Restaurant Sault, Leagzpi Village: where clever cooking meets pure deliciousness

The Begres are about as hands-on as you can get. Pam, also a partner and sommelier at Celera (Tatler Best Asia Pacific 2026’s Best New Restaurant), says: “While I’m building one concept, I’m already thinking about the next.” That often starts with finding a location, and for that she has a method: she manifests spaces.

Read more: Celera is crowned Best New Restaurant Asia Pacific at Tatler Best 2026—a first for the Philippines

This time, her list was long, and it started with the location: it had to be in the middle of the city. Not one to leave things to fate, she approached Studio Yakal, a vintage furniture studio in the same building, to flag any vacancies. It wasn’t too long before one opened up, but alas, it wasn’t quite what they were looking for. Eventually, the two adjacent units on the fourth floor became vacant: one a former law office, and the other a water treatment specialist.

From there, Pam designed, and Geronimo built. She sketched out a basic floor plan and other details whenever ideas struck, even if it meant drawing on Instagram’s Create mode. Ever the handyman, he turned her ideas into the door handles, the wall finish and the smoky, mirrored panel behind the bar, which catches the treeline from across the room. Dimarucut, meanwhile, mapped out the kitchen’s flow and layout, down to the oven, which Geronimo also fabricated.

Pam chose everything down to the table implements, picking pieces up on trips abroad, from wine events to her son’s football tournaments. The dinner and dessert plates are by local ceramics studio Aarde, imprinted with Sault’s logo. The serving cutlery is from one of Thailand’s remaining silversmiths, the dining implements are a special Hong Kong edition from German brand Zwilling, and the kamagong butter knives are from a stall at the Legazpi Market.

Every time they travel to Europe, the Begres feel as if they have left a piece of themselves there. Once they return, they find themselves longing to go back. Sault brings a taste of that life to Manila. “Opening this space, for me, is to romanticise home,” says Pam.

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Dimarucut is no new face in Manila’s F&B circuit. Now Sault’s partner and executive chef, he is best known for his time as sous chef at Metiz, which he left to stage at the prestigious Restaurant Jordnær in Copenhagen and later at Harbor House Inn in California. Just a week into his time at Jordnær, he was offered a full-time position; the day after, the Begres came calling. So why return to Manila?

“I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse,” Pam jests. “At the time, I kept asking myself whether I wanted to build a name for myself in Denmark or back home in the Philippines,” Dimarucut says. “Ultimately, I chose to come home because I felt there was more I could contribute to our culinary community here.”

Running his own kitchen is “daunting, to say the least,” he admits, “but not overwhelming since it’s been something I’ve been dreaming of for quite some time now. I feel a responsibility to my team to help them reach new heights.” He adds, “Having spent most of my career in other people’s kitchens, I’ve learned a great deal, but I’ve always worked within someone else’s vision. At Sault, I have the freedom to put those experiences into practice on my own terms.”

For Pam, that is the whole idea. “My personal mission being in F&B is to cultivate opportunity for those who deserve it, and for them to thrive here at home,” she says.

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Some meals win you over with clever cooking. Others are so delicious they draw a primal, physical response. Sault sits at that rare intersection.

Sault opened to the public on the evening of October 13, granting Tatler Dining a first look the afternoon before. Dimarucut calls it a “season-driven European restaurant”, its menu changing every quarter. Everything comes off the fire, though the team treats it “as a way of cooking rather than another flavour to add to the dish”. Plates are à la carte and primed to be shared (“European food, but Filipino sharing”, as Pam puts it), and the chefs come out of the kitchen to walk you through each one. Not quite casual, not quite fine dining.

Judging by the appetisers, Dimarucut clearly doesn’t shy away from bold flavours. The lazy raviolo, a single parcel of mushroom ragù with chicken liver pâté, XO sauce, olive cream and mushroom jus, is unctuous and rich. Smoked Chilean mussels come with chicharo and a heady crema made from the mussels themselves, while a terrine of short rib and tendon arrives with peppercorn sauce, a basil emulsion and a crisp potato “cloud”. Keep the house sourdough, folded with XO sauce, within reach: its creases bake into crunchy ridges, its softer faces designed to mop up every plate or pair with their herbaceous café de Paris butter.

