Lazy Suzy Blends Japanese, Korean and Cantonese Cuisines Together in Cleverly Delicious Ways

(SPOT.ph) Even by the standards of any chef in the frantic, frenzied, feverish food scene of Metro Manila, Pat Go is one busy man.

He’s kind of everywhere. Mainly, you’ll see him at the helm of Makati neighborhood favorite Your Local, where he’s shown off his unique talent for remixing Asian flavors and cooking styles for the past six years. This also comes to play as a food consultant for the Tasteless Food Group, with him coming up for the menu of Gochu-Gang at The Grid.

But oh, does he have an appetite for collaborations. In 2025 alone, you’d also see his distinctive flavors at work in menus and pop-ups with Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, Taqueria Franco, and chefs Young Sook Lee and Jihyung Choi from Netflix’s Culinary Class Wars.

These days, you’ll see him more often at the Podium Social, where Chef Pat has just opened his new restaurant Lazy Suzy—and on today’s shoot here, he is (ironically) never doing nothing. He smoothly moves between torching something delicious up in the kitchen and taking business calls to politely answering interview questions and testing the restaurant’s new automatic mahjong table.

Only a few weeks after its official launch, Lazy Suzy is running like a well-oiled machine and feels like it knows what it wants to be: a playful celebration of East Asian flavors and experiences, with big plates meant to be shared and mahjong tiles ready for play.

It is the kind of finesse that tells you about the 20 years Chef Pat’s spent working in different restaurants and leading kitchens. But here’s where things get bizarre: Lazy Suzy is his newest concept, but it is also technically his first.

In a scene where many chefs with international experience unveil new concepts and avante garde tasting menus left and right, Chef Pat is an unusual character. For one, he was originally a banker before he decided to go to culinary school, training under Norbert Gandler at The International School for Culinary Arts and Hotel Management in Quezon City.

“My first job was with Florabel [by Florabel Yatco],” he recounts, snacking on leftover nori from today’s shoot. It’s the first time we’ve seen him sit since we got here hours ago. “Then I transferred to Chef Jessie Sincioco [in Enchante]. I worked in Shangri-La Makati for a few years before working in Sala Bistro by Chef Colin McKay.”

But Chef Pat’s name would soon begin to pop up in conversations as Jordy Navarra’s senior chef de partie in Black Sheep. When Navarra left to start Toyo Eatery, Chef Pat took over the restaurant’s second iteration in Makati in 2016 (though it would later heartbreakingly close its doors).

This is already a weird position to have been in once, but he would later find himself in it a second time as he quietly took over Southeast Asian fusion spot Your Local from Nicco Santos and Queenie Villar in 2021.

“It was very difficult because of course people had an expectation,” says Chef Pat. “But for me, I took it as a challenge. I accepted it as my own restaurant, so we had to change a lot. We had to make it under my leadership: the menu, the service, everything. We had to own it.”

Where one might have been tempted to loudly announce a changing of the guard, Chef Pat’s entry into Your Local was relatively quiet—but that’s not to say it was shy. The restaurant’s stronger flavors were updated with the times, and with what diners actually wanted based on feedback (perhaps the business major in him coming out to play). What worked stayed, and what didn’t was removed. Continuous trial and error seems to be the core of the fusion cuisine Chef Pat has come to be known for, along with an approachability that not many chefs are able to match.

“People always notice that I usually combine a lot of different cuisines, like fusion style, which I think many are afraid to do because it’s hard to get right,” he notes. “For me, it has to be subtle. Less forcing two cuisines together and more like finding a common ground, like an ingredient or a cooking style, and making something new with that. We don’t hard sell.”

It’s one of the reasons Your Local remains one of Legazpi Village’s most enduring spots for a night out 12 years after it first opened—and with Chef Pat always testing new creations on a crowd through popups and collaborations, it was perhaps only a matter of time before a new concept emerged.

“There’s a lot of restaurants that bring together Southeast Asian [food], but no one here has ever combined East Asian cuisine,” says Chef Pat. “So this is that: it’s Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese-inspired, with drinks and all.” 

It is a concept a long time in the making, with him writing it down on his phone as far back as five years ago. Something that he’d save for the perfect opportunity—like, say, The Podium going on the hunt for one-off restaurants for its new rooftop culinary hub. After a full year filled with menu and concept edits with his partners and construction delays, however, Lazy Suzy finally is here to play.

“[This is] the first chef-driven restaurant that was mine from the very beginning,” he says. “It’s been fun, and it’s a new feeling to have made something from the ground up.”

