At FLOW, Chef Kevin Uy Takes Diners From Manila’s Markets to the Amazon Rainforest

(SPOT.ph) Immersion into the worlds of others can teach you life through their lens and better understand your own. Just ask Kevin Uy, the 31-year-old chef who spent five years in Lima, Peru, much of it training under chefs Virgilio Martínez and Pia Leon at Central, which ranked No. 1 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2023. Doing so had the unexpected benefit of leading him to learn more about the Philippines, his own home base.

While working with Virgilio and exploring the rest of the Inca Empire afterwards, Chef Kevin developed a fascination with the Peruvian landscape. He saw countless parallels between Peru and his country across different arenas. These learnings helped bring to life FLOW, Kevin’s new restaurant on the ground floor of Green Sun Hotel, Makati, where he celebrates the diversity of the Philippines’ land, living parts, and cycles, keeping Central’s principles in mind.

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Even as a teenager, Kevin knew he wanted to go the culinary route. “It was [when I was] 13 years old when I decided that's the direction I wanted to go,” he tells SPOT.ph. “As a kid, I was always very fantasy-driven. I wanted to become a super spy, then a singer. But one thing's for sure, I did not want to work in an office. Absolutely not,” he says with a laugh.

Chef Kevin admits to being a fat kid who loved to eat. He started making his own breakfast and found he enjoyed the whole process. “I just fall in love because it's that part of my day where I felt that I was in most control," he explains. "As someone with ADHD, I struggle to find things that I can control. And now I think that the kitchen is a good way to channel my [condition], my difficulty of focusing into something very productive and very me. It's something that I'm very proud of… Somehow [cooking] brings me peace.” Looking to venture into the culinary arts, he enrolled at Enderun Colleges and flew to Barcelona for an internship at two-Michelin starred establishment Enoteca Paco Pérez. "This was a prerequisite to graduate... but I think that's the time [of my life] that [led me to] decide that this is the line of work I wanted to be in," he shares.

It was in 2016 that Kevin got the opportunity to meet Virgilio for the first time, at that year’s run of Madrid Fusion Manila. He recalls a funny moment from the encounter, and the question he asked Virgilio: "What is the nutritional value of tiger’s milk?” Kevin was referring to Peruvian tigre de leche, which he mistakenly thought was literal milk from tigers (it's actually the figurative term for the citrusy marinade used in their ceviche). “[Virgilio] laughed about it after.”

Initial embarrassments aside, meeting the Peruvian chef awakened something else in Kevin. He developed a deep admiration for Virgilio's philosophy—particularly the work he’s done at Central, where the team reimagines Peruvian ecosystems categorised by altitude as dishes using ingredients from these systems. In doing this, Martinez and the team get to showcase the country’s wide biodiversity, and propel the cuisine globally in the process.

Kevin realized the Philippines has a similar wide biodiversity, and had the vision to open his own place with a similar approach—as applied to the Philipppine's landscape. “When I realized that the Philippines had that same diversity, I was like, ‘I need to celebrate this. I need to celebrate what we can find here.' That's why I was like, 'Okay, I need to go to the guy that does it the best.'"

Kevin was determined to find a way to work with Virgilio himself. And so he gathered his courage and approached Virgilio privately to inquire about doing an internship, to which Virgilio said to send him an email. To get academic accreditation, Kevin set out to study at the Basque Culinary Center in 2017. The year after, he was able to enter Mil, Martinez’s other restaurant located in the Sacred Valley, to do his thesis.

It wasn’t long before the young man was offered a job at Central itself. “[At the time] I didn't feel myself ready for Central,” Chef Kevin admits. “And then [Virgilio’s sister, Malena] called me and said, ‘You're coming to Lima. Virgilio wants you here.’” His face lights up. “All the dominoes just fell in place for me. And it really felt that I made the best decision to go there. It's something that I will never regret.” Kevin entered Central in 2019; took a break in 2020 because of the pandemic; and returned in 2022, staying until October 2024. For a month following his exit from Central, he continued to explore the country, going as far as to travel to the Andean mountains to better understand the Peruvian landscape.

