Pet-Friendly Cafés to Visit in BGC for a Paw-some Bonding Time

When it comes to alcohol, we’ve always found whiskey a little intimidating. It’s complex, deeply layered, and often feels more appropriate for seasoned drinkers—a hush collective of some sorts that seems to solely exist in its own circle of taste and tradition.

But, as we recently learned, what begins as an intimidating mystery can turn out into something rich, approachable, and surprisingly personal. 

Last July 29, we entered Elbert’s Riedel Room with open minds, a beginner's palate, and a hint of reluctance—paired with a little bit of curiosity and eagerness to widen our inclinations to the spirit. 

The venue itself felt “hush hush” in the best way: warm lighting, velvet chairs, rich leather couches and dark wood accents that wrapped the space in elegance. It felt secretive, yes—but also welcoming to everyone willing to walk through the door. And for first timers like us, that was more than enough to help us get settled in. 

With a room gently filled with a smoky aroma, it was the perfect setting for a whiskey masterclass—this one led by Mr. Drew Mayville, a Master Blender from Buffalo Trace Distillery.

Surrounded by amber-gold pours, nosing copita glasses, and seasoned drinkers, class was in session. 

Learning the Language, One Sip at a Time

The masterclass was quite intimate, with just a handful of people in the room—including Mr. Drew Mayville himself. There wasn’t any podium or stage; just a casual conversation, with thoughtfully arranged glasses and an inviting atmosphere for anyone who wants to join in. 

As class began, we quickly learned that whiskey isn’t just sipped or tasted for pleasure. Each bottle is carefully sampled by masters—like Mayville himself—who make precise decisions about the liquor’s quality, character, and readiness.

Like any new language, whiskey has its own vocabulary—and during the masterclass, we were gently eased into it, although most of the people in the room were already knowledgeable about the terms. 

Words like bourbon (a barrel-aged American whiskey made from corn), single barrel (a select whiskey style that ages in one barrel), proof (twice the ABV content of a spirit), and nose (how it smells) were said here and there, but were explained with care and with proper context clues. 

All the other terms felt intimidating to get introduced to, but everything started to make sense, one sip at a time. Drew Mayville even introduced us to the “Bourbon Tasting Wheel,” a guide that helped us identify flavors and elevate our appreciation for the spirits in each glass. 

Our First Sips: The Tasting Experience

Four nosing copita glasses were lined up in front of each guest, each one holding a dram of bourbon from Buffalo Trace Distillery: Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, Weller Full Proof, and Stagg. 

To properly taste each one, Drew Mayville shared that a single sip isn’t enough to truly understand a bourbon. The first sip, he said, only “shocks” the palate—the ethanol being the dominant sensation. It’s only on the second sip that the actual flavors begin to rise. By the third, like how master blenders do it, is when we start to notice the transitions; the way the notes unravel, settle, and linger. 

It’s a process that slowly tunes in and allows the bourbon to introduce itself fully sip by sip. 

Buffalo Trace

The first one of the four, Buffalo Trace has a 45% ABV. On the nose and palate, it offers warm notes of vanilla, mint, molasses, and stone fruits like peach, cherry, and plum. Once it settles on the tongue, it tastes pleasantly sweet, with a hint of brown sugar and a touch of spice that unfolds into deeper flavors. 

The bourbon finishes smoothly and confidently, with a lingering spice and a surprising depth that leaves quite an impression. 

Eagle Rare

Eagle Rare is a 10-Year-Old bourbon whiskey, clocking in at 45% ABV. It offers sweet notes of toffee and honey, with hints of orange peel, and earthy notes of herbs, leather, and oak on the nose. The taste is quite bold, dry, and delicate, settling on the tongue with sweet hints of candied almonds, brown sugar, raisin, and a rich taste of cocoa. 

It finishes quite dry and lingers on the tongue with a spice and a touch of old leather. 

Weller Full Proof

The Weller Full Proof has an ABV of 57% and is sweet to the palate. It has a nose of vanilla, dark cherries, caramel, baked apples, and oak. The sweetness continues with its taste, giving a velvety mouthfeel with luscious hints of cherry, orange, cinnamon, caramel, dark honey, and sweet vanilla. 

