All Stories

Everything we've published, newest first.

Senator Loren Legarda standing between chefs Rhea and Jay Jay SyCip inside The Fatted Calf restaurant in Tagaytay

Farm to table, heart to heart

After a volcano, a pandemic and a lost lease, chefs Jay Jay and Rhea SyCip’s Fatted Calf finds its footing in Tagaytay, one farm-to-table plate at a time.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 25, 2024
Group portrait of TGI Fridays One Ayala team members in their black uniforms posing together inside the restaurant

Mojo risin’: A tale of set meals and endless mojitos

Bottomless mojitos, set meals and a little existential drift: an afternoon at TGI Fridays One Ayala, where P345 buys as many mojitos as the heat demands.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 18, 2024
Chef Josh Boutwood, in a white t-shirt and canvas apron with a handlebar mustache, stands before the blue-tiled open-fire grill of his kitchen

Chef Josh Boutwood’s appetite for evolution

The chef behind Manila’s most restless kitchens on why he never designs a menu until he is standing in the room, and the chapter he is closing now.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 11, 2024
Composite of the Philippine Pavilion community library: installed inside the Venice Arsenale on the left, rebuilt outdoors in Angat, Bulacan on the right, where visitors gather along its slatted walls

Philippine Pavilion’s ‘Structures of Mutual Support’: From the Biennale to Bulacan

From an old armory in Venice to a barangay in Angat, the award-winning community library goes home to the people who helped build it.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 6, 2024
The Maxell “blown away” ad remade with Cthulhu: a suited tentacled listener in a leather armchair blasted backward by a loudspeaker, scarf and lampshade streaming, a record sleeve in his lap

Moving in Stereo: Why do audio fools fall in love?

Soundproofing is not acoustic treatment, the way Ryan Adams is not Bryan Adams. The never-ending build of a listening room, failing better.

By Igan D'Bayan · July 2, 2024
Maria Angelica Tan seated in her studio beside a large swirling blue and gold painting

The empire state of Maria Angelica Tan’s art

A Filipina in her early twenties, a Hudson Square gallery, and leftover adobo before the bus: Maria Angelica Tan distills New York into paint.

By Igan D'Bayan · June 3, 2024
Installation inside the Philippine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale featuring a large grey boulder with a brass horn sticking out and hanging white textile sheets

Mountain song: PHL Pavilion brings the aura of Banahaw to the Biennale

In the Philippine Pavilion, visitors walk among fabric, fake stones and sound, following the light. Mark Salvatus brings Banahaw to Venice.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 20, 2024
A smiling woman in black holds an iced coffee beside a glass pastry case at the Daily by Bo’s Coffee store

Daily grind & morning rituals

Bo’s Coffee spins off Daily, a hand-poured brand born in the pandemic, from 10 cloud stores to 12 cafés built to look like bounce houses.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 16, 2024
An older Filipina in a floral dress sits among teddy bears at a flower-filled window, a lamp glowing beside her in soft painterly light

Shadows fall and I try

Grief tech, Black Mirror bots, and memories of Nanay: she murdered the English language but was Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul rolled into one.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 12, 2024
Senator Loren Legarda in a woven-trimmed black jacket stands among hanging fabric artworks and a boulder in the Philippine Pavilion

A raising of curtains: Senator Loren Legarda & the story of the PHL Pavilion in Venice

Over lunch in Venice, Senator Loren Legarda recounts how she willed the Philippines back to the Biennale after a 51-year absence.

By Igan D'Bayan · May 6, 2024
The Bistro Group executives Lisa Ronquillo-Along and Divine Peralta smiling in front of a brightly lit modern restaurant interior

A night of dragon potions and Red Lotus eaters

A dinner of Sichuan Sour and Shanghai Spritz becomes a night of wild print-industry tales, at a resto-bar built for lowering your defenses.

By Igan D'Bayan · April 21, 2024
Cecile Licad, in a black gown, raises joined hands with the conductor at curtain call before the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra

Cecile Licad on concert memories and the loss of a soulmate

It was an emotional moment for Anton Huang when Licad dedicated the Schumann-Liszt piece to Nedy Tantoco. ‘Sad that it was actually my mom’s last concert.’

By Igan D'Bayan · March 24, 2024