What does a typical day at work involve for you?

There is no typical day for me (Laughs). But since I manage two restaurants, what I try to do is handle lunch in The Goods Diners and I would head to The Goods Café by night for food and quality control, ordering, meeting suppliers and other people.

What’s your idea of a good day?

A good day for me would be waking up with no messages on my phone from any of the suppliers (laughs) and then I would just relax in my room, watching DVDs at home. Basically relaxing with no one bothering me.

What is your source of inspiration?

I get a lot of my food inspirations from people around me, sometimes from books, magazines, or by searching online but mostly people around me. For example, for one of The Goods Diner menu of the Filipino Short-Ribs was inspired from a conversation with my aunt’s friend. And in the end after series of trials I finally found the right presentation. I always feel you can’t trademark recipes, you can be inspired by the same recipe, but it will always be different under different hands.

What’s your current obsession?

My current obsession is using the Sous Vide machine, cooking different ingredients and exploring cooking proteins and different food item in varying temperature. I was given the opportunity to learn a bit about this technique from the previous restaurant I worked for. And it became something I wanted to teach to my cooks, so they can explore a different methods of cooking.

What books are you reading now?

I am still not finished reading one book since a year ago (laughs), it is one of Anthony Bourdain’s book titled A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, where he explores different countries and share to us about the cuisines of each country. But one of my all time favorite book is by Thomas Keller titled Under Pressure – Cooking Sous Vide, which explores about the Sous Vide methods.