A perfect choice to pair with desserts, the bourbon finishes long like crème brûlée, with a touch of dark chocolate, and the warmth of toasted oak. 

Stagg

Standing at an ABV of 67.2%, the Stagg is strong and bold, with sweet notes of apricot, caramel, apple, chocolate, and brown sugar. The taste is quite rich, with toffee, caramel, and black cherry balancing perfectly with rye spiciness, orange, and black tea. 

The Stagg lingers long after you’ve taken a sip, with hints of dark chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, finishing well with citrus and smoky oak. 

Questions Worth Asking as a Beginner

After savoring each bourbon and slowly building our whiskey vocabulary, curiosity followed. We realized that asking questions—especially to a Master Blender like Drew Mayville, was just as essential as the tasting itself. 

Fortunately, he was more than happy to indulge The Beat Asia and all our beginner questions, with patience, insight, and a friendly smile. 

For those starting out their whiskey and bourbon journey, Drew recommended Benchmark, a 40% ABV expression with sweet notes of caramel and stone fruit. But for those willing to try it neat, he said Buffalo Trace is the best one to start with.

Another question we asked was whether it was better for beginners to drink their whiskey neat or with a dash of water. Drew’s advice?  “Sip it the way you like it.” Whether it’s in a cocktail, with a splash of water, or served neat, what matters is learning to enjoy the taste before diving deeper into the world of whiskey.

When it comes to training the palate to recognize more tasting notes, Drew emphasized that it takes time and practice. “You have to just taste, taste, and taste, and you’ll have to accept the flavors and understand the taste of it all.” 

One misconception he’s noticed is that some people add only a small amount of bourbon to cocktails, so they won’t taste it. For Drew, it should be the opposite—bourbon and whiskey should be tasted, not hidden. That said, he admits that he’s not a fan of highballs, personally preferring to drink his whiskey neat.

We also asked, “If we can’t taste all the notes, are we doing something wrong?” Drew reassured us that it’s perfectly normal. “Everybody is different. Some people can smell certain things, and others can’t,” he shared. “You can get better at detecting flavors—with practice.” 

As a parting piece of advice, Drew encouraged us to keep exploring different spirit categories and expressions. Of course, curiosity is always there whenever we’re trying out something new.  

Final Thoughts

As we quietly settled down, finishing what was left in our glasses, we found ourselves to be little less intimidated about the world of whiskey, with a newfound appreciation for this largely misunderstood spirit. 

What began as a night riddled with beginner’s reluctance and curiosity slowly turned into one that was quite educational and eye-opening, understanding why whiskey has earned a mystified and hushed reputation among different social circles. 

Whiskey is a spirit with depth, and when you take some time to understand it, its different expressions and vocabulary, it slowly welcomes you into its world—one gloved hand at a time. 

Learn more about Buffalo Trace Distillery and their products here. Follow Grand Cru Wines and Spirits Inc. on Instagram. 

Asia is one food-crazy continent! We take great care to pick restaurants based on culinary vibes, rankings on international gourmand guides, mentions in magazines, Instagrammability, and added hunger. Yes, Chef! features the region’s chefs' stories of love and labour in kitchens that have made some of our restaurants the next big thing in Asia.

It all started with a craving. After a long day of prepping, cooking, and tasting French dishes at Chateau 1771, Chef Vicky-Rose Pacheco found herself longing for something closer to home — the comforting taste of Filipino food. 

“At that time, my only desire was to eat non-French food because every day I was cooking it, and I said, 'Oh, what do I eat after work?' Whenever I went home, I just ate fried bangus (Milkfish) with vinegar, and I realized this is the kind of food that I want to eat,” she shared with The Beat Asia. 

This lingering craving would eventually become the spark behind Sentro 1771, a Filipino restaurant she founded in 2002, deemed one of the pioneers in ushering modern Filipino cuisine into the mainstream dining scene. 

