An English lesson in cuisines around the world

When four-time James Beard awardee Todd English started his career in food in the 1970s, “being a chef wasn’t cool, it was considered a blue-collar job. Fortunately I grew up in a household with two great cooks — my mother and my grandmother — and I was mentored by the best: Julia Child.”

Today, Todd embodies the rock-star image of chefs, regularly being featured — gossiped about is perhaps a more accurate way of putting it — in newspapers and blogs. Two weeks before he came to Manila to open his Todd English Food Hall, only the second branch in the world (the first is The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English in New York City), he was in the news and on Twitter over a tiff with his girlfriend, who caught him canoodling with two other women.

The charismatic chef that’s so loved by women around the world for his TV show Food Trip with Todd English partnered with Filipino restaurateur Rikki Dee to open the first Todd English Food Hall out of the US.

Todd explains that it is not a food court, and definitely not a fast food, but a European-style food hall that offers culinary stations featuring dishes from around the world. Set in stylish interiors inspired by his Food Hall in New York, the branch in Manila was designed by Ivy Almario with dark wood shelves against the walls filled with Todd English spices, truffle salt, candies and coffee.

“The beautiful thing is that you have a big table and can share all these dishes,” Todd says. “The Food Hall speaks of the American culinary scene, which is a fusion of cuisines brought by all the immigrants to America’s shores. It was also inspired by my travels to Barcelona, London, Japan and many other places, so it’s really a celebration of food around the world cooked in front of you.”

Todd English Food Hall has nine stations featuring cuisines from Europe, the US and Asia. There is a pasta station where fresh pastas are made with flour flown from Italy and ingredients produced specifically for Todd English. At the grill station, one can order flatbread pizzas (thinner and crunchier than regular dough) with unusual toppings like fig jam. Prime ribs and steaks are also available, as well as burgers and sliders.

At the Asian station, there are fried noodles, noodle soups, and steamed and seared dumplings. The Raw Bar includes fresh Maine lobsters, oysters, clams and shrimps. Diners can also choose fresh sashimi and sushi. The Dessert and Bread Bar will have homemade ice creams and Isabel’s Curly Cakes, a shop owned by Todd’s daughter Isabel.

How did this celebrity chef find his way to Manila? It was through Boston, actually. Eric Dee, son of top restaurateur Rikki Dee, has always been a fan of Todd’s. Eric studied International Business at Menlo College in San Francisco and got his first taste of a Todd English meal in Boston, where Todd opened his first restaurant with his mother in 1989, and later the famous Olives restaurant, which now has branches across the US.

Two years ago, Eric emailed Todd and said his family was also in the restaurant business and would like to partner with him. Then Eric met with Todd in Kuala Lumpur, where the chef was taping a show. Todd’s son Oliver English, who handles the business development of Todd English Enterprises — with its deep portfolio of restaurants that includes Olives, Figs, Todd English PUB, and BlueZoo — came in and the journey from New York to Manila began.

“There is no better ambassador for Manila than Eric,” says Oliver.

The Englishes describe a dinner last year at the Dees’ house in Makati. It was a Filipino-themed dinner cooked by Cai chef Gilbert Pangilinan, where he served lechon, sisig, truffle penoy — and even balut, which one of the Food Hall chefs tried.  

“The lechon was awesome,” says Todd. Oliver’s favorite was the sisig.

While the Todd English Food Hall is easily the most successful of his restaurants, Todd says it took him at least 10 years to convince investors to go with him on this concept. “People didn’t know what a food hall was,” he said. “Finally I got some investors from Israel who understood the market and food. We have always been trendsetters, but we are also risk takers. We took a chance with the food-hall concept, then unknown in the United States. We like thinking out of the box.”

And now they’re in Manila straight from New York (they haven’t even opened one on the West Coast). “We didn’t know much about Manila, we just had confidence in Eric. We feel that we couldn’t have better partners than the Dees.”