For Chef Kevin, working at Central wasn’t just about prestige but about deeply understanding its principles. “I wanted to learn a philosophy that I would soon turn into what FLOW could hopefully become.” Martinez had, in Kevin’s words, tied the country together: “He brought them together by territories—by showcasing dishes that grew there, [then] recreating the ecosystems on the plate,” he explains. “That's something that he was able to showcase not only to the Peruvians but to everyone in the world, by demonstrating the massive biodiversity that is in Peru because the different altitudes. He always says, ‘You crumple a piece of paper and you lay it flat.’ That's how he sees [his home country.]”

Coming home to the Philippines, he saw even more similarities to Peru—in layout, environmental conditions, animals, plants, and so on. “[Prior to my time in Peru] I never really got an opportunity to travel [around the Philippines],” Kevin admits. “We really discovered a lot of ingredients during the travels that we did in Peru… [then realized] there's a lot of things that they have that we also have, or that maybe we have a counterpart of.”

All of these discoveries and insights come together at FLOW, which has been the talk of the local food community since it opened last December.

At the entrance of FLOW is a recessed pathway, taking after sunken elements in the Philippine rice terraces; it leads to a door with a central rock as its handle, its shadow stretching down to the floor. The inside is dim, a soft glow emanating from the cove lighting on the walls. Glass cloche lamps showcase husks, shells, fishbones—emblems of the dishes ahead. The place seems to light up as Kevin tells the stories of the different parts of the restaurant—from the hand-woven napkins from Benguet and hand-carved utensils from Laguna on the tables, to the bricks from Pangasinan on the lower half of the walls, to the woven overhead lamps by Zacarias 1925 and Nazareno/Lichauco hanging from the ceiling.

We’re led to a private room that's low-lit, save for the burst of color from the display of local produce and byproducts he uses as ingredients: saba bananas, guyabano, lagkitan corn, cacao nibs, and tamarillo, to name a few. These are ingredients most Filipinos will have encountered while living in the Philippines. Some are more ubiquitous than others; it's easy to dismiss them as common and take them for granted. But in all of these, Chef Kevin sees potential. Working with Executive Chef Gato Ong and the rest of the FLOW team, he uses the know-how he's gathered over the course of his career to unlock new ways of using these bounties of the Philippine soil.

Towards the back is a display of custom pottery from local artisans. “We work with different artists to create this experience,” Kevin explains. “And we’ve really worked hard to locate each and every one of them because I really wanted to showcase the importance of our ceramic artists here in the Philippines.” Some designers he’s collaborated with are Rita Badilla-Gudino, Joey de Castro, and EJ Espiritu, who each created custom pots and plates that serve as vessels for specific courses on FLOW’s lineup.

“All of these people I want to give a shout out because all of them really contributed to the story," says Kevin. While he himself is in the culinary space, he recognizes the value of creativity in its different forms—visual arts, interior design, music, content creation, even marketing. "I want Flow to become a hub for inspired artists to thrive."

"I appreciate creativity... I like to celebrate uniqueness," he continues. "I'm a guy that knows how to look at something and appreciate the work that went in. And that's why I love art and creativity so much. It means the world to me. And I wanted to showcase this space as for more creative people and more artists to be able to express themselves. I want to be the one to bring them out into the open. And that's why [we celebrate every single person who made] the plates. So that's something I really want to express—something very important to me personally."

Like Central, FLOW takes upon it to create courses inspired by the ecosystems of the Philippines in their debut tasting menu (P5,500), a nine-course journey that also brings to light the common threads between Peru and the Philippines. It begins with the Coastline, a showcase of different kinds of seaweed in three parts: an earthy gel of lato that mimics the sea; nori crackers symbolizing the sand, topped with a salad of lato and guso; and rock-like puffs infused with spirulina then filled with an algae cream. There’s Manila, essentially a kinilaw dish inspired by the city's wet markets—a lively arena where vendors of assorted goods come together—with juicy scallops, fried cassava, and a bright blue spirulina granita that’s extra punchy from being infused with citrus and batuan.

