World Kitchens at Gateway Mall 2Restaurants usually work hard to get people through the door. World Kitchens accidentally makes you hesitate.
The fourth floor of Gateway Mall 2 feels detached from the mall beneath it. The chatter that usually spills from food courts gives way to something quieter. The corridors widen. Gold ceramic tiles bounce warm light across the room. At its center stands a towering sculpture that feels more at home in a hotel lobby than a dining destination. Even the restaurants seem to retreat from view, tucked farther back than the familiar clusters of cafés and fast-food chains most shoppers instinctively drift toward.
You don't stumble upon World Kitchens. You make the decision to look for it. That first impression lingers. The place carries itself with the confidence of somewhere that expects reservations instead of walk-ins. Before I had seen a menu, I had already convinced myself dinner was going to be expensive.
It's an unfair assumption. It is also, I suspect, one that World Kitchens has to overcome every day.
World Kitchens at Gateway Mall 2I was there because Araneta City had invited a small group of media members to spend the afternoon meeting several of the chefs behind the dining concept. On paper, it sounded like the kind of event lifestyle journalists attend all the time — introductions, tastings, interviews, photographs, polite conversation. Instead, something unexpected happened.
By the end of the afternoon, I realized the conversations weren't really about food. Every chef, in one way or another, was trying to dismantle an assumption people carried into their kitchen long before they ever sat down to eat.
Spanish food isn't as inaccessible as people imagine. Indian food doesn't have to overwhelm first-time diners. Traditional Guangdong cooking can remain faithful to its roots while acknowledging local tastes. Comfort food deserves craftsmanship. Fresh seafood shouldn't require a weekend pilgrimage to a wet market.
World Kitchens at Gateway Mall 2Two weeks later, I found myself riding the escalator back to the fourth floor. There wasn't another media event. Nobody had invited me. There were no photographers directing chefs toward better lighting, no public relations staff ushering guests from one kitchen to another, no carefully timed parade of signature dishes. Just lunch.
I wanted to know whether World Kitchens still felt the same after the speeches ended. It did. And somehow it didn't.
Seafood 8
Chef Oliver BuenviajeOf the five chefs I met that afternoon, Chef Oliver "Oli" Buenviaje probably had the least reason to concern himself with accessibility.
His résumé could have carried him almost anywhere.
Before returning to the Philippines, he had cooked in restaurants that most young chefs only read about. Perth. Paris. Bangkok. Hong Kong. Dubai. His career passed through the kitchens of celebrated chefs and luxury hotels, eventually leading him to open his own catering company in Australia. If there was anyone in World Kitchens entitled to build another exclusive dining room, it was him.
Instead, he chose dampa. Not because it needed rescuing, but because he couldn't understand why everyone had accepted its inconveniences as part of the experience.
"The dampa has been known for decades," he told me. "But you only get to go there Saturday, Sunday." He paused for a moment, almost inviting the question to answer itself. "Why?"
The more he spoke, the less the conversation sounded like one about seafood. He talked about time, about middlemen, about making diners buy fish from one place only to carry it somewhere else to be cooked. He questioned a routine so familiar that most of us had stopped questioning it ourselves.
"When I was asked to open this, they sent me to the dampa to negotiate with the suppliers," he recalled. "But why should I negotiate with the supplier? I wanted to create a brand where they should come to me." It makes sense. If fresh seafood could already reach Gateway Mall 2, why couldn't the dampa experience?
Why should good seafood require an entire afternoon?
His answer became Seafood 8. Not a reinvention of dampa, but a quieter way of removing everything around it that had nothing to do with eating.
Asador de Manila
Chef Gale Tan Sun"Why Spanish?" I asked.
"Alam mo 'yung mga tanong na 'yan, ha?" Chef Gale Tan Sun replied, as though he already knew where the conversation was headed.
The answer wasn't a story about childhood memories or a lifelong fascination with Spain.
The opportunity arrived during the pandemic, when Jorge Araneta happened to taste their cochinillo. When plans for World Kitchens began taking shape, Chef Gale and his team were invited to helm the Spanish kitchen. He accepted it as a challenge.
"Just because we're Filipino doesn't mean we should only cook Filipino food," he said. "Just because I'm Filipino-Chinese doesn't mean all I should know is how to make siomai." For him, cuisine isn't something you're born into. It's something you choose to study, understand, and respect.
I admitted something that had always lingered in the back of my mind whenever someone suggested Spanish food. I rarely found myself craving it, and somewhere along the way, I'd convinced myself it belonged to the kind of restaurants you visited only after checking your wallet.
Chef Gale didn't argue. Instead, he started naming dishes. Caldereta. Menudo. Callos. Lengua. "Actually," he said, "it's almost the same." Then he explained why.
Many of the dishes Filipinos now consider everyday comfort food trace their roots to Spain. Rather than introducing an unfamiliar cuisine, he sees Asador de Manila as continuing a culinary tradition that has long been woven into Filipino dining.
"I'm just continuing what our ancestors started," he said.
That same philosophy shapes his cochinillo. In Spain, diners don't place the same importance on crisp skin that Filipinos do. Here, the crackle is part of the experience. His version remains unmistakably Spanish while acknowledging what local diners instinctively look for when the dish reaches the table.
