkiest texture ever. Now we're going to pre-cook this
10:44egg custard. We're just going to make a few more of this carton so we can move on to our next job,
10:48basically. We steam it twice. The first one is to cook it. The other one is to make sure that
10:53we serve it hot for our guests. 18 minutes and then we gucci. We're good. It's one o'clock.
11:00I need to break down this big jackfruit for our halo-halo. This is 20 pounds. Imagine if this
11:11fall on you. And in the Philippines, we use this a lot. If it's still green or not ripe, we use it
11:16for a coconut stew. And if it's ripe, we put it on our dessert. So how are you gonna know if it's
11:21ripe? You don't know. You gotta oil it because that's very sticky. We're gonna make an incision.
11:29All right, and then you just go around. I'm gonna put another knife in here.
11:35Wow. All right. Oh, look at that. So fresh. So this, they use this glue in the Philippines.
11:42This jackfruit is from Ecuador. So we source it from our produce vendor. We have to commit
11:48on like two whole a week in order for them to carry this for us. Moment of truth. You ready?
11:56It's ripe. We're gonna make a jam. This is for our halo-halo dish. So halo-halo means mix-mix.
12:04It's a shaved ice. The best halo-halo is with a lot of that jackfruit jam juice. You know that
12:10it's a classic one if they use jackfruit. We reimagine it as well. What we do is we make it
12:15in one bite. We freeze it in liquid nitrogen. It needs to be aerated. Otherwise, you're eating a
12:22block of ice. We put it in an ISI gun. You gotta make sure that there's enough fats because the
12:27fats is really the one that's make it easier to break down. I've been wanting to like really use
12:32liquid nitrogen, but it's a liability. You know, when you work corporate, you always have to think
12:38of like the liability issue, right? Now that I own my own restaurant, I'm using liquid nitrogen.
12:44Techniques are different. Still tastes like Filipino food. You gotta just remove it from
12:49the core a little bit. You gotta make sure that your hands are oiled. This is how it looks like.
12:56I love this. Jackfruit in real life. So we're just getting enough for service. Like I said,
13:05we have very limited space. I think this is enough. When I was in the Philippines, I used
13:10to like sell a halo-halo. That's why I know how to create like all these tropical fruit jam.
13:16I sell it for five pesos. So now I'm gonna braise it to turn it into a jam. Very simple. Add the
13:22sugar, a little bit of water, and then just braise it for two hours. Not a lot of restaurants have
13:28lids, right? It's either a sheet tray or a parchment paper. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna use
13:33this as cover and then let it braise. It's 2 p.m. right now. I'm gonna do the owner,
13:39admin, management side. I'm gonna call my lawyer for a liquor license.
13:49Hey, Mr. Nedich. Do we have an ETA on when it's gonna come? Now that I'm the sole owner of Tadhana,
13:56I really have to deal with all the legalities. In New York City, it's so hard to get a liquor
14:01license. It takes like 22 to 26 weeks. We're on top of it because like, you know, it's a 25%
14:08revenue. We're in the final step of the design process. I just need to approve it. And then
14:13that's our two weeks timelines. Basically, it's gonna be a brand new restaurant again. The lighting
14:17plan, schematic elevation, I don't know what that means, but sure. Leave it to the professionals.
14:23That's what they say. Now I'm gonna personally write a letter for the celebrants. So we got
14:28two birthdays and one anniversary. This is a postcard. This is the streets I grew up. This is
14:34like a nice touch. People appreciate it. Every time they sat down, they're like, aw. All right,
14:39now I'm done with the admin stuff. I'm gonna head in the kitchen. What's a secret to a good
14:44restaurant? Taste, taste, taste. You gotta have your tasting spoon ready. This is the spicy
14:51coconut sauce for our laing, the coconut stew. It's not done yet. It's salt. Salt. I can't look
14:59at you in the eye if I don't taste it, especially when you're a guest. I created these dishes so
15:04the only way to make sure that this is up to par is tasting it. Right now Ralph's doing our charcoal
15:10lime pie teacups. That's very crispy. Good job. A few things we do before our service opens.
15:23We do make this coconut vinaigrette sphere. We freeze our vinaigrette. We just drop it in
15:28alginate bath. It's a sodium alginate. It's made from algae. It reacts well with calcium,
15:34so it creates a membrane and it solidifies. At the same time, it melts the vinaigrette,
15:39so it's literally, it's a sphere.
15:45Really good sphere. That explosion comes out of the ceviche dish. This is very time sensitive
15:51just because you want to make sure when you drop it, it's still frozen. All right, we only have 30
15:57minutes before the door opens. Right before service, that's where we do all the knife cuts.
16:02All those garnishes are being picked. All those a la minute stuff. Everything looks good. Now we're
16:08heading to our pre-ship before service. This is the back of the house pre-ship. All right,
16:13happy Wednesday everyone. Happy Wednesday. So we're heading into full house tonight. 48 on the
16:17covers, 24 and 24. Chef Mark sells all the allergies, the modifications, celebrations also.
16:24Take care of the guests. Take care of each other. Tadhana on three. One, two, three. Tadhana. Hey.
16:30It's about six o'clock. We're about to open the door. Front of the house is getting ready for
16:35service. We're getting ready for service. We're almost done. Thank you for coming.
16:39Thank you for following me around. Now I'm gonna kick you guys out. Bye!