NYC’s Best New Restaurant is Reimagining Filipino Cuisine

What we're doing here at Tadhana

is we're imagining what Filipino food can be.

It took me 21 years to learn this modernist technique

and now I'm bringing it here to Tadhana.

I've opened a lot of restaurants in the city.

I've worked for the royal family,

but this time it's all me.

Being the sole owner of Tadhana,

it's a lot of anxiety

just because there's 12 people relying on me.

You have to be able to jump in anywhere

from dish pit to rep to getting a liquor license.

I gotta make this work.

Tadhana means by fate or destiny.

After 21 years, all my experiences just led me all to this.

[cheerful music]

Hey guys, I'm Frances Tariga,

I'm the chef owner here at Tadhana. Let's go to work.

[door squeaks]

Hey!

These are a small dining area.

This used to be a coffee shop.

It's like really, really not built

for a fine dining restaurant, but you know what?

We make things happen.

Normally I'm the first person here,

but Chef Mark beats me sometimes, you know.

We like to, like, come early

so that we can check all the equipment.

We're electric only so if one equipment is not working,

it's really gonna affect our service.

Hello chef.

Hello chef. Morning.

It's not just like checking the equipment,

it's basically my first walkthrough.

Checking what happened last night.

Did they clean this? Did they not?

The closing team made sure

that they even cleaned the gasket last night.

This is what health department check. The gaskets.

If your gaskets are, like, moldy, that's a five points.

You're about to get a B, basically.

So this is our freezer.

It's really a house freezer. [laughs]

It's gonna change soon, okay?

We have money now, right, chef?

Yes, chef. We call that

balling in the hood.

We don't have a walk-in,

so everything is prepped fresh daily.

So it's 10:00 AM right now.

Yama Seafood is here. So let's get our fish.

[bouncy upbeat music]

Hey, Nobu.

Yo.

There's dog shit here. Watch out.

[Frances] Our fish, normally we order it from Japan

just because it's very similar

from what we have in the Philippines.

Hiramasa and ji-kinmedai from Shizuoka

and hiramasa from Nagasaki in Japan.

It just got delivered today?

Yes. Hey. Okay.

You see how Japanese people wrap their fish? Very good.

We got the hiramasa.

You can find the hiramasa in the US

but the quality is different.

You see this technique that they do?

Ikejime. They remove the nerve of the fish.

You bleed it out properly so they're not fighting,

so the meat stays intact.

Everything is firm.

A lot of the domestic fish in America when they're caught,

they just kinda catch it in the net

and just kinda throw it in a barrel

and let it suffocate to death.

As opposed to here,

you can fly fish from thousands of miles away,

but it's in better condition

than fish that was caught domestically.

Facts.

It's caught over the weekend,

and then my partners in Japan shipped it over

and then we received it this morning.

Now this fish is special

because it's a new company that's using AI robotics

to do the Japanese ikejime technique-

Wow. without humans.

And obviously you can see the meat quality,

it's pristine, it's white.

Chef, this is for you.

This is the kinmedai for our R & D.

This is for our next menu rollout for August.

So invoice.

Oh my God! Expensive!

Just kidding. [Nobu laughs]

The total is $366 for three fish.

All right. Thank you, chef.

It's around 10:30 now

so we gotta start butchering the fish right away.

[gentle upbeat music]

Nobu delivers in most of the Michelin Stars in the city.

We really trust that guy.

A lot of New York chefs trust that guy.

This is what we use for ceviche.

I'm gonna scale it.

So what we're gonna do is the sukibiki technique.

It's more gentler in the fish.

Plus we don't have a lot of space to scale it

'cause it gets too messy,

so what we do is we remove the scale just like this.

It removes the pocket that the scales are in.

I did this Japanese technique when I was doing omakase.

There's 120 omakase in the city.

You have to be somewhat different

from what everyone else is doing, right?

Now I like to teach myself a lot

'cause New York kitchens are cutthroat.

So we make sure that we ourselves handle the products,

like this, especially expensive fish.

This fish is around $160

but after yield, this will cost like $320.

So you can only use 50% of the fish

'cause you just want the filet.

So the dish that this comes with, we call it kinilaw.

Kilaw means to cook the fish in vinegar in Tagalog.

It's basically a ceviche.

The vinaigrette is inside the sphere.

When you bite this, the flavor's gonna explode.

So when you're fileting fish,

especially with this kind of fish,

you gotta use a fileting knife, the Deba.

Deba is a Japanese chef knife

that is like one side bevel.

I'm a lefty so it needs to be a lefty Deba.

This is a life changer.

You use a Deba, it literally just slides in

and you get a perfect cut filet.

As a female chef, a lot of people doubt you already

just because you're female, right?

So like I made sure that I learned all these techniques.

I used to work for the royal family.

I used to be a private chef for the princess of UAE.

I worked in corporate for 20 years.

Before, I'm like more carefree

just because that's not my money.

Now it's like this is my livelihood, this is my career.

This is actually everything for me now.

There is no room for mistake.

I'm actually just freeing the meat from the bone.

This is right now 80 bucks. This is the quarter.