River stars river prawn, a.k.a. ulang in Filipino and camaron del Rio in Peruvian. Inspired by Peruvian chupe de camaron, the crustacean (a staple in both countries) is given a glaze of tamarillo (sachatomate in Peruvian) and topped with a foam brimming with the umami of its head juices. He then tells us of the time he visited the Amazon jungle: “I was blown away by the different flora and fauna I saw there. The different jungle life. And when I first landed [there], you know what I said? ‘Grabe, parang Manila na ‘to!’” he says, chuckling. "The temperature [is similar to ours]. And when I landed, boom, a tricycle." He retells the story in the Amazon, a substantial course of pork face seasoned with mishkina, a turmeric-heavy Amazonian seasoning; then kept company with rolls of rolled and chopped ubod na saging, plus stewed puso ng saging in saging na saba sauce at the bottom. 

Kevin emphasizes the Filipino-Peruvian connection in Lima, a ceviche-meets-kinilaw situation of sorts of market fish in leche de tigre infused with guyabano and citrus, a defining souring agent of ceviche. The addition of guyabano leaf oil in the marinade lends a smokiness to the mix—divine stuff, especially as it’s balanced out by the sweet potato puree at the bottom and crystallized sweet potato leaves on top.

We get to the peak of the menu in Mountain, Chef Kevin’s tribute to the famous mountains of Peru and the Philippines. Chunks of beef cheeks braised in burnt coconut symbolize the mountain ranges of Mindanao; meanwhile a tri-colored mix of tinigib, naturally dyed to mimic three local corn varieties (lagkitan, Japanese sweet corn, and red corn from Bukidnon), represent Peru’s rainbow mountains while honoring corn’s role in the Andean diet.

Working with Virgilio has instilled in Kevin a number of core values that he continues to draw from. For one, there’s the appreciation of locality and sustainability—and seeing how these can help the country in turn. At FLOW, this comes out in his nose-to-tail, seed-to-tree, front-to-back approach to using ingredients—like the dessert of Cacao that contains no chocolate per se, but uses all parts of the cacao fruit: the husk (turned into a sponge); cascara a.k.a. the skin from the cacao pods (infused into caramel); the mucilage or pulp (transformed into sorbet); cacao nibs (candied into an addictive, crisp-caramelized topping); even the cacao leaf (powdered and dusted over the dessert to finish). 

We also see Chef Kevin explore all the ways he can play around with a single ingredient, as in the grand finale that is the Yacon course. This has the so-called “earth apple,” a naturally sweet root found both here and in Peru, in different forms: earthy fermented yacon at the base; a cream of the concentrated yacon juices; compressed yacon strips; chopped pickled yacon as a tangy accent; a sponge made of “ash” from burning the yacon’s skin; and a syrup from the reduced liquid of the fermented yacon.

The meal has ended, and Chef Kevin calls out the entire kitchen team to come out and meet the diners. All members of the team (Kevin included) bow while we all cheer. He tells us of FLOW’s early days doing dinner trials, as he made it a point to ensure those who’d be among the first to try his food would be “...every single supplier, every single collaborator, every single individual that was part of building what now is FLOW.”

For Kevin, this is largely a way of honoring Virgilio’s “appreciation of people”—the man’s humility that keeps him grounded and grateful for those that have helped him get to where he is today. “[Virgilio] really taught me not just how to be a leader, but how to be a great person in [this] industry,” Kevin tells us. “There's a line in Ted Lasso that perfectly describes [him]... like, ‘In a [business] that celebrates ego, he reigns his in.’ [Virgilio is] not only his talent but his humility. So that's something I hope to embody.”

Filipino and Peruvian terrains and ingredients take center stage on FLOW's debut lineup, but Chef Kevin clarifies that there's no intention to define the establishment by a fixed cuisine. That is to say, while its core values are designed to stay the same, the possibilities of what he'll tackle in the future remain open—and endless. But that's perhaps the beauty of Virgilio's ethos. Kevin shares: "I think [his] concept of landscapes can apply to everything, because there are landscapes everywhere and they all have stories to tell, especially with [regard to] culture." It's a joy immersing oneself in the pages of FLOW as its story glides forward.