In our conversation, Chef Vicky looked back on the restaurant’s beginnings, recalling how it emerged from the realization that Filipinos will always end up looking for Pinoy flavor somewhere, no matter what cuisine they consume. Her desire to “come home” to the flavors she grew up eating had led her to create dishes that honor local traditions while using techniques and disciplines she had learned in fine dining. 

One of the prime examples of this is her signature Corned Beef Sinigang, which she shared was inspired by her mother’s English-style corned beef and cabbage recipe. 

She had initially put the Corned Beef and Cabbage on Chateau 1771’s menu, but it didn’t sell as much as she’d hoped. And then, a serendipitous experiment involving a pot of beef in her kitchen happened.

“We had just made a batch of corned beef at Chateau 1771 in 1997, and I saw a big stock pot of corned beef broth (the liquid where the beef was simmered for 4 hours). I tasted the broth, but it was too salty! So I said, 'What if I put a souring ingredient?' Then it tasted like Sinigang!”  

It turns out that Chef Vicky’s journey to the kitchen was just as serendipitous. Sentro 1771’s Executive Chef shared that her love for food wasn’t influenced by a particular recipe but rather fostered in family-style dining and inspired by the variety of dishes she had witnessed being prepared.

“Growing up, we always ate together as a family,” she said. “And every time there was a fiesta, the kitchen was always bustling with people. Many people came and cooked all at the same time in one small space. I was always watching them. Every time there’s a special occasion, there’s always a big spread. So maybe it was the variety — in the abundance that was there, which now I realize was a blessing.”

Chef Vicky took up a Bachelor of Science in Hotel and Restaurant Administration at the University of the Philippines Diliman and trained in prestigious institutions in Switzerland, such as the Roches Hotel and Tourism School and École Hôtelière de Lausanne. She then took her career to the US, where she helped launch a restaurant in Daly City, San Francisco. However, fate had other plans when it brought her back to the Philippines — right at the doorstep of a newly-opened French restaurant, which eventually became known as Chateau 1771. 

“It was opened by one of my batchmates in Switzerland, and she asked me to join her because she was going on leave. So I came in as her assistant manager, and she was the restaurant manager, and the chef became her husband. When the couple left the restaurant, I took over all of their roles, even the chef's part. So that's when I started cooking. The owner thought I knew how to cook *laughs*! He thought he hired a chef, so I just had to prove myself and was learning as I went along.”

More than two decades later, Chef Vicky has made her mark in Filipino cuisine with Sentro 1771’s signatures, which easily became local favorites.

“It did not set out to be a Filipino restaurant,” she said matter-of-factly, explaining that they had initially planned to put up a Western-style restaurant. “I just said I wanted food that was likable or amiable to the Filipino palate. What do Filipinos like to eat? So that went around in my head, and it turned out that it was Filipino food.”

Some of the restaurant’s specialties include the Corned Beef Sinigang, which remains to be their top bestseller; the Rated GG which is Galunggong fillets (prepared using French preparation techniques) fried in garlic olive oil and topped with browned garlic; the Sizzling Tofu, which she described as “parang sisig pero hindi (just like sisig but not really)” as she wanted a sisig dish that vegetarians could consume; the pan-fried Blissful Bangus Belly deboned and seasoned with a mix of soy sauce, oyster sauce, and vinegar; and the Tomato Kesong Puti Salad, which is chef’s Pinoy version of the Italian Insalata Caprese. 

When asked about how she curated the menu, Chef Vicky mentioned that the restaurant’s offerings are a blend of her creativity and what her customer wants. 

“There’s always a creative part, and there’s always a statistics part. The statistics part is like observing what people like to eat and what sells. So that's what you put in the favorites, dishes like Kare-Kare and Crispy Pata. All restaurants have those, and everyone will mostly order them because they're hard to prepare and it’s lasang Pinoy (tastes Pinoy). But then, after putting in certain classics and favorites, I always make sure there are original dishes on the menu, and that's the risk because that's also the creative part. When I introduce a dish, it just means you’re making a statement that this is what tastes good for me and for everybody. Sometimes it's a selfish endeavor, but most of the time it should not be because every restaurant is for the customer, not for the chefs.”

