AN IDENTITY BUILT ON FLAVOR
Nearly a year since it opened in late 2019, METIZ in Karrivin Plaza has proudly showcased its take on Filipino flavors through bright and creative dishes.
Astriking sight you'll see when you first enter Metiz is the near-seamless boundaries of its kitchen and dining area. With only a long wooden shelf acting as a partition between the two halves, its interiors are a simple blend of smooth concrete and wood. This ease of transition between chef and diner is, oddly enough, befitting for what’s to come with Chef Stephan Duhesme’s dishes and what Metiz represents in the local culinary scene. I recently paid a visit to Karrivin Plaza to try the current roster of their ever-evolving 5-course meal and talk with Stephan on lessons learned in Metiz's first year.
Stephan shares that he likes to change up the dishes of their 5-course meal every few months. This first dish is the newest addition to the batch, Egg and Bangus V2.0. It makes a stunning statement as the opening dish, being the most visually intriguing of all of them: a rectangular piece of sourdough puff pastry stuffed with bangus tinapa paste, confit egg yolk, and topped generously with a green herb. The story behind this, Stephan shares, comes from an old craving that he used to always have. "A part of these cravings that I enjoyed throughout multiple periods of my life was a croissant that [opens up], smothered with butter, and inside I would put a fried egg.” He says that he was experimenting with a new sourdough puff pastry, which at one point in development reminded him of that specific croissant craving. Inspired by this, he continued to build on the recipe using a confit egg yolk instead of a fried egg and integrating a salty umami-rich paste made with tinapa, chocolate, and vinegar produced with fermented chili. These flavors come together into a savory bomb. The buttery flaky crunch of the pastry is coated by the thick and rich goo of the egg yolk and hits that final punch of umami from the tinapa paste—A strong start to the meal.
Surely enough, after the rich flavors of the first dish, the next would come as a bright and refreshing counter. The Shrimp and Strawberries get their highlight from their play of textures from its two main ingredients. Made with half steamed Balesin shrimp, Amarillo and fermented strawberry dressing, crispy fried shrimp carapaces, strawberry slices, and garnished with roselle leaves.
The steamed shrimp acts as the main body of the dish carrying the bright and astringent strawberry dressing that blooms its flavors with everything it coats. The strawberry slices and fried carapaces add texture with their crunch and the roselle leaves provide an herbaceous bitterness that breaks between the sharp tones of the dish. The last dish before the main course is the Broth, Rice, and Meat. As with the first dish, which leaned on its umami, richness, and the second with its bright fruitiness, this one acts as a balanced pull between the two flavor profiles. The intense chicken broth is flavorful on its own with its added native herbs, bone marrow, and mushroom for added savory notes; these are then met with the sharp cut of the sour buro and the fermented tomato oil. The contrast works with all the flavors blending in the broth plus some wilted bitter greens to act as a buffer for both flavors.
At this point in the meal, I start to notice a recurring element in Metiz's flavor profile— fermentation. Not only is it evident in the pickled, aged, and cured aspect of the dishes but also in the array of pickling jars occupying the shelves all over the restaurant filled with a multitude of fruits and other ingredients. In asking Stephan about this apparent penchant for fermenting he excitingly shares, “There is a penchant, right. I mean all our vinegars we make them ourselves. … The [preference for] fermentation actually comes from this desire to not waste. So whenever something is about to go bad, we try to figure out something to do with it." Stephan continues that they like to rotate on different kinds of vinegar for their recipes depending on what extra fruits they have in excess and that currently, they're using a lot of guava vinegar while they already have jars of strawberry vinegar waiting for use. "Yeah, there's definitely an affection for fermentation here. That comes more from a need, from a desire, not to waste. Also, it makes things taste better. It adds depth and complexity." With this in mind, I was excited to see what fermenting formula would be used for their main course. And as expected, the Steamed Pork Belly makes use of aged and cured native pork belly steamed in banana leaf with fava bean tausi, the meat is drenched with a pungent bagoong and sineguelas sauce topped with pili nuts. For the sides we have pork fat wilted talcum and tublay leaves, and a bowl of Kalinga rice. The aged pork is near falling apart in tenderness and the rich bagoong sauce highlights the deep flavor they’ve built from their respective fermentation process. The vegetables provide a sour and bitter crunch to balance the richness of the pork. Of course, pairing each bite with a spoonful of rice just completes the experience.
For our last stop, the dessert is described as a hot and cold mix with their Banana Leaf and Rambutan. The banana leaf comes in the form of light and smooth ice cream while the rambutan comes as a thick dense syrup. The contrast of flavors and textures is at play once again as did with the savory dishes and the fermented rambutan syrup gives this dark taste that is highlighted by the light infusion of the banana leaf in the ice cream. Commenting on the inception of the dish, Stephan shares, “It's something so Filipino, from its textures, from the bilo-bilo and the spicy nuts, and the rambutan syrup… On the banana leaf, it's something you kind of forget that it's such an important flavor for us in the Philippines. So we decided to make it a focal point.” He continues to say that the dessert is probably one of the quintessential dishes that represent Metiz' culinary identity. “The dessert is, I think, the definition of what it is that we try to achieve here. It uses humble ingredients; it’s got fermentation in it, something we like to play around with; and it's got ingredients in reasonably good season. These are three things, three aspects of our cooking that we like to do. And we've achieved it in the desert, actually, more so than almost any other dish so far on this menu."
In listing these three key factors, I asked how Metiz has evolved over its first year. With a grin, Stephan answers, "Today, honestly, I feel more confident with what we do. I think we found a lot more focus, we've had time to think introspectively and think about all of our past dishes.” As back then when they initially opened, many initial reports were unsure of the cuisine Metiz falls into, but after a year of challenges and growth, Stephan proudly declares, “The food for me is Filipino. That's something I stand on. It's Filipino in the sense that [these are] the flavors we run after. So we go for really traditional flavors in the sense where you've got a lot of sourness, you've got bitterness, umami, all of these things, and I think that that's a very important factor that we learn is that we go for a traditional flavor."