"I liked the way she moved, how she tempered her choplets. She was reading ingredients for a recipe and she was so showbiz! I decided to enroll in her class," Nelia recalls.
Reggie Aspiras of the school of culinary arts which bears her name, has been teaching for more than a decade and has never repeated the recipes in her class. Maybe it’s because she never writes anything down.
Nelia considers her a culinary goddess and has taken most of her classes – baking, Filipino, Italian, Middle-Eastern, and yes, even Thai cuisine. Five years ago, Nelia put up her own catering business, using Reggie’s recipes. The two eventually became friends.
"We took painting lessons and pottery lessons. We realized we have so many things in common," Reggie says.
One day, Nelia decided to open her own restaurant and invited the "culinary goddess" to join her. They opened Tongue Thai in April at the Glorietta 4 in Makati.
Reggie is not new to the restaurant business. She put up Reggie’s, a Franco-Italian restaurant at EDSA Shangri-La Mall in 1995 and it lasted all of a year-and-a-half.
"I was too crazy. I just did what I wanted to do. I didn’t care about the cost. I didn’t like dealing with a sea of numbers. I was also teaching, writing and styling food all at the same time. A restaurant is a very personal business. You have to be hands-on. You have to really watch over it," Reggie explains. "My weakness is Nelia’s strength. I love to create food, I love to play, I love to concoct. And I tend to overdo things. Nelia is the one who says, ‘Ooops, costing…’"
Nelia interjects: "Someone has to pull Reggie back to earth. Someone has to keep the balance. I guess that would be me. But one thing we will not sacrifice is quality."
The day we dropped by for lunch, we saw the two friends in symbiotic action.
Three people tentatively walked in Tongue Thai for an early meal. Reggie was checking ingredients and terrorizing staff in the kitchen, fixing the table settings and arranging flowers on the buffet table – all at the same time. She whisked past the diners, and never even saw them. Nelia, on the other hand, noticed them right away, and showed them to a nice quiet table and chatted with them before leaving them with menus.
We were tongue-tied. Before we could say anything, Reggie sat us down and talked animatedly about Thai cuisine.
"There’s no other Asian country that takes this balance of flavors so seriously. Thai food has four flavors: sweet, which comes from palm sugar; spicy, which comes from dried pepper flakes and Serrano chili; sour, which comes from citrus, lime, lemon or tamarind; and salty which comes from shrimp or fish. Sometimes they add a little bitter taste which comes from cinnamon bark, ampalaya, and their tiny round eggplant," she says.
Tongue Thai’s offerings are carefully prepared in the Royal Thai method but with a twist. "We spruced them up a little to adapt to the changing times and what’s available in the market. It’s easy eating, it’s hearty, and the portions are OK," Reggie says.
The food is fun, colorful, and with exceedingly bright flavors. The kitchen doesn’t scrimp on ingredients (the spices and some of the vegetable are imported from Thailand) and generally avoids excess oil and sweetness.
For starters that day, we tried A Taste of Thai. This is a sampler of papaya salad, rice crackers with pork and shrimp dipping sauce, and fried bean curd with satay sauce. We also sampled the Spring Roll Platter of fried noodle and mushroom-stuffed spring roll served with plum and mustard sauce, pork salad in fresh lettuce leaf cups with mint and coriander dressing.
We relished the Stew Nue which is cilantro-infused beef stew with lettuce and bean sprouts and fresh chili sauce. It was so good, we didn’t want to eat anything else. Marinated overnight and then slow-cooked, the beef almost melted in our mouth. The sauce which came with it was a bit sweet and spicy and surprise – it wasn’t oily.
We changed our mind about not eating anything else when we were presented with Phad Thai. This was a carefully composed pan-fried sweet rice noodles dotted liberally with fat curled-up shrimps, fried bean curd and caramelized walnuts. The kitchen also sent out a very respectable Fried Rice with Roast Duck served with shiitake mushrooms. Green Curry Rice with baby shrimps, baby eggplant and Thai daing was remarkable as well.
For most savory dishes, the staff dutifully asked our desired heat level – one chili for safe, two chilis for medium hot, and three chilis will set your mouth on fire. We thought two chilis a safe bet. We sniffled a bit, but we weren’t blotting our brows and downing their delicious lemongrass iced tea (must try!) by the gallon.
For dessert, we had Tab Tim Grob – water chestnuts with langka and coconut milk. Hmmm… after the unforgettable Stew Nue, this is definitely worth another trip back. Sure-fire crowd pleasers are Saku Piak which is pandan tapioca pudding with corn kernels and coconut cream, and Sticky Rice with Ripe Mangoes.
All tongue-tied over where to eat after watching, say, Spiderman for the nth time? Head for Tongue Thai.