The tasting menu at Restaurant Naides, an ambitious new fine dining restaurant, has an eye toward avant garde visuals, but the progression of courses is high octane. The explosive tone is set in the first few minutes by the opening bites, inspired by Filipino street food.
A recent winter dinner kicked off with an abstracted take on lumpia: a tuile plank dolloped in banana miso that was more savory than sweet, garnished with a fan of pear slices. The following appetizer, okoy, a medallion-sized fritter made of mung beans, was layered in prawn tartare and pickled roses, foreshadowing the menu’s throughline of funk and acid — two of the signature flavor profiles of Filipino cooking. The opening sequence peaked with the puto, a springy rice cake filled with pork rillette that coated my mouth in velvet-soft fat; a garnish of tart, unripe berries brought things back into balance.
I felt as though I had experienced the setpiece of a Michael Bay blockbuster before the meal even truly began…