As both Executive Chef and COO of Sentro 1771, Chef Vicky has done a commendable job in balancing management of the kitchen as well as the front of the house. She shared how management would usually take over, as it takes a lot of time, and she has a good team in the kitchen, and everything is standardized. However, if there are issues in the kitchen, with a guest, or they’re training someone new in the kitchen, then she would always make sure to be back there to supervise. 

“I do inspections every day. I pass through the back door and open all freezers, all refrigerators, all storage, and then I check the stations. Even if I can't be in all the restaurants in a single day, when I’m there, I talk to the people. I don't do paperwork because it's a waste of time to be physically in the place, but not talking to people, not relating to them, and seeing how they are. I always believe that a happy cook cooks good food, so I always make sure that they’re okay.”

With Sentro 1771 being around for more than two decades, Chef Vicky had a much to share about how Filipino cuisine has evolved through the years. She told us that before, Filipino food was just traditional “lutong bahay (home-cooked)," but after Sentro opened, they started introducing original dishes or recipes with a twist — plating them differently or serving them in an upscale ambience. 

“It elevated Filipino cuisine,” she explained. “And after around eight years in 2010, that's when other restaurants followed suit, doing the same thing: upgrading the food, the ambiance, the graphics, everything! So then that’s when the competition became tougher. But it’s good because it keeps us on our toes.”

When asked about how the restaurant plays its part in preserving Filipino heritage, she replied that it lies in their hospitality, or how they welcome their guests like family, the way a true Filipino household would. She shared how they accede to some of their diners' requests to tweak the flavors in some of their dishes. Chef even called it the “1771 brand of service,” which is all about making sure each dish suits their tastes, and each guest leaves happy and satisfied. 

As for what’s next for Sentro 1771, Chef Vicky expressed her desire to find a new location, preferably a house that they can fashion into a place that will make their customers feel more at home. 

“Something more welcoming. In a house, the ambiance is different. So that's in the pipeline — that's in our master plan in my brain.”

Sentro 1771 currently has three branches around Metro Manila: Greenbelt 5, One Bonifacio High Street Mall in BGC, and Capitol Commons, which doubles as an event venue where you can celebrate with your loved ones. You can make your reservation here or contact the branch directly. 

For more delicious updates, follow Sentro 1771 on Facebook and Instagram.

Enjoyed this article? Check out our previous Yes Chef! profiles here.

Asia is one food-crazy continent! We take great care to pick restaurants based on culinary vibes, rankings on international gourmand guides, mentions in magazines, Instagrammability, and added hunger. Yes, Chef! features the region’s chefs' stories of love and labour in kitchens that have made some of our restaurants the next big thing in Asia.

Chef Myrna Segismundo is more than a chef, she's a celebrated force in Philippine gastronomy, known for championing and elevating Filipino cuisine on the global stage. With a career spanning decades, from managing some of the best hotels in New York to winning top prizes at culinary competitions and leading international food expos, she has become a powerful voice in the Philippine culinary scene. 

Known as the mastermind behind the National Food Showdown, a prestigious culinary competition that brings together aspiring chefs, hospitality students, and industry professionals from across the country, Chef Myrna is inspiring a new generation of cooks, all the while keeping our food legacy alive and thriving. 

As The Beat Asia sat down for a quick chat with the chef, it was clear that her passion for Filipino food went beyond recipes and techniques. 

For Chef Myrna, food is rooted in storytelling, memory, experiences, and cultural pride. In our conversation, she reflected on her unconventional path to the kitchen, how she navigated hotel dining rooms, and how she continues to preserve and evolve Filipino cuisine through mentorship, advocacy, and innovation. 

From Home Kitchen to Global Stage

Like most origin stories, Chef Myrna’s love for food started at home. Growing up in a big family with eleven siblings, she was exposed to one important aspect of Filipino cuisine — which is something to share with loved ones. 

“I come from a very big family of 12 children, and I'm number 12. And as in any Filipino household, dining is more or less the center of our lives in the home,” she told The Beat Asia. 