Before we moved on, Chef Gale mentioned something that echoed an idea I'd already heard elsewhere that afternoon. At Asador de Manila, you don't need to reserve cochinillo days in advance. If you wake up craving it on a Wednesday, it's there.
It was a practical detail, but not the one I remembered most.
Throughout our conversation, the air-conditioning had been blowing directly onto the cochinillo prepared for lunch. Chef Gale brought it up himself, hoping the skin had stayed crisp by the time everyone sat down to eat. It was a passing remark, but one that revealed where his attention naturally settled.
Even in the middle of an interview, part of his attention remained on the meal waiting on the table. He answered every question with ease, welcomed every follow-up without making the conversation feel rushed, and moved easily between stories about Spanish cuisine and the people who would eventually eat it. By the time we stood up to move to the next kitchen, I found myself remembering not the history lesson or the cochinillo, but the chef who never stopped thinking about whether his guests would enjoy lunch.
Kevin's Diner
Chef Kevin VillaricaIf Chef Gale spent the afternoon tracing history, Chef Kevin Villarica seemed more interested in questioning labels. One of them, in particular, made him hesitate: fusion.
It's a word that gets thrown around so casually in food writing that it often explains very little. Mention two cuisines in the same sentence and, sooner or later, someone will call it fusion. Chef Kevin doesn't. "I'd like to think it's not fusion," he said. "It's innovation."
The distinction mattered to him. "When you say fusion," he explained, "it's like kare-kare with a European-style sauce. You've already changed the essence."
Innovation, in his kitchen, begins somewhere else.
He has always loved kare-kare. His only complaint was the beef. "You really need bagoong just to make it taste good," he said. So he started experimenting.
His corned beef spends 12 days in brine before finding its way into his version of kare-kare, where the beef is meant to carry its own weight. The bagoong is still there if you want it, but the dish no longer depends on it. That, to him, is innovation.
That same way of thinking shaped Kevin's Diner. Before opening at World Kitchens, Chef Kevin studied the existing lineup. "When I saw the menu," he recalled, "i felt something was missing. Families come here, and they bring their kids. Kids didn't have much of a choice."
Adults already had plenty to choose from. Steaks. Seafood. Chinese cuisine. Spanish food. Children, meanwhile, were still looking for burgers, sandwiches, and the kind of food they naturally gravitate toward.
"So that's why I chose the diner." It's one of those ideas that sounds obvious only after someone says it.
His burgers carry another detail that most diners will probably never notice. Chef Kevin also owns a steakhouse in Makati. Rather than buying ordinary ground beef, he uses quality trimmings from that kitchen for the patties served here. It's a small decision that says a lot about how he thinks. Even comfort food deserves good ingredients.
Toward the end of our conversation, I asked whether there was an American cooking technique he wished Filipinos embraced more often. His answer surprised me: None.
If anything, he believes Filipino cuisine has more techniques than people give it credit for. Adobo alone exists because generations before us had to figure out how to preserve food long before refrigeration.
American food, he said, simply became very good at speed.
Prana
Chef Rajan VeerananThe first chef I met that afternoon wasted no time addressing what he knew many diners were already thinking.
Indian food has a reputation for being unapologetically spicy. Chef Rajan Veeranan understands where that comes from. "A lot of Filipinos like Indian food because they have worked in the Middle East and were exposed to it," he said. "But the problem is that Indian food is very spicy."
Rather than expecting diners to adjust, he chose to meet them halfway. "Here [at Prana], we needed to adapt to the local palate. Filipino people prefer less spice."
He was careful to draw a distinction. "We kept the same authentic taste, but we changed the level of spiciness to make it milder. Yet it still remains authentic."
When I asked what he thought was the biggest misconception Filipinos had about Indian cuisine, he pointed to the same assumption that had shaped our conversation from the beginning: that all Indian food is intensely spicy.
India, he said, isn't so different from the Philippines. Just as Filipino cuisine changes from one region to another, Indian food does, too. Some regions favor milder flavors. Others embrace more heat. Judging an entire cuisine by its spiciest dishes, he suggested, misses just how diverse it really is.
18 Jade
Chef PengThe interview with Chef Peng unfolded differently from the others.
An interpreter relayed every question and every answer between us. Conversations usually build momentum as they go. Ours moved in shorter bursts, with every exchange making a stop before reaching the other person.
Chef Peng came to the Philippines after years of cooking in Singapore, bringing with him a menu rooted in Guangdong cuisine. Through the interpreter, he explained that some adjustments had become necessary. Traditional Guangdong cooking tends to be saltier than what many Filipinos are used to, so he eased back where it made sense while keeping the cooking true to its roots.
When I asked what had surprised him most about the Philippines, his answer wasn't the weather or the culture. It was rice.
Back home, soup can be enough for a meal, he explained. Here, he had noticed, rice seemed to accompany almost everything. He had also grown fond of dishes that reminded him of home. Lechon kawali and lechon Macau, he said, felt surprisingly familiar.
By then, I'd already tasted Chef Peng's cooking. The conversation still relied on an interpreter. The meal didn't.
On the way out
The culinary minds behind World Kitchens at Gateway Mall 2 raise a glass togetherBy the time I headed back toward the escalator, the gold tiles hadn't become any less shiny. The towering sculpture was still there. World Kitchens still looked like the kind of place that might make first-time diners hesitate.
The difference was that I knew better.
The most expensive thing about World Kitchens had been my first impression.