Chef Miko Calo launches a new tasting menu at Metronome

Calo has a library of flavours that she has kept tucked away in her mind, waiting for the perfect time to use them. She takes a classic French ingredient such as foie gras and uses it to make chawanmushi and also formed them into tiny mi cuit cubes. Just when I thought I knew what a foie gras dish tastes like, I am shocked by the zing from cane vinegar, a technique that one might think is a Filipino infusion but is actually something Calo learned way back when she was a young cook in Paris. After a palate-cleansing consommé (or a bowl of homely “sabaw,’” as Calo lovingly calls it) with hazelnut gnocchi Parisienne and malunggay pistou, we were warned to brace for the bold flavours that are about to come. Inspired by both the pancit langlang that she enjoyed during visits to Arayat, Pampanga and her beloved Tita Susan’s callos that she sorely misses, the cognac-glazed main lobster lies in a bed of fregola, lobster bisque, guanciale, tomato confit, cured egg yolk, olives, capers, calamansi, and saffron. As fearless as it is endearing and nostalgic, it truly is a show-stopping dish.

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After that, Calo down-shifts with a turbot dish demonstrating she is still capable of restraint, and that her kitchen is a sustainable one that turns herb trimmings into oil and fishbones into jus. She then puts pinipig on her glazed pigeon breast not as (we are so quick to assume) a way of mimicking the crunch from the accompanying pigeon leg confit, but because she simply wanted to. She serves it with foie gras gastrique, kamias caramel, and salted black bean puree as a nod to the beloved Filipino culinary tradition that is sawsawan (dipping sauces).

Calo admits that she is ready for more adventurous moves also because her team is now up to the task. “They already get now what I am trying to do,” she says, “it does not take a lot of explaining anymore for them to be able to execute the things I have in mind.” She shares the stage with her team, many of them rising through the ranks. She leaves the desserts in the highly capable hands of pastry chef Ginno Hernandez, who first refreshed our tastebuds with a light pomelo pre-dessert to prepare us for the redux of their “chocolate textures” dish, adding variations in temperature and consistency. He and Calo continue this playful artistry with the mignardise, again masterfully yielding the interplay between texture and surprising flavours, encouraging diners to end strong with a double espresso or finish off that delightful Vouvray from the wine pairing menu (the all-French line-up is a must for wine lovers, expertly paired by Alain Borgers).

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Many times over Calo has proven that she can cook and she runs a highly-skilled kitchen like the best of them. But, the legendary ones, the ones that we will all remember even when they are gone, are those that create. They are the artists who are not afraid to reveal multiple facets, those who can unleash their boldness and also reel it back in, the ones who are not scared to get their hands dirty. Calo is now leaving the perfect mould she has created for her food and is fashioning it into something that is completely her own. It shows how beyond her skill and her training and that steely focus is a well of creativity that runs so deep, this really is just the beginning.

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