Salcedo Village’s street food with manners

I am loving the addition to the Salcedo Village restaurant scene: Ikomai. It’s a very urban chic eatery on Dela Costa Street, near the corner of Tordesillas and right beside Smith & Butcher.

With its distressed concrete walls and long bar, not to mention its decent whiskey collection and garden and smoking area at the back, you would think the place converts into a bar at night. It doesn’t. The place has its last call at 10 p.m., as we sadly learned on my second visit with party-loving friends on Saturday night. And no, you can’t stay on past midnight just for drinks.

What you can have here, though, is a good lunch or a dinner, the kind where you savor each bite and nod your head in approval at the conversation each dish has with your mouth.

You need to be open to that conversation, though, or you might not appreciate the restaurant at all. A quick look at the menu might make the skeptic prejudiced against it, as I was, but if you give it a chance, it has the wherewithal to convince you of its worth.

Karaage

Take the “karaage.” It’s P100. What arrives on your table is just one piece. One. You count in your head the many ways to justify how you can spend that much on a single breast. A thousand jokes immediately come to mind … Belo breasts might be cheaper! There’s an intellectual property charge for the use of the word karaage. Maybe it’s the source of Brand’s Essence?

I remember the horrible, overpriced P600 “organic” salad with greens that look like they died dieting and three sad little pieces of shrimp at the recently opened The Farm Organics in Rockwell and think, “Oh no, not again!”

But it’s OK. Unlike The Farm Organic’s miserable salad, Ikomai’s karaage, while slightly mind boggling with its price, leaves you with a smile on your face and smacking your lips after devouring it, wondering if you should order another one.

“Sarap! Parang Jollibee!” I joke to my friends. But it is finger lickin’ good (oh wait, that’s KFC!) and has everything you love about fried chicken—packed with flavor, with perfectly crispy skin, juicy meat. Even better, what it does not have is an oily aftertaste, even if it has a delicate layer of chicken fat. That’s what you’re shelling out P80 for: guiltlessness because the chicken you ate tastes clean and isn’t drowning in oil. The other P20 is for Jeff, the witty waiter who will not only bring you your food but banter with you and make you laugh if you’re having a hard day. So mesmerized, you take out another hundred bucks for a second piece.

Progressive

It’s not just the chicken that shines at Ikomai. In fact, I wouldn’t even consider the karaage the top item to order, although I wouldn’t argue with its quality.

Start instead with the octopus, laid out so beautifully on a plate with umami-filled sauce for flavor and topped with roe as a texture breaker.

Next have assorted kushikatsu, deep-fried skewered meat and vegetables. The Ikomai set has pork, shrimp, chicken, onion and okra.

If you are hungry, indulge in the taco. It’s a meal in itself. The dish is a collaboration between the restaurant’s Japanese chef Hide Saeki and its pastry chef/founder/owner James Antolin (respected elder of the Pastry Alliance of the Philippines).

Antolin describes it as a “progressive” dish. “It’s not fusion because all our creations are based on existing recipes but maybe progressive as we marry recipes from different cultures,” he explains.

“I wanted to play with my staple ingredients,” he adds. Nori, deep fried in tempura batter, is used as the taco shell before it is stuffed with marinated Japanese rice, and a choice of tuna with sriracha, salmon with ebiko mayo or shrimp with Japanese mayo. Then for more flavor action, they add cucumber, red radish, tobiko and basil.

Try the salmon. It’s so good. Have this over a sandwich any day.

Wasabi

Or have the wasabi salad. Unlike the P600 salad of The Farm Organics (still not over what a rip-off that was), this one, at P340, comes in a huge bowl (twice the size of The Farm’s at half its price) and is actually filling and delicious. They do go a bit overboard with the wasabi, which is not ideal if you don’t need to clear your nose, but filling and delicious nonetheless.

The poke is also a good starter. For those born in the era of Le Souffle and shoulder pads or earlier, poke is the hipster’s carpaccio. It is raw fish salad, usually served as an appetizer in Hawaiian cuisine. At Ikomai, you can choose to have either tuna or salmon poke. It’s big enough to share with a friend or two and a wise choice for a starter.

Street food

They also offer the usual sashimi and Nagoya-style chicken wings. Think buffalo wings but Japanese.

Actually, a lot on the menu are comfort food or street food but presented on a plate, to be appreciated with manners. After posting a few dishes I liked on Instagram (@margauxsalcedo), I got private messages asking if Ikomai is really good. Here’s my verbatim reply: “I love it. Elevated street food. Like a good suit—nothing fancy but sewn right. :)”

I think that sums it up. And like a good suit, give or take my cash on hand, I think I can appreciate this often, i.e., on the days I can splurge beyond KFC and Jollibee and have my karaage with a Yamazaki.

P.S. The desserts at this restaurant are by Antolin’s Tochi. Antolin is an excellent pastry chef and deserves a whole other story that I will reserve for another day. Do ask, however, for Ikomai’s dessert specials. Tochi won’t disappoint.