In partnership with Megaworld, Chef Fhred brings Palay + from Melbourne to Manila for a focused, intimate tasting experience at Richmonde Hotel Eastwood — Filipino food edited through memory, technique, region and restraint.
This trip is about bringing back what has been built in Melbourne and placing it beside the food, regions and people that shaped it in the first place.
Palay began as a Filipino house in Fitzroy — a place built around belonging, memory, conversation and food that still feels like home. Palay + takes the same identity and compresses it into a quieter, more precise dining format.
For Chef Fhred, Manila is a chance to cook Filipino food in the Philippines with the distance, lessons and perspective gained abroad — not to make it “less Filipino”, but to show how flexible, technical and expressive it already is. With Megaworld supporting the journey through accommodation and hospitality, Richmonde Hotel Eastwood becomes the home of this Palay + chapter.
“The goal is not to modernise Filipino food for approval. It is to edit the frame, so people can see what was already there.”
Founder · Executive Head Chef · Palay, Melbourne
Chef Fhred Erick Batalona has spent more than thirteen years in kitchens, developing a style that moves between Filipino memory and contemporary Australian dining. He is the founder and Executive Head Chef of Palay in Fitzroy, where Filipino food is presented with warmth, context and confidence rather than as novelty.
His work extends beyond the restaurant through catering, collaborative dinners, culinary storytelling and Dishes & Dialogues — a food-led media project where conversation begins at the table.
The food remains legible as Filipino. The change is in control: sharper pacing, clearer contrast, more deliberate texture, and techniques that reveal rather than disguise.
Everything on the plate has to earn its place.
The dish should still make sense to someone who knows the original, even when its form changes.
Fermentation, curing, smoking, clarification, emulsions and precise temperature are used only when they strengthen the story.
Courses are portioned to be eaten as they arrive: one composition, one intention, one clean finish before the next.
A premium cocktail set built around Emperador brandy as the anchor. The drawings intentionally feel more like bar-journal sketches than advertising, so the drinks stay elegant and editorial.
Emperador · clarified calamansi · soda · cane sugar · citrus oil
Emperador · charred pineapple reduction · coconut sugar · aromatic bitters
Emperador · pandan · lemon · egg white / aquafaba · toasted rice
Emperador · ginger cordial · honey · lemon · black tea
Emperador · tablea cacao · milk clarification · muscovado · sea salt
Emperador · ripe mango · green pepper · dry vermouth · calamansi
Palay + is designed as more than a dinner. The experience is supported by the people and spaces helping bring this Manila chapter to life — from where the team stays and cooks, to how the story is documented and carried beyond the table.
Supporting Chef Fhred's Manila return through hospitality and accommodation, and creating the platform for Palay + to collaborate with Megaworld's hotel culinary teams.
Eastwood, Quezon City · the setting for the intimate 12-course Palay + tasting experience.