The restaurant walks you down memory lane with detours that make old favourites taste brand new.

What if our grandmothers got &lsquo;Freaky Friday-ed&rsquo; into the present and came out with a chip on their shoulder? What would they cook?&rdquo; is how Jericson Kho of <a href="https://www.thecuratorcoffeeandcocktails.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Curator</a> group described <a href="https://www.instagram.com/poandpilar/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Po &amp; Pilar</a>.
The group&rsquo;s latest concept that pays homage to the life, influence and cooking of their grandmothers, Po &amp; Pilar is named after the Khos&rsquo; paternal grandmothers, with Pilar sharing the same name as a fellow partner&rsquo;s own grandmother.
&ldquo;We had an image of our grandmothers as these homely, calm women. But you know when they were younger &mdash; if times were different and they didn&rsquo;t have to survive in a foreign land or a land that wasn&rsquo;t really accepting of them &mdash; what would they be doing? This is a tribute to them,&rdquo; he continued.
It&rsquo;s a tribute, but there&rsquo;s also the undercurrent of The Curator group&rsquo;s signature DNA: taking the familiar and imbuing it with the imaginative and spectacular. Entering the space, you&rsquo;ll feel a deep-seated nostalgia. A sampaguita glass door greets you at the entrance with machuca tiles paving the floor. The walls are lined with photos of the grandparents and pastoral landscapes from a bygone Philippines.

One look at the menu will show you just how delightfully different the group&rsquo;s approach is.
You&rsquo;ll see things like munggo, galunggong, kinilaw and sisig, but there&rsquo;s nary a classic presentation in sight. Across the menu, the experience feels like the moment you have a thought at the tip of your tongue. It&rsquo;s an excitement of knowing exactly what something is and getting it across.
One dish that&rsquo;s a prime example of this phenomenon is the garbanzo chawanmushi, black lentil makhani. You wouldn&rsquo;t know it, but the progenitor of the dish was mapo tofu &mdash; a nod to many of the group&rsquo;s Chinese lineage.
This is where the &ldquo;chip on their shoulder&rdquo; style of cooking comes in. They took its most basic elements, tofu and a rich topping, and remade it with Japanese and Indian influences. The Indian influence (which came by way of one of their chefs&rsquo; own heritages) is also vibrantly present the munggo tadka.
The dish is the funked-up version of the meal we associate with meatless Fridays. It&rsquo;s a hearty, spiced bean dish that&rsquo;s enriched with kesong puti and cut with a crunchy-fried pickled onion topping. It&rsquo;s simultaneously recognisable and comforting while being punchy and out of this world.

Two Filipino favourites meet in the restaurant&rsquo;s kinilaw and sisig. Fresh chunks of raw fish are cured in a zesty green mango dressing and topped with a dehydrated and twice-fried pork face cracklings. The fish of the day changes daily, so it&rsquo;s more than worth reordering every time you come by.
No matter how full you are, you cannot skip dessert. The singular sweet on the menu is tiramisu &mdash; but it&rsquo;s not a slice steeped in long-standing tradition. It&rsquo;s simply described as &ldquo;How we want to make it. Bitter and sweet.&rdquo; Notes of boldly-brewed coffee and rich, sweet cream swirl on your palate as you take bite after bite. It&rsquo;s deserving of the highest level of praise our elders can offer: &ldquo;Oh, it&rsquo;s not too sweet.&rdquo;
And if you&rsquo;re thinking of ordering seconds, do not hesitate.
At its core, the experience Po &amp; Pilar offers feels like seeing a childhood friend after decades of distance. Yes, there&rsquo;s a sense of home, but there&rsquo;s also an element of discovery in every turn of the conversation. The place is beautiful, the food is fantastic and as far as tributes go, it may just be the tastiest one in recent history.

Po &amp; Pilar is located at 227 Salcedo St., Legazpi Village. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 5.30pm to 12am.

Po & Pilar Brings Reimagined Nostalgia to Manila’s Dining Scene

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