“And so we grew up eating in large numbers. As the siblings started to marry off, the family grew larger and larger, and before you knew it, the meals on weekends and special holidays were almost the size of a feast! Having been exposed to that, it follows that our interest in food was very strongly influenced by family life. My parents loved to host parties back in the '60s and '70s, and as a child, I wasn’t old enough to join the party, so I was always left somewhere in the back where the caterers were. My yaya (babysitter), who eventually became the main cook of the family, influenced me a lot, as well as my parents, who love to bring the family out to eat in restaurants and hotels during those days.”

Chef Myrna graduated with a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration from the University of the Philippines, but being an immigrant, she had to fly back to New York, where her career in hotel management began. It was from there that she became exposed to the Food and Beverage sector. 

“I worked for several hotels at the front of the house. I started at the Waldorf Astoria and then moved on to two other hotels while living in New York. These were the Saint Moritz on the Park and the Sheraton Center. Even as my work was in the front of the house, my exposure to New York and its culture, particularly in the food scene, was something that helped my development as a food and beverage person as well.”

The chef told us how she returned to Manila upon her parents’ request and worked for two hotels. She began working as an assistant food and beverage manager at the Hilton, which assigned her to the F&B operations of both the front and back of the house. The chef mentioned how this experience exposed her to the kitchen more as she got involved with the people that she managed in that area.

“But it was when I moved out of the hotel, moving out from the bigger scene of the industry and into a smaller operation that really gave me more focus,” she stated, as she eventually pivoted to corporate dining for an exclusive restaurant in a bank.  

“I was forced to pay attention to kitchen operations because, having been skilled enough to handle the management part of food and beverage, it was in the kitchen where I felt I needed to get my hands dirty, roll up my sleeves, and work alongside my chefs. It was a very new experience for me. It was smaller but more dynamic, more challenging, and more enjoyable. Since it was an exclusive restaurant, it was extremely fancy and very demanding. It had a limited market, so it was also very challenging in the sense that I had to be very creative because I was feeding the top tier of the company and their VIP guests. It’s a very different animal. You literally walk up and down trying to figure out how you can be more creative and serve something new to the eyes and to the palate.”

Over the years, Chef Myrna learned a lot from the people she worked with in the kitchen. She told us how she realized that the people who moved up the ranks were extremely helpful in developing personal skills. “They knew how, but they didn’t know why,” she quoted, on how these workers’ skills are shaped and honed through experience. 

She took on the challenge to provide them with the necessary tools and techniques, going back to the books to explain the “whys.” “It was a two-way thing. I learned from them and they learned from me and we worked very closely as a team,” she shared. “We both appreciated the fact that we would understand what we were doing now. And that was when I started joining culinary competitions.”

The chef also commented how it felt ironic that it was in Manila that she was able to appreciate what she experienced in New York and was able to apply all her learnings, being exposed to the front and back of the house, and understanding the entirety of the operations. 

In the period that she joined culinary competitions, her interest in the craft grew. Her team won top awards in the restaurant division, which surprised many, considering they came from a smaller industry. Chef Myrna used this as an opportunity to hone her skills as a chef, a profession she described as something she got by accident. 

“I needed to benchmark, because coming from the hotel and then moving into a smaller operation and then not even being open to the public, I didn't know if we were good or bad. The competitions kept us going. I was also starting to get burned out at the hotel, as it’s a very difficult job. I no longer wanted to follow that direction, although it was very promising. At the end of the day, it's what you do with what you have in front of you that really decides exactly where you're headed. So this is where we are now.”

On Reviving the Filipino Table

It’s clear to see that Chef Myrna’s career was shaped by her experiences in the industry and honed by hands-on work in the kitchens. She took up culinary courses, but the chef wouldn’t call herself someone fully schooled in a culinary program, and rather takes pride in the way she had learned all her skills on her own and with the people she worked with. 

In 2009, Chef Myrna founded the National Food Showdown, an annual competition that revived some of the country’s earlier cook-offs, such as the Chefs on Parade — a competition she joined back when she was working in corporate dining. Born from her conviction that talented Filipino chefs need a platform to showcase their skills, heritage, and creativity, the culinary competition spans multiple regions and is divided into student and professional divisions. It also features diverse challenges such as classic and modern Filipino dish cook-offs, pastry and dessert rounds, as well as beverage categories. 