While Your Local keeps it cozy and intimate with dim lights and bright Southeast Asian flavors, a step into Lazy Lucy at the top of The Podium immediately feels like a joyride farther north. You’re hit with grey tiles and glass panels reminiscent of the streets of Seoul, Taipei, and Hong Kong, as well as splashes of lucky red and green, a painting of a woman playing mahjong, a Giant Bear figure designed ala Japan’s Milky chocolate, and well, a big Labubu statue tying the rest together. Off to the side and available for rent with drinks and special bites is the ultimate luxury: an automatic mahjong set that shuffles the tiles for you.

It’s neat, yet still fun with its cheekier references, kind of like Chef Pat himself.

“Lazy Suzy was inspired by the Chinese lazy susan, the round spinning [turntable] at lauriats— so my vision was that everything has to be shared,” he explains. “But also, we had this persona of a fun tita: Suzy, not Susan. She can eat with her friends, drink, play mahjong, and enjoy a fun menu.”

While there aren’t any actual lazy susans in the restaurant, everything on its menu is definitely made to be served right in the middle of your table for everyone to share, even the small plates, and inspired by Chef Pat’s own fond memories from his childhood and his travels.

When asked, the first thing he’ll recommend are the Lazy Suzy Floss Dumplings (P350), a showcase of texture with pork and mushroom balls deep-fried before being wrapped in crispy wontons and nori floss, and served alongside a sweet and spicy plum aioli reminiscent of Hong Kong roast house sauces.

You also won’t go wrong with their Smashed Cucumber (P290) with a fragrant and surprisingly mild Szechuan Mala dressing and burnt sesame, or their (surprisingly vegan) Whipped Tofu and Focaccia (P360), with soy so smooth you’re tricked into thinking it’s Ricotta.

The crowd—and Chef Pat—favorite however, is the Burnt Ends Chawanmushi (P290), which is where Chef Pat goes against the grain topping a silky egg custard not with the traditional delicate flavors of shrimp or chicken, but the smoky burnt ends of beef brisket.

When you’re ready for something heftier, however, the mains await. And it wouldn’t be a Pat Go restaurant if there wasn’t some form of sweet and smoky charsiu somewhere in there—though he definitely throws us a curveball with the Lazy Suzy Beef Charsiu (P880/Regular, P1,600/Large).

“I noticed in Hong Kong that they just roast it in the oven, so it’s the sweet and simple Cantonese style,” he says, “That’s why I wanted to use beef [brisket] and grill it. Slow roasted and then finished on charcoal so it’s smoky and it has that inihaw flavor.”

You’ll also find plenty of smokiness in their Hot Stone Bulgogi Rice (P350) with US Angus beef and gochujang, as well as a luscious light sweetness in their umami Brown Butter Miso Clams (P600).

Meanwhile, the Beef Noodle Soupreme (P550) is Chef Pat’s bombastic ode to classic Taiwanese beef noodle soup, complete with slow-cooked Angus beef cheeks and a homemade Lao Gan Ma chili crisp (which you can actually buy in a jar as Lao Gan Pat, complete with the chef’s face). The soup itself is made in a surprisingly old school way: “We have a master stock that’s been there for maybe four months already!”

But perhaps the greatest joy in this menu is in finding a bit of nostalgia in unexpected dishes. The Ginseng Chicken (P700) is a play off Korean samgyetang, essentially a boil chicken soup with sticky rice. However, the Lazy Suzy remix blends that rice into a sauce, serving up a flavor that takes one back to piping hot chicken congee in the Binondo of our childhoods.

The party continues to dessert, though you may rightfully have some doubts about one called Lemon Chicken Cake (P290). It happens to be Chef Pat’s personal favorite, and he adds, “I love lemon chicken, fried with that sweet and sour lemon sauce. So we turned it into a lemon cake with yuzu ice cream and a chicken skin polvoron, so it’s both sweet and savory.”

Alternatively, there’s the Hojicha Taho (P290): silky hojicha-infused soy, topped with more hojicha cream, roasted peanuts, and a bouncy muscovado sago. Reader, if this dessert were a person, this writer would marry it.

There is sense of humor and of freedom that runs through Lazy Suzy, from Chef Pat’s dishes and mixologist Royce Pua’s cocktails to its interiors and even its pocket events like Midday Mahjong, Wasake Wednesdays, and even a kaishao social (if you know, you know) for Valentine’s day.

It is a completely and unashamedly a different animal from both Your Local and Black Sheep, as well as other new concepts that have popped into our frantic, frenzied food scene. Louder, but still intentional.

“I think you have to have a very open mind when it comes to making something new,” says Chef Pat. “Before, I was cooking for other people, making a lot of stuff that other people wanted. But I’m more comfortable now. More comfortable with my cooking and my strengths. You can’t satisfy everyone, so make what you like to eat, and it will show.”

And if that means more cleverly delicious common ground between cuisines, flavors, and memories, then Chef Pat is going to stay very busy.

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