Welcome to Palay + in partnership with Megaworld — a three-hour Filipino tasting experience shaped through regional voices, collaboration and precise editing.
This Manila residency connects food, hospitality and storytelling across a month of collaborations. Palay + is one chapter of that return: not one chef trying to define Filipino cuisine, but a table where different regional relationships can sit beside one another without losing their own character.
Filipino-Australian chef and founder of Palay in Fitzroy, Melbourne. His work moves between restaurant service, cultural events, collaboration and media — using food as a way to make Filipino identity more visible without flattening it for another audience.
Palay + is an extension of that practice: familiar Filipino ideas edited through proportion, sequencing, temperature and technique, while keeping their cultural and flavour language legible.
The point is not to make Filipino food look expensive by surrounding it with outside flavour cues. The edit is quieter: remove noise, sharpen technique and give the ingredients already belonging to the cuisine enough space to speak.
The dish should remain recognisable in flavour, memory or regional logic even when the format changes.
Precision matters only when it makes the Filipino idea clearer, cleaner or more expressive.
If an ingredient does not deepen the story, it does not need to be on the plate.
The chefs remain at the centre of the teaser, but their final dishes stay private while development continues. Portrait spaces are ready and can be replaced one-by-one as the approved chef images arrive.
A regional project beginning with land, staple crops and the systems behind the table.
Cavite memory and carinderia roots approached through precise contemporary service.
A chapter where grain and agricultural identity are treated as authors, not side dishes.
Heat, smoke and the energetic balance of char and acid guide the regional question.
Place, ingredient identity and regional technique sit at the centre of the Bohol chapter.
A project looking at continuity, technique and thoughtful use of ingredients.
Direct Ilocano flavours, vegetables and preservation lead this regional conversation.
An Iloilo project where story leads and technique is there to support, not replace, memory.
Supporting the Manila residency through hospitality, accommodation and access to its culinary teams.
Eastwood City, Quezon City · Saturday, 26 September 2026 · two three-hour seatings: 3:00–6:00 PM and 7:00–10:00 PM.
A QR code opens this digital companion so guests can move through the chefs, regions and stories at their own pace across the three-hour sitting. For now, the page reveals the people and philosophy behind Palay + — not the food still being developed.
