MANILA, Philippines — In his over 30 years of cooking, traveling the world and tasting many dishes in his hit reality series like “MasterChef” and “Hell’s Kitchen,” what has been the best dish Chef Gordon Ramsay has tasted so far?
“Oh, that’s tough!” he admitted at his fan meet yesterday at the Newport Performing Arts Theater in Pasay City.
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He was instead asked to recall the best dish he has tasted in recent years, to which he said, Sisig by Melbourne-based restaurant Serai by Filipino chef Ross Magnaye.
“There’s a young kid in Melbourne, he's blowing up on the internet and he's a Filipino chef and all the rest is from his grandma, and the rest (restaurant) is called Serai,” Gordon shared.
“We were eating his Taco Sisig. He took all those crispy pig's ears, the nose, the snout, and put it inside a taco and it was just like, how exciting is that?”
The fan meet’s host Issa Litton suggested to Ramsay to pair Sisig with beer, as Filipinos usually do.
Ramsay also enjoyed a bone marrow dish from Serai. Bone marrow is usually used in Filipino soup dish Bulalo.
“And then we had a bone marrow… where you slice his bone marrow in half, caramelize the bone marrow, and then he doused it, I think it was with vodka, and he torched it… with this live flame melting bone marrow running down the back of your throat,” he described the experience. “Absolutely bang on, it was delicious! And I just swallowed it!”
Last year, Serai, Magnaye and his team competed at “MasterChef Australia,” a franchise of the “MasterChef” American series that Ramsay hosted.
Related: Beef Kilawin for the win: Filipino-Australian chef Ross Magnaye wows 'MasterChef Australia'
“Filipino dishes reimagined and cooked over a wood-fired grill, fun cocktails and an all-natural wine list,” Serai described itself on Instagram.
The restaurant’s playful and Australian takes on traditional Filipino food “is where Filipino cuisine should be,” said Ramsay.
“Growing up using all those intestines and the young chef of Serai in Melbourne, you know, he grew up in the river, just seeing what he's doing with that evolution of Filipino food was sensational and then down to the desserts, you guys have a very sweet tooth and evaporated milk, you use a lot of it.”
The best cooking, he said, always brings fond memories, which what restaurants like Serai do.
“We grew up with a rice pudding made with evaporated milk and some tarts. I have a very sweet tooth and those kind of little nuances always takes me back to my childhood.”
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