MANILA, PHILIPPINES — It was purely incidental that I dined in Metiz during Filipino Food Month. Although my expectations were set high, I was still pleasantly surprised upon entering the dimly lit restaurant — not by wisps of pretense or arrogance, but by the comforting warmth of a Filipino kitchen and the sincere promise of an excellent dining experience.
Seating up to 30 pax, Metiz is the fine dining concept and brainchild of Chef Stephan Duhesme. It debuted at 48th on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants last year, solidifying its place in the region’s culinary scene. Impressively, it is the only Philippine establishment to secure a spot on Asia’s 100 Best Restaurants of 2024. Led by Chef Stephan, Metiz showcases the richness of Filipino flavors while pushing culinary boundaries with creative techniques and locally sourced ingredients. Beyond the acclaim and recognition, however, is a not-so-well-kept secret: Metiz is actually a restaurant born from failure, as Chef Stephan candidly admitted to adobo Magazine.
The genesis of Metiz traces back to 2014 when Chef Stephan first toyed with the concept in his mind. Prior to that, he was training as a chef in New York. A call from friends who were backpacking around Latin America changed the course of his career. They proposed opening a restaurant within a three-year timeline, which intrigued him. “Being in my mid-twenties, I was like, why not? I have never even been to Latin America before, but it’s in your twenties that you say yes to these kinds of crazy projects and ideas,” he laughed.
“For the next three years, I put myself in positions to learn what I needed to learn — to be ready to open a restaurant.” He ventured to France to seek employment opportunities but faced rejection from almost every restaurant, an experience that instilled in him a sense of rebellion against French cuisine. However, he was able to secure an internship in Japan, which is considered another prestigious culinary destination. Viewing Japan as an equally enriching prospect, if not more appealing, he completed his final internship there before boarding that fateful plane to Colombia.
“I stayed there for the next three years,” Chef Stephan reflected, referring to his time in Bogotá. “The restaurant we opened was the early idea of what Metiz would be, but it was ultimately a failure. We were very ambitious — it’s a very normal thing when you’re in your twenties. You don’t know anything.”
Gastronomically, the restaurant gained attention, with some of the country’s prominent chefs and even those from Latin America’s Top 50 Best dining in the restaurant. However, it ended up being a financial failure. They struggled to keep up with the large overhead costs due to the expansive space, leading to closure around two years after opening.
“At the time, it really destroyed me as a person — hitting this kind of failure,” Chef Stephan confessed. “I was 27 or 28 years old, and I felt left behind because of friends who were the same age as me but were doing extraordinarily well in their careers. I was essentially at a loss. I literally had zero money to my name at that point.”
The young chef didn’t want to return to the Philippines yet, so he worked on a business plan that meticulously addressed the shortcomings of his first restaurant to create a more focused concept. His longing for Filipino food, intensified by his absence from the Philippines during his time in Colombia, led him to explore fermentation and other techniques to recreate the flavors he missed. Despite his efforts, he struggled to find investors in Colombia who shared his vision.
After six months of trying, he finally decided to return to his roots, realizing that Manila’s booming economy presented a promising opportunity. With investors on board, they scouted various locations before settling on Karrivin Plaza, where they eventually opened Metiz in 2019.
Observing the culinary landscape, he touched on the contrasting trajectories of Manila and Colombia’s food scenes. While Manila showed promise in 2015, progress seemed slow compared to Colombia’s culinary revolution, where chefs embraced and celebrated their own cuisine with fervor. This experience abroad allowed him to detach from the mindset prevalent in Manila. It fueled his commitment to celebrate Filipino identity through food, with a spotlight on local ingredients and time-honored cooking methods.
According to Chef Stephan, Metiz presents traditional Filipino diets through a contemporary lens. The restaurant primarily serves vegetables and seafood, with meat only serving as a secondary component to enhance flavor. He explained, “Since we are influenced by the cultural trends happening all around us, I think it’s important to modernize certain things. But there’s a fine line between entering something gimmicky and also unrecognizable. For me, the worst thing that can happen is when we taste something and go, ‘Is this really Filipino?’ So we have to be very careful of that because, otherwise, we’re just not being honest with ourselves.”
In line with this perspective, I look back at the menu special I had the privilege of trying — the pork rib and pork humba with fermented carrot glaze, upo (bottle gourd), patis, okra, and guava. While this dish retained the comforting sweetness of humba, it also incorporated unexpected elements that didn’t take away from its essence. Adding mustasa (mustard greens) also provided a refreshing touch without overpowering the flavors. Since no Filipino meals are complete without rice, Metiz served a refined version with Kalinga rice, Lapu headstock, and fermented cucumbers that undoubtedly added depth, richness, and umami.
On the importance of maintaining familiarity and approachability when it comes to food, Chef Stephan recounted an occasion when he was served Bistek Tagalog made with US Angus beef. To him, this deviation from tradition undermined the dish itself. Customarily, Bistek Tagalog relies on tough cuts of meat that need marination for tenderization — a step rendered unnecessary with Angus beef.
