Go (coco)nuts! Share this story with your friends.
This just in: Chef Tony Boy Escalante, of Antonio’s fame, is finally opening a restaurant in Metro Manila! It’s something many of us have long been wishing for so thank heavens, the award-winning chef is finally giving in to our request.
But before we spill the beans on that, here’s another juicy bit to get excited about. Come April, The Grill by Antonio’s, located along Emilio Aguinaldo Highway, Tagaytay will shut down its doors to make way for a bigger restaurant. Just how big? Three storeys big!
It will be called Balay Daku, which means ‘big house’ in Ilonggo. The restaurant will be serving Filipino cuisine, studded with many Negrense dishes as ode to chef Tony Boy’s home province, Bacolod. It will be located along the ridge in Tagaytay. All three floors will be different from each other. The ground floor will house the private function area, the restaurant will be on the second, with a deck bar on the third.
A month later, in May, Tony Boy will head down to Manila to work on the final touches of his very first venture in the city. He will be converting a house in Kapitolyo, Pasig into a beautifully designed restaurant that will be serving his greatest hits. There’s no working name yet, but we know that it will be situated across the neighborhood church and that the bestsellers from all of his restaurants will be available and altered to be reasonably priced.
Good news for the people in Metro Manila as his delicious food becomes more accessible; bad news for Kapitolyo residents because for sure, parking and traffic would be even worse than now. But really, who cares when the reward far exceeds and more than makes up for the consequence?
These two restaurants will certainly rock the local restaurant scene, the way chef Tony Boy has humbly and steadily done so with Antonio’s for many years now.
(Photos: antoniosrestaurant.ph)
Reader Interactions