But right now I'm gonna pass this on to our cook

so he can portion this,

and we're moving on to our chicken wing.

So we call this inasal na relyenong pakpak,

meaning it's a stuffed chicken wing.

We stuff it with our Filipino meatloaf we call embutido.

It's a festive sausage in the Philippines.

It's like ground pork, green peas, golden raisins,

and then of course our secret ingredient,

this is a very stereotype Filipino,

Tender Juicy Hotdog!

We don't have Nathan's in the Philippines.

So how do you stuff chicken wing? It's a lot.

Also, Chef Mark's gonna help me.

First you just need to cut the joint.

This goes to family meal.

This one is what we're gonna stuff.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna make sure

to remove the bones.

You push it, push it down like that, and then you break it.

So this is now empty inside, ready to be stuffed.

What I'm doing, it's not really traditional.

I'm combining two traditional Filipino dishes into one.

You can't find this anywhere. It compliments each other.

We do a lot of modernist technique.

The aunties always say, Oh, I can cook that at home.

This is not just an easy thing

that you can do, like, on the fly.

This is what Filipino food can be.

It doesn't have to be traditional all the time.

Sometimes I'm a no emotion bitch,

but I think you gotta really have a tough skin also

to be in this industry.

I first started cooking when I was a kid.

My dad's a police officer that loves to cook.

When I came out, you know,

when you have a police officer dad,

their mindset is different.

They look down on you already.

But like when I'm cooking with him, it's different.

Like, I feel like there's no judgment.

I feel like I was trying to please my dad.

He explained to me the why. Why are we doing this?

He passed away a long time ago,

but before he died he said like,

That [beep] lesbian's good!

No, he said that. In Tagalog though. [laughs]

It's already noon.

I need to move on to my next prep,

which is the duck egg custard.

I'm gonna give this to Chef Mark so I can do the next job.

Chef.

[Mark] Yes, chef?

[animated upbeat music]

Around this time, a lot of our teams are coming in.

We wanna get ahead of the game

'cause we don't have a lot of time

so I'm gonna do this for them.

So first, the egg needs to have that pointed part up.

Balut means it's an 18-days duck embryo.

They're fertilize them, basically.

They check it in the light.

If the embryo is full, that becomes balut.

If the embryo is not full, that becomes penoy.

Penoy is the younger version of balut.

That's like the undeveloped embryo,

so that's why it's custard-y.

We reimagine penoy, basically.

How is it gonna be more for, like, American audience?

So we're doing the duck egg custards.

It's basically like a chawanmushi.

We steam it and then we finish it with mushroom veloute,

shallots, Golden Osetra caviar, and pickled jicama.

We get that violent reactions like,

Oh, this is not balut!

Like, Ate, come on.

Like, we can't serve, like, you know,

embryo with beak and feathers.

Like, that's not really palatable.

That's part of my spiel here.

Like, All right, guys, relax.

You're not on 'Fear Factor,' you're at Tadhana.

Everyone laugh. Ha ha ha ha.

First we're gonna crack the eggs.

This tool is basically cracking the egg in a perfect forms.

It's just sending the vibration

around the perimeter so it breaks.

Throw it in there, empty shell out,

and then we're gonna soak it in this vinegar water solution

to remove the membrane inside the duck egg.

It's a chewy texture, so we don't want that.

People call us fine dining

so we're trying to be at that standard.

You gotta make sure all these little details.

Now I'm gonna pass it to my sous chef

and he's gonna do our custard.

I mean, I can't do everything!

You know, you gotta trust your people, basically.

I'm a big freaking micromanager.

So used to that, you know, like working in corporate,

working in a volume restaurant,

you really gotta micromanage people.

I managed 300 employees and I don't want that.

Being an owner now, you gotta really empower them.

You gotta let them do the job, you gotta trust them.

There's gonna be a lot of mistake,

a lot of expensive mistake.

But you know what? It's part of, like, growing.

So we have this custard from yesterday.

If you do it the day before,

it blends well and then the custard is, like, softer.

All right, so I'm just putting aluminum foil here

'cause we're gonna put it in the steamer.

Once it's soaked, it just peels off. Voila.

This is the whole membranes.

Duck egg is more, like, sturdy.

With the custard, it's more thicker and it holds better.

Now we're gonna sand it so there's no sharp edges.

Yep. Michelin Guide, I'm calling you out.

Come here.

People ask us, Oh, where you guys buy your eggshell?

I'm like, Bitch, we make it in-house.

Chef Ralph, can you wash the eggshells

so we can add the custard?

Tonight, we're gonna do two seating. So 48.

We're always fully booked

and we only booked 21 days in advance,

so better get your reservation now.

Hey! [staff chatter]

this mix, we pass it at least three times in a chinois

in order to get the silkiest texture ever.

Now we're gonna precook this egg custard.

We're just gonna make a few more of this carton

and so we can move on to our next job, basically.

We steam it twice. The first one is to cook it.

The other one is to make sure

that we serve it hot to our guest.

18 minutes and then we gucci. We're good.

It's one o'clock.

I need to break down this big jackfruit for our halo-halo.

