Sunday feast

After many years in Vancouver, Chef Sandy Daza is back in Manila and recently opened a new restaurant along Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City. Named the Wooden Spoon, it basically serves Filipino food as interpreted by Sandy. And Chef Sandy seems to be influenced by anything and everything that he tastes and sees—which I heartily approve of. I do love chefs and cooks who like experimenting.


The pechay (pak choi) stuffed with lean ground pork and tinapa (smoked fish) and cooked in a spicy coconut sauce is easily one of my favorites. According to Chef Sandy, this dish came straight out of his imagination.

  The breaded fish fillet may look like any perfectly fried fish fillet anywhere in the world, but it is the dipping sauce that makes this one unusual.

  Lechon kawali is a common dish in the Philippines since it is just pork belly that's boiled then fried. That doesn't mean that all lechon kawali is the same though; quite the opposite, in fact. If not done well, the meat can be chewy and the skin tough enough to break teeth. I think that the Wooden Spoon has achieved perfection with theirs. Everything—every bite, every morsel, every millimeter of the skin—is crunchy. Aside from the regular liver sauce for dipping, it is also served with sweet chili sauce, and ginger sauce.

  The dipping sauce for the breaded fish fillet is based on wansoy (cilantro). It can easily overpower the delicate taste of the fish, as I discovered when I literally dipped the fish in the sauce; two or three drops placed on a bite-size piece is enough. Of the three sauces for the lechon kawali, I liked the ginger and green onion sauce best.