ANGELO G. GARCIA

In a few days, Boracay Island will reopen to the public. It has been almost six months since the island destination was shut down for rehabilitation. Tourists have already booked their tickets and hotels, excited to step on the island’s powdery white sand beaches and swim in its crystal clear waters once more. But the people who are more thrilled about the reopening are the residents and business owners. The closure was difficult for them, to say the least.

“It hurt us a lot because we had no income for six months. Plus expenses kept on going,” says Sunny Side Group owner Nowie Potenciano. “But we’re just really thankful that we’re going to be reopening. We don’t know the state of the island is entirely, if it’s 100 percent ready, but we do really want to reopen, especially for our staff, because a lot of them had no work for the past six months.”

To help augment its expenses and help some of its staff, Sunny Side Group operated several pop-ups in Manila for three months, employing 50 percent of its staff. The pop-ups were a success with some diners requesting the company to open shop here in the city but Nowie and his team are excited to go back to the island.

“So far so good, we had a lot of people, and we had positive reaction. A lot of people want us to stay here but we would like to go back to our land,” he says. Nowie, together with his wife Odette, manages the restaurant group which operates five restaurants: The Sunny Side Cafe, Spicebird, Supermagic, Coco Mama, and Popo. These restaurants are some of Boracay’s highly rated eateries with the exception of Popo because it’s new and just opened a month before the island closed down.

The closure gave the restaurant group a chance to whip up new ideas and introduce new eats at its restaurants. Because when the shops open, expect new dishes to revamp the menu. It has likewise improved on the thrust of each restaurant—more Filipino and more seafood.

“We improved our menu, we’re adding a few things here and there. We have a few thrusts, one is using more Filipino ingredient another one is push more seafood, have more healthier options also. Of course we’re excited because we try not to keep idle during this time. When we reopen we want to be, it’s not business as usual, we want to be better. So we’re excited to finally implement the plans that we had for the past couple of months,” Nowie explains.

There are also new and exciting tie-ups and emphasis on local ingredients. For instance, the seafood offerings are from local waters, the chocolate from Mindanao, the special heirloom rice is from Mountain Province. The company has likewise partnered with Risa Chocolates to make special chocolate bars for The Sunny Side Cafe: white chocolate with house blend coffee beans and salted dark chocolate with dried mango and dried pineapple. The group has also partnered with Pedro Brewcrafters for some local craft beer.

“We’re working with some of our friends, we’re partnering with them with a few exciting projects like guest chefs coming over, tie-ups,” he says.

During a recent celebration at Hole in the Wall, Centruy City Mall, Sunny Side Group is hyping up Boracay’s reopening and its restaurants new dishes, something tourists and residents of Boracay should be excited about.

Representing The Sunny Side Cafe at the event was a pan of arroz de Marisco, which is a Portugese rice dish similar to Spanish paella. Shrimps, clams, mussels, and fish are cooked with rice in a flavorful seafoodbased broth. For Spicebird, the piri-piri crab is a spicy take on crab. But some favorites of the brand were also served like Spicebird Merguez or its own housemade version of Moroccan sausage. The sausage was served with crispy chicken skin served with Sauce No. 5, a special spicy sauce with kaffir lime leaves.

Then there’s the shrimp rolls with umami dust, served under the Supermagic brand. Supermagic is a burger joint but also serves this lobster roll-like sandwich.

Popo, on other hand is the group’s Chinese restaurant. It’s the newest brand under the company and was opened a month before the island shut down. For the event, the team served Typhoon Shelter Prawns, the restaurant’s version of the popular Hong Kong crab dish.

For dessert, Coco Mama’s heirloom sticky rice with mango and salted coconut cream ended the meal. It was served in a eco-friendly bowl made of leaves.

The Sunny Side Group also emphasized that the company has been following sustainable practices even before the island closure. The restaurants have been operating for four years and employs a strict no-plastic policy. It likewise uses metal straws at its restaurants instead of the single use plastic ones. Diners are also free to refill their reusable water bottles at the restaurants to discourage people from buying bottled water.

“How we work is we always felt like we had to do our part in terms of environmental concerns, we’ve always been ahead of others. Like we adapted metal straws even before Boracay was closed. We also started promoting of refilling water instead of buying bottled water,” Nowie says.