Photographed by Kim Santos
Chef Frances Tariga had just returned from an exploratory trip to Nueva Ecija, where she was stunned by the sheer variety of vegetables and produce being grown. Not all of them were being used, she recounts to her guests at the soft opening of her new Makati restaurant, Tadhana. Still, she wanted to try everything, even the plants locals warned were poisonous. One left her tongue numb. “I’d use that in a cocktail,” she says, completely serious.
Tadhana, which means fate, seemed destined to come home to the Philippines. Tariga first opened the restaurant in New York City in 2024, her first as owner after nearly two decades in professional kitchens. Raised in Sampaloc, her first job after culinary school was working as a prep cook at the seven-star Burj Al Arab in Dubai. Her willingness to do anything and learn everything eventually landed her positions as a private chef for an Emirati princess, then for a UAE ambassador, a role that brought her to New York. There, she began making the rounds on cooking competition show, from Cutthroat Kitchen to Beat Bobby Flay.
With her distinctly Pinoy sense of humor and an almost unfiltered ease in talking, Tariga was always a crowd favorite. “What skyrocketed my career was when I was in Top Chef Season 13—I was subtitled, but it’s okay.” In 2023, sporting neon lime green hair, she won the first season of Morimoto’s Sushi Master with a Filipino-inspired omakase. Realizing what she could do for Filipino food, she opened Tadhana on the Lower East Side, serving a 16-course tasting menu rooted in Philippine flavors. Within five months, the restaurant made it to the Michelin Guide.
Now, as Tadhana New York pauses for relocation, Tadhana Makati opens on the second floor of the new Levanto building on Jupiter Street. “We’re still using premium ingredients, because we want to make sure that we’re still on the bougie side,” Tariga explains. “But I also want to share my knowledge of premium ingredients while showcasing what’s seasonal in the Philippines. A lot of chefs are doing that right now, and I think it takes a movement.”
The 10-course menu involves bite-sized reimaginings of Filipino dishes, driven more by memory than method: “kwek kwek” becomes an annatto pie cup filled with smoked ikura; “ginat-an” comes as a seafood velouté topped with kaluga caviar. One dish that everyone at the table loved was the “tinapay,” an architectural block of tinigib (Visayan white corn) bread meant to be slathered with tinapa mousse. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when Chef Frances is joking. “The kalapati almost didn’t make it tonight,” she says as the “tocilog” squab arrives, complete with an intact claw resting on the plate. “They flew in from France.”
Tadhana is located at 389 Jupiter Street, Makati.