Since its founding, the cook-off has served as a “Kitchen Olympics” for culinary students. When asked why she had put it up in the first place, Chef Myrna answered, “I felt for my people. I felt for these employees, these skilled workers who were not schooled. Also in the provinces, the lesser schools that have students who do not have the facilities and means to study and take a culinary course. I felt that, at least at the National Food Showdown, there would be a door that could open opportunities for them.”

The talented chef also mentioned that many young people have forgotten what Filipino cuisine truly is — how it all starts at the table, shared with stories and experiences. 

“Like us, who grew up with home-cooked meals and were exposed to those things, I feel many in the new generation did not have that privilege. So there’s a lack of depth because now everything is about reconstruction, plating, or tasting menus. There’s nothing wrong with that. But do we want to promote our culinary culture in that manner? We weren't into molecular gastronomy. We weren’t into courses. We’re into sharing food — family style,” she said, perfectly describing the heart of Filipino cooking. 

The National Food Showdown has gone back to promoting these objectives in the hopes of encouraging the next generation to appreciate their cooking and cuisine, and for them to discover their ingredients. It also puts emphasis on sustainability, which, for Chef Myrna, is simply using locally sourced ingredients. 

“Sustainability for me focuses on going local. When you support local ingredients and local produce, the topic of sustainability comes into the picture, because then you have to be able to supply the demand,” she said. “And another one would be to discover and appreciate cooking techniques and ingredients that are indigenous to the areas so that there is more creativity, there is more transfer of knowledge and experience. It follows that if there’s more focus on these things, there will be sustainability.”

More than establishing a national cook-off, Chef Myrna has also represented the country in various international food festivals. She shared with us one of her experiences where she collaborated with the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to hold food festivals across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. When asked about some of her most memorable moments, she told us about an observation that she turned into an actionable plan to gain more traction and meaningful transactions in their booths. 

“So in the beginning, it was about holding food festivals in the hotels, but then I noticed that our only customers were Filipinos too, and so there doesn’t seem to be enough interest from the foreign market. As I got more confident and more exposed to these festivals, I started to suggest that we need to educate the market that we want to attract, which is not the Filipinos nor the overseas workers. Because why go abroad if you cannot attract the locals of that country?”

Chef Myrna suggested promoting festivals by way of lectures and cooking demonstrations to a select audience, such as the media, academe, suppliers, and importers. This way, more information is shared with them on the culture of Filipino cuisine, as well as the ingredients and cooking techniques unique to the Philippines.

She’s also a contributing author in one of the country’s most beloved culinary guidebooks, “Kulinarya,” where she shared ten classic Filipino recipes in collaboration with other renowned local chefs such as Chef Jessie Sincioco and the late Chef Margarita Forés. 

She described the book as not an “end-all” but a start, considering many traditional dishes have one or more ways in which they can be made. Chef Myrna pointed out that “Kulinarya” is not a collection of standard recipes, but more of a representation of the best cooking techniques and practices from the contributing chefs. 

We can say that Chef Myrna is a culinary icon, one who has made it her mission to preserve and revive Filipino heritage cooking and share it beyond our borders. The National Food Showdown continues on its 16th run, which will be held in September and October in various provinces such as Cebu (Sept. 27), Iloilo (Oct. 2 to 3), and Baguio (Oct. 9 to 11). 

Additionally, Chef Myrna is also undertaking a Food Writing competition, which she dedicated to the late Doreen Gamboa Fernandez, a food critic icon and writer in the Philippines. The competition is slated for September and will also go alongside the very first Food Reel competition, which is presented in partnership with FEATR — a digital video channel from The Fat Kid Inside Studios founded by chef and celebrity food blogger, Erwan Heussaff. This year’s theme for both competitions is “Minatamis and Sweet Merienda Staples.”

For more information on how to join, click here.

Enjoyed this article? Check out our previous Yes Chef! profiles here.