[lively upbeat music]

This is 20 pounds. Imagine if this fall on you.

And in the Philippines, we use this a lot.

If it's still green or not ripe,

we use it for a coconut stew.

And if it's ripe, we put it on our dessert.

So how are you gonna know if it's ripe? You don't know.

You gotta oil it 'cause that's very sticky.

We're gonna make an incision.

[upbeat music]

Right? And then you just go around.

Gonna put another knife in here.

Wow. All right. [knife ripping]

Ooh, look at that. So fresh.

So this, they use as glue in the Philippines.

This jackfruit is from Ecuador.

So we source it from our produce vendor.

We have to commit on, like, two whole a week

in order for them to carry this for us.

Moment of truth. You ready?

[jackfruit rips]

Ooh! It's ripe.

We're gonna make a jam.

This is for our halo-halo dish.

So halo-halo means mix mix.

It's a shaved ice.

It's the best halo-halo?

It's with a lot of that jackfruit jam juice.

You know that It's a classic one if they use jackfruit.

We reimagined it as well.

What we do is we make it in one bite.

We freeze it in liquid nitrogen.

It needs to be aerated,

otherwise you're eating a block of ice.

We put in iSi gun.

You gotta make sure that there's enough fats

'cause the fats is really the one

that's make it easier to break down.

I've been wanting to, like, really use liquid nitrogen,

but it's a liability.

You know, when you work corporate,

you always have to think of, like,

the liability issue, right?

Now that I own my own restaurant?

[beep] it. I'm using liquid nitrogen.

Techniques are different. Still taste like Filipino food.

You gotta just remove it from the core a little bit.

You gotta make sure that your hands are oiled.

This is how it looks like.

I love this.

Jackfruit in real life.

So we're just getting enough for service.

Like I said, we have very limited space.

I think this is enough, chef?

When I was in the Philippines,

I used to, like, sell halo-halo.

That's why I know how to create, like,

all this tropical fruit jam.

I sell it for five pesos.

So now I'm gonna braise it to turn it into a jam.

Very simple.

Add the sugar, a little bit of water,

and then just braise it for two hours.

Not a lot of restaurants have lids, right?

It's either a sheet tray or a parchment paper.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna use this as cover

and then let it braise.

It's 2:00 PM right now.

I'm gonna do the owner, admin, management side.

I'm gonna call my lawyer for our liquor license.

[upbeat music]

Hey Mr. Naditch,

do we have an ETA on when it's gonna come?

Now that I'm the sole owner of Tadhana,

I really have to deal with all the legalities.

In New York City, it's so hard to get a liquor license.

And it's take like 22 to 26 weeks.

We're on top of it 'cause, like, you know,

it's a 25% revenue.

We're in the final step of the design process.

I just need to approve it.

And then that's our two-weeks timelines.

Basically, it's gonna be a brand-new restaurant again.

The lighting plan, schematic elevation.

I don't know what that means, but sure.

Leave it to the professionals. That's what they say.

Now I'm gonna personally write a letter for the celebrants.

So we got two birthdays and one anniversary.

This is a postcard. This is the streets I grew up.

This is like a nice touch. People appreciate it.

Every time they sat down, they're like, Aw.

All right, now I'm done with the admin stuff.

I'm gonna head in the kitchen.

What's a secret to good restaurant? Taste, taste, taste.

[upbeat music]

Well, you gotta have your tasting spoon ready.

This is the spicy sauce for our laing. A coconut stew.

It's not done yet.

Needs some salt. [coughs]

Salt!

I can't look at you in the eye if I don't taste it,

especially when you're a guest.

I created these dishes, so the only way to make sure

that this is up to par is tasting it.

Right now Ralph's doing our charcoal lime pie teacups.

[pie crunching]

That's very crispy. Good job.

[upbeat music]

Few things we do before service opens.

We do make this coconut vinegarette sphere.

We freeze our vinegarette. We just drop it in alginate bath.

It's a sodium alginate. It's made from algae.

It reacts well with calcium,

so it creates a membrane and it solidifies.

At the same time, it nails the vinaigrette.

So literally, it's a sphere.

Really good sphere. Ooh!

That explosion comes out of the ceviche dish.

This is very time sensitive,

just because you wanna make sure when you drop it,

it's still frozen.

All right, we only have 30 minutes before the door open.

Right before service, that's where we do all the knife cuts.

All those garnishes are being picked.

All those a la minute stuff.

Everything looks good.

Now we're heading to our pre-shift before service.

This is the back of the house pre-shift.

All right, happy Wednesday.

Happy Wednesday, chef. Happy Wednesday.

So we're heading into full house tonight.

48 on the covers. 24 and 24.

Chef Mark tells all the allergies,

the modifications, celebrations also.

Take care of the guests, take care of each other.

Tadhana on three. One, two, three!

[Staff] Tadhana!

Hey!

It's about six o'clock. We're about to open the door.

Front of the house is getting ready for service.

We're getting ready for service. We're almost done.

Thank you for coming. Thank you for following me around.

Now I'm gonna kick you guys out. Bye.

[gentle upbeat music]