(SPOT.ph) Over a decade ago, there was a young, quiet chef running the back of the now-closed Black Sheep. If his food didn’t make you take notice, his demeanor would; there is, even today, a boy-next-door charm and soft-spoken humility to Patrick Go, Spot’s Chef of the Year 2026, that people tend not to expect of a chef as skilled and seasoned as he.Even in his early career, he’d catch the attention of two culinary legends, Florabel Co and Jessie Sincioco, before landing a backbreaking stint in the kitchens of Makati Shangri-La—all done with barely a peep of complaint. “I guess in any room, I feel like I’m there to learn,” he says. “You learn so little if you react before absorbing.”Today, though, he’s found his voice in more ways than one. The old, frenetic urge he had to be everything, everywhere, all at once now emerges as a different energy. Rather than pile on the bells and whistles into one or two menus, Chef Pat channels his love for the breadth and diversity of Asian cuisine through both fusion and fission—a careful curation of tasks, recipes, and supplies that allow him to juggle the thousand-and-one things he’s got going on. You’ll have heard of at least three of them at any given moment.