Regina Troy Barrios

Why Restaurant Idalia’s Balmori Pop-Up Is a Must-Experience Before It Ends

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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/restaurantidalia/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Restaurant Idalia</a> cooks in a style that came to define many of America&#x27;s best restaurants, especially in New York and California. It prizes craftsmanship with almost obsessive intensity. Bread is naturally leavened. Pasta is made in-house. Meats are cured. Condiments are fermented. Ingredients are treated with uncommon respect, and almost everything is made from scratch. None of this is done because it&#x27;s fashionable. It&#x27;s simply how the best kitchens cook. Every dish has a story, but the relentless effort behind it is never the point. If they&#x27;re doing it right, you&#x27;ll never notice that labor. You&#x27;ll simply notice that everything tastes so much better.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1785299378540MRK_3191.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>KFC (Kevin&#x27;s Fried Chicken) with hot honey and chicken fat gravy | Photo: Restaurant Idalia</div>At Restaurant Idalia&#x27;s month-long residency at Balmori Chef&#x27;s Table in Rockwell, running until July 31, Chef Kevin David puts that philosophy into practie. We started with the sourdough focaccia.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1785299710566MRK_3215.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Sourdough focaccia with whipped anchovy butter | Photo: Restaurant Idalia</div>On paper, sourdough focaccia, whipped anchovy butter, hummus hardly sounds like a dish you&#x27;d remember. But when you bite into it, the crust offers just enough resistance before giving way to a springy, gently chewy crumb with an almost silken texture, and it carries the gentle tang of naturally fermented sourdough. Before you know it, you&#x27;ve eaten almost the entire basket, wondering what just happened.David wasn&#x27;t even a baker before the pandemic.When restaurants shut down in the United States, he taught himself to bake bread by studying the books of legendary San Francisco baker Chad Robertson, baking from his garage and selling loaves to neighbors just to pay the bills.&quot;It taught me something,&quot; he says. &quot;Simple things, with time and patience, give you the best results.”The focaccia comes with one of Idalia&#x27;s signature hummus: silky chickpea purée layered with zhug, pickled vegetables, crispy chickpeas, sumac, and za&#x27;atar. It&#x27;s an homage to an Israeli mentor who introduced him to Middle Eastern food, but it also sums up David&#x27;s philosophy. &quot;Hummus is like adobo,&quot; he says. &quot;Every country makes it differently.&quot; His cooking isn&#x27;t about reproducing traditions perfectly. It&#x27;s about carrying them forward through his own memories.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1785299828668MRK_3197.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Hummus | Photo: Restaurant Idalia</div>Long before opening Restaurant Idalia in Salcedo Village, Kevin David spent more than sixteen years working his way through some of America&#x27;s most respected kitchens. He arrived in New York at eighteen and started where many immigrant cooks do: washing dishes for $7.96 an hour. Curious about the food around him, he admits he sometimes picked at leftovers from customers&#x27; plates—not because he was hungry, but because he&#x27;d never seen foie gras, wagyu, caviar, or even a croque monsieur before. A line cook eventually caught him. &quot;If you&#x27;re hungry, just let us know,&quot; she told him. &quot;We&#x27;ll feed you.” David has never forgotten it. Today, everyone in his kitchen sits down for a proper family meal before service. Hospitality, he believes, begins with taking care of your own.His education continued in some of America&#x27;s most respected kitchens. From Jean-Georges, he eventually moved into Jonathan Waxman&#x27;s kitchens, then Otium under Timothy Hollingsworth, and later Melissa Perello, whose thoughtful approach to sustainability and zero-waste cooking left a lasting mark&quot;She taught me a lot about using things people normally throw away,&quot; David says.Those lessons show up throughout Idalia—not as virtue signaling, but as deliciousness. <div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1785299983031MRK_3111.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Rigatoni, anchovy, black garlic, brown butter | Photo: Restaurant Iddalia</div>The wagyu beef croquettes are a perfect example. David had made too much slow-cooked wagyu cheek filling for a ravioli. Rather than throw it away, he breaded it, fried it, and served it with a bright herb aioli and another made from six-week fermented chilies. Golden and impossibly crisp outside, the filling is rich and almost molten. It&#x27;s one of the best things we ate.The rigatoni with anchovy, black garlic, and brown butter looks deceptively simple, but it carries layers of flavor. The anchovy lends savory depth, brown butter warmth, black garlic a gentle sweetness, and fermented chili just enough heat to keep every bite lively.Then comes the halibut en papillote, perhaps the simplest dish of the meal. Steamed in parchment with bay scallops, shiitake mushrooms, bok choy, and dashi, the fish stays beautifully moist, its natural sweetness gently amplified by the broth rather than buried beneath it. It takes confidence—and restraint—to know when a dish doesn&#x27;t need anything more.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1785300124014MRK_3097.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Halibut en papillote | Photo: Restaurant Idalia</div>Dessert was a warm bread pudding with burnt honey cream and coconut Anglaise. Warm, fragrant, and beautifully balanced, a satisfying end to an excellent meal.The Balmori residency runs until July 31, so there&#x27;s still time to catch this menu before it disappears. But think of it less as a farewell than an introduction. As David puts it, &quot;I hope, after you miss it here, you crave us more to go to Salcedo.”<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1785300192295MRK_3328.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/>Bread pudding, burnt honey cream, coconut Anglaise | Photo: Restaurant Idalia</div>The dishes at the flagship won&#x27;t be exactly the same. That&#x27;s part of the point. What you&#x27;ll find instead is the same restless curiosity, the same uncompromising craftsmanship, and the same conviction that every technique, every fermentation, every loaf of bread, every fermented condiment, every cured meat exists for one reason only: to make the food taste better.In a dining scene where too many restaurants are built on marketing, aesthetics, and empty buzzwords, Restaurant Idalia simply lets the food speak for itself. It is, without question, one of the best restaurants in Manila today. And once you&#x27;ve eaten there, you&#x27;ll understand why people keep coming back<div>Restaurant Idalia is at The Balmori Suites Chef&#x27;s Table, Rockwell, through July 31, 2026. Reservations: 0998-864-2525. The flagship restaurant is open Monday–Saturday at G/F Citrine Residences, 112 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati. Follow <a href="https://www.instagram.com/restaurantidalia/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@restaurantidalia</a> on Instagram.</div>

Restaurant Idalia’s limited-time Balmori Pop-Up brings Chef Kevin David’s New York-trained craftsmanship to Manila with handmade pasta, naturally leavened bread, fermentation, and deeply thoughtful dishes that make it one of the city’s most exciting dining experiences before it ends on July 31.

Restaurant Idalia’s limited-time Balmori Pop-Up brings Chef Kevin David’s New York-trained craftsmanship to Manila with handmade pasta, naturally leavened bread, fermentation, and deeply thoughtful dishes that make it one of the city’s most exciting dining experiences before it ends on July 31.

Why Restaurant Idalia’s Balmori Pop-Up Is a Must-Experience Before It Ends

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Why Restaurant Idalia’s Balmori Pop-Up Is a Must-Experience Before It Ends

Troy Barrios

Published July 27, 2026 12:50 PM PHT

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Updated July 29, 2026 01:21 PM PHT

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