Everything We Know About Chef Margarita Forés' New Restaurant

(SPOT.ph) We don't need to tell you that Margarita Forés is an icon and practically a household name in Filipino food and dining. After all, the award-winning Filipina chef's illustrous career spans a whopping 37 years, beginning with her studies under esteemed chefs in Italy, then applying those learnings to her restaurants and concepts in the Philippines: Pepato, Cibo, Lusso, Cibo di M, The Loggia, and Grace Park, championing Filipino ingredients in the process. This year however, the 2016 Asia's Best Female Chef jumps into a new arc as she streamlines her brands and puts a number of them under one name: Margarita. She is also set to open a signature restaurant of the same name at Ayala Triangle Gardens come last quarter of 2024.

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Chef Margarita Forés has exciting stuff up her sleeves, dropping very soon:

New Brand Identity

Forés made the announcement at Lusso last Saturday, March 23 (it was also her 65th birthday!), over a dinner of personal food "eurekas": dishes she came up with when she first went to Italy and realized Filipino and Italian ingredients could make for beautiful unions.

"I've been thinking about the rebrand for maybe the last eight months—[and] I always gave my birthday as the deadline," the chef says in an exchange with SPOT.ph, admitting her branding has, for many years, been "a little bit muddled." With that, her restaurants and concepts will be falling under the more coherent Margarita brand. She's enlisted the help of Chris Owen and Victoria Tang-Owen of Thirty30 Creative, which has worked with the likes of New World Hotel, Dior, and the Tod's Group.  

"I think that it's a great endeavor because it clarifies everything," says Forés. "It also streamlines our image, and the legacy that I would like to push for the years to come."

Margarita the Restaurant

The second part of the announcement focuses on Forés' upcoming dining establishment that's also called Margarita, to open very soon at the Ayala Triangle Gardens. "[It...] has been long coming. It's something that I've wanted to do many years ago but I think that the space [at Ayala Triangle] that has come up for us to do it is the most ideal space for it," the chef tells us.

You can expect to see both Forés' Italian training and advocacy for Filipino food in action at the two-storey dining spot, which will be serving an ala-carte menu on the first level and a tasting menu on the second. "This will showcase all my signature dishes that I've been doing, that haven't ended up actually at my restaurants," she shares. "This is going to be partly an offshoot from Pepato from many years ago, but really the signature [dishes] from my catering business... and from collaborations I've done with foreign chefs in the last decade."

Taking over the design side of things is acclaimed architect and interior designer Sean Dix (he also did the interiors of Hong Kong's Yardbird, Manila's Steak & Frice, and more). Dix and Forés draw inspiration from places they hold dear, and Dix envisions the resulting space as "a plush sala, a jewel box showcasing Margarita's culinary finesse."

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