Dimarucut steers first-timers toward the pulpo, and it’s become a breakout hit: boiled, steamed and then grilled, so the thick of the tentacle stays tender while the tips crisp and char over the flame. It sits on a nutty, almost cheesy roasted yeast emulsion and a black pulpo jus infused with bay leaf.

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The larger plates show more restraint, a sign that Dimarucut knows when to let great meat speak for itself. The Australian duck is aged in-house for two weeks, glazed with maltose and kiwot honey from Kaya Kusina, made by stingless bees that feed on rambutan blossoms, then finished over the embers. It arrives a perfect blush pink, each slice with a thin, glistening layer of fat under glass-like skin.

The A5 Japanese Wagyu rib-eye, aged two days, is finished over ipil-ipil wood (the same trees that peek through Sault’s windows) and served with a sauce of black, green and Sichuan peppercorns. Bite into a smoked olive, and the juice resets your palate for a second before a wave of smoke reintroduces the grill and sends you straight back for another slice.

Dessert is where Sault’s experimental nature comes to full fruition. The “chopsuey” turns vegetables into dessert, part of their efforts to run at total zero waste (Dimarucut estimates they’re 80 per cent of the way there): snap pea white fudge, onion peel sablé and crumble, roasted cauliflower ice cream and carrot oil.

Pam, who doubles as beverage director, set the framework for the beverage programme and left the picks to Ria Quintana, Sault’s newly minted maître d’ and head sommelier. The brief was the “new” French: a younger generation of winemakers going back to the roots of the craft, the movement Jon Bonné charts in The New French Wine. Quintana’s first pick shows why crisp whites take priority here: Gérard Bertrand’s Picpoul de Pinet, a fresh Languedoc white that cleanses the palate between the kitchen’s punchier plates. “It acts almost like a reset, then you get to enjoy the food that we have even more,” she says.

Past the Champagnes, burgundies and understated classics, the list’s Off the Beaten Path section “is where we can encourage people to explore more,” says Quintana. The bottle that surprised her most is Zsolt Sütő’s “Frankie” from Strekov 1075 in Slovakia, a blaufränkisch-led blend she calls “easy ‘sippers’ but still able to hold its own when had with food”. On the cocktails side, the martini gets particular care, with the same smoked olives from the kitchen that pair with the Wagyu rib-eye.

None of it is meant to feel stuffy. Distilling the Sault experience into one word, Dimarucut says: “I’d want them to feel welcomed.”

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Across the hall, Freaquency (Freaq for short) is a different animal: more intimate with couches and lounge seating, pops of colour across the décor, furniture and lighting, unlike Sault’s earthy neutrals. Pam calls it a neighbourhood lounge, made for walk-ins and for the nights when dinner isn’t enough: when you want time with friends before the evening gets going, or aren’t quite ready to say goodbye after dessert. The lounge doubles as a gallery, currently showing the work of artist Bjorn Calleja, and the team envisions it will serve far more purpose with events and DJ nights in the pipeline.

The drinks go left field. “This is where we can showcase the freaqs in funk,” says Pam, pointing to the Strekov 1075 bottles, the result of her long search for Slavic wine, and cocktails like a kalimotxo inspired by the Begres’ travels.

Its kitchen runs partly on Sault’s byproducts, like duck neck sausages and burgers made with the pellicle of Sault’s tomahawk. The early favourite sums up Freaq’s tongue-in-cheek attitude: Eggs on the Eggmaker, which puts kaluga hybrid caviar on chicken nuggets with labneh and scallions. Save room for the chocolate tenerina with smoked vanilla ice cream and seasonal fruit jam.

Opening soon within Freaq, Pop Bottleshop will sell bottles grab-and-go so you can ride the Freaquency all the way home.

Restaurant Sault, Freaquency and Pop Bottleshop are at 4/F, YL Holdings Building, 115 V.A. Rufino St, Legazpi Village, Makati City.

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