Rikki Dee now runs 75 fast-food courts nationwide and have five restos, namely, Mesa (where lines are always long), Kai, Isogi, Cerveseria, Mangan and  Ebun. Soon they are bringing in Tim Ho Wan, the cheapest Michelin star dimsum resto in Hong Kong famous for its crispy pork.

It’s not a stretch to compare the parallel journeys these two father-and-son teams have taken. Todd English started cooking in his twenties; Rikki started his first restaurant with his wife Beng in his twenties. Oliver and Eric both grew up in the kitchens of their fathers, beginning their careers as dishwashers and waiters when they were 13 years old.

Eric used to go with the cooks to source fresh lapu-lapu while Oliver worked in the pizza and salad stations of his father’s restaurant.

A Cornell graduate, Oliver spent time in France, where he worked with renowned chef Alain Ducasse in operations. He says he found his “true passion in the business development side of things, in the operations and management of restaurants.”

Todd says with affection in his voice, “Oliver always worked the room; there was nobody better! I would look for him and ask, ‘Where did he go?’ And I would see him seated at a table having pizza with the customers. He would just get along with everybody and they would invite him to their table. He was part of the entertainment.”  

You can see that Todd has not only passed his love of food on to his son, but his charisma as well! It must have been that same English charisma that made Julia Child mentor him when he was in his twenties. He was living in Boston and would cross the Charles River to Cambridge to hang out in Julia’s kitchen, watching her tape her show.

“Oh, Julia loved her red wine,” he says with a laugh and mimics the legendary chef. “Julia never thought she had a funny accent,” he says.

Julia would come to the restaurant he opened with his mother and order the roast chicken, which he considered a great compliment, “because they always say you judge a chef by his roast chicken.”

To this day, if Todd has an hour to watch a cooking show, he will watch reruns of Julia Child’s The French Chef — and another hosted by two English ladies and produced by the BBC called Two Fat Ladies.  â€œThey were hilarious! They rode around a motorcycle with a sidecar all over England. They didn’t care how much butter or lard or cream they put in the food. They didn’t apologize for it.”

“Julia was the most awesome woman I ever met apart from my mother,” Todd says. “She was very supportive. I first met her when I was interviewing for a job with another lady. I had just come back from Italy and this was a time when people in Boston barely knew what a radicchio or polenta was and you wouldn’t find a bowl of risotto in restaurants. I was already nervous to begin with and then Julia Child walks into the room. I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ I was just very fortunate to have been around her.”

We asked Todd a couple of quick questions and told him not to think too much about the answers:

If he could eat only one type of cuisine for the rest of his life, what would it be? “The Italian side of me takes over,” he says. His maternal grandmother comes from Calabria, Italy.

What is his favorite food movie? Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate and Stanley Tucci’s Big Night. (The second-generation restaurateurs, Oliver and Eric, go for Ratatouille, which, Todd says, from a culinary standpoint was spectacular in its details, including the French ovens).

Where does the best olive oil come from? “I’ve tried thousands of olive oils. The best ones are from Greece, from the island of Crete. Greece is really where the first olive oil came from; there is something about it that is just perfect.”

If Todd were to live in France, which side of the country would he choose, the part that cooks with butter or olive oil? “There is not even a second before I’d answer that — the South of France, without a doubt. I spent the early part of my career working there and I would retire there.”  

If he could cook for five people, dead or alive, who would they be? “American president Thomas Jefferson; chef Auguste Escoffier, who belonged to the generation of chefs we were inspired by — we all came out of the Escoffier school, which married haute cuisine with nouvelle cuisine; and my three children, Oliver, Isabel and Simon.”  

What is the most memorable meal he has ever cooked and for whom? “For my uncle Armando, who was my greatest influence as far as being in New York is concerned. He knew every nook and cranny of the city, he grew up in the Village, he lived through the Depression. We took him to Italy and I cooked him an Italian meal with white truffles — nothing elaborate.”

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Todd English Food Hall is located on the 5th floor of SM Aura Premier SkyPark.