“Often, people forget that if you want to push food forward, you have to think thoroughly throughout the entire process. Like, why are we pushing it? Why are we doing what we’re doing? What’s the purpose behind it? For Metiz, it has to be done using local ingredients, or we’re just showcasing that it cannot be elevated without the help of external forces. It goes back to the entire discussion of colonial mentality. We have to be able to stand on our own without the help of foreign ingredients,” he said.
Chef Stephan prioritizes two fundamental questions when crafting new dishes. First and foremost: Does it taste good? This essential query guides the Metiz team, prompting frequent travel and dining experiences to benchmark against other restaurants. Chef Stephan views this practice as an investment akin to pursuing a master’s degree.
“The second question is, how do we remain flavor-forward?” he shared. “There are obviously different schools of thought amongst chefs, but for Metiz, our school of thought is that the only way we can remain unique is by making sure that the flavors that come forward, or the things that remind us of certain dishes, are local.”
Using local ingredients inherently means adjusting menus to accommodate seasonal changes, a practice Metiz embraces. However, one dish has been a mainstay on its menu — the caramelized ensaimada, accompanied by cheese and soured milk, an aged tapuy reduction, and kasuy (cashew.)
From the eight-course menu I enjoyed, this was undeniably a personal favorite. The ensaimada, with its caramel coating, almost brought to mind the look and taste of freshly baked French canelé. It was complemented well by the cheese, which offered a salty flavor when dipped into and added a whole new layer of taste. Meanwhile, the tapuy reduction, derived from a traditional rice wine, lent the dish a sharp and tangy character.
“The ensaimada just celebrated a year since its first moment on the menu, but it’s only been around eight months in its current form,” Chef Stephan elaborated. “It’s actually an important dish for us because we try to flip the discussion on its head. Oftentimes, we ask, how will we ever do better than French or Japanese food? I’m trying to flip it around by saying, what if our food is actually already better than theirs?”
While acknowledging potential skepticism from top chefs, he firmly believes in the enhancement Filipino elements can bring to dishes like beef bourguignon, which he feels is improved with the addition of patis.
He continued, “If we’re just unapologetic and decide, ‘this is how I like my food. I don’t have to eat it the way you’re telling me to. I’m doing it the way I want it,’ we realize that we actually have so much to be thankful for.”
In addition to its philosophical approach to culinary innovation, Metiz is known for its emphasis on fermentation. Chef Stephan incorporates a variety of fermented ingredients into his dishes and menus, leveraging the complex flavors and unique profiles that the process can offer.
He told adobo Magazine, “Fermentation brings out the best in certain ingredients, and it creates flavor that we, as Filipinos, love. We enjoy bagoong, patis. We eat fermented things all the time. We don’t realize that even vinegar is fermented. Everything we love essentially is fermented, and I think it’s a big part of our flavor profiles. To acknowledge that is to acknowledge our cuisine. At the end of the day, it still speaks about us as a people and the things we lean towards.”
Chef Stephan expressed his desire for guests not to leave indifferent when asked what message he hopes diners take away from their experience at Metiz. He stated, “If a guest comes in and says outright, ‘I don’t like the food,’ that’s completely fine with me. At least they tried it.” He acknowledged that such reactions are not uncommon, especially when guests expect traditional dishes like steak.
“The truth is, vegetables are a lot more labor-intensive than meat. Anybody can cook a steak. Doing vegetables properly — I think that’s a real frontier, right there. So, I want people to see what the possibilities are and leave with more questions than answers,” he said.
I was delighted to experience this outlook firsthand with the third dish of the night — zucchini, button mushroom, cabbage, and carrots in a smoked bangus and pork broth with oyster egg sauce. Upon reading the menu, I initially thought this vegetable-forward dish would be unassuming. I was quickly proven wrong, however, when it was presented. It boasted a remarkable depth of flavor and substantiality, with diverse textures that added a compelling dimension to the dish. This lingered in my thoughts long after the meal concluded. (If we’re being honest, I’m still thinking about it to this day.)
Discussing his desired role in the global discourse on Filipino gastronomy, Chef Stephan emphasized focusing on elements he could directly control — his company, restaurant, and daily actions — rather than the broader perspective. With Manila’s tight-knit fine dining community, he recognized its small size and the visibility of both successes and failures within it. For him, creating a positive impact within his immediate sphere — encompassing suppliers, staff, and patrons — takes precedence over broader global conversations about Filipino gastronomy.
As Metiz claims its place as one of the Philippines’ most coveted dining establishments, who could have imagined that it was formed from the fragments of a distant and failing Colombian restaurant? Reflecting on the journey, Chef Stephan said, “Metiz is a flavor-centric restaurant. It just turns out that Filipino food is the medium. We’ve already established the fight — our cuisine is delicious. Now we’re focusing on what’s next.”
