By Joseph L. Garcia, Senior Reporter
JUST edging his way into his 40s, you can say a lot about Josh Boutwood, but you can’t call him one-note. A visit to two of his restaurants weeks apart shows his own diversity and his own keen sense of balancing business and pleasure.
His restaurants — namely, The Test Kitchen, Juniper, Ember, and Helm (another, Savage, shuttered in 2024) — operate under the Bistro Elite line of the Bistro Group, due to his status as the restaurant group’s corporate chef, a position he has held since 2012.
JUNIPERIt sounds young and fresh, and opening just this year in the newly refurbished ground floor of the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, it certainly is. BusinessWorld visited the restaurant on June 19 to test their new lunch bowls, but not before a few nibbles.
We had had a disastrous time with a Tapioca and Cheese Fritter at another restaurant (which we will not name; it left us looking like a cow chewing their cud), but Mr. Boutwood’s version was exquisite. The pearls encased in the fried shell gave an excellent tactile experience and a comforting cheesy taste, erasing the memories of fritters past. Meanwhile, a guest at our table insisted we taste Mr. Boutwood’s signature sourdough bread, which had a consistently dense crumb and was delightfully spongy. This was served with whipped butter and olive oil.
The lunch menu has six new items: four rice bowls (Gyudon, soy egg, kimchi; Soy glazed salmon, edamame, tapioca; Teriyaki pork belly, bean sprouts, pickled cucumber; Miso marinated wings, cabbage, sesame — the menu is straightforward with the names) and two sandwiches (Grilled cheese with cheddar and Gruyère, spiced tomato; Turkey ham, sun-dried tomato, arugula garlic aioli). Prices start at P375, with none of them over P600.
In a group interview, Mr. Boutwood said, “Opening a restaurant in this particular area was very different from my other locations — a different crowd,” alluding to the many offices forming the Ortigas skyline. “Lunches have to be speedy, fast, and in-and-out.”
That’s being modest: we’re sure the seats get warmed up.
We had our favorites: the pork bowl had rich, excellent pork with good rich fat, and tasted nourishing and filling with rice and pickles. The salmon bowl felt like it glistened with freshness, while we were very sure we’d love the Turkey Ham sandwich to-go, over and over.
As a treat, Mr. Boutwood cooked up a fresh batch of off-menu agnolotti (with an excellent meaty filling with a razor-sharp flavor of Parmigiano) and served us his porkchops; both dishes convinced us of his prowess.
“Juniper is a lot more casual,” he said about this outlet. “You don’t have to dress up to come here to enjoy a nice meal.”
THE TEST KITCHENAfter our June 19 visit, Mr. Boutwood flew off to Sweden for a vacation. “For me, that’s the best way to get excited about it again: it’s just to miss it for a bit,” he had said in that previous interview.
He was available for an interview on our July 8 visit to the Test Kitchen, his first chef-helmed restaurant.
When Mr. Boutwood first appeared on our radar in 2017 at the second Madrid Fusion Manila, he had been bypassed at the country’s first iteration of the international food conference due to not having his own restaurant, according to a previous BusinessWorld story. However, in 2017, having his own place (The Test Kitchen itself) got him qualified to take the stage.
“This is my little baby. It’s my first one, right?” he said during a Zoom interview from Sweden. The Test Kitchen moved to Rockwell in 2019 after an initial run in Makati’s Kamagong St. “It’s where the majority of our development for all of my other restaurants starts, and it gets moved down or up to the other restaurants as we see fit.”
While Mr. Boutwood was in Sweden during the interview, BusinessWorld was at The Test Kitchen’s Curing Room upstairs, and we saw hams and other treats hung up on hooks; as well as jars slowly fermenting pickles. This is a testament to his sometimes-unorthodox takes (that work). On fermenting, he says, “We’ve always said that time is an ingredient.”
“Some of the curing that we do can take up to six months, to a year; sometimes two years,” he said. He also has a predilection for open-flame cooking. It’s present in two of his kitchens: this restaurant’s and Ember (and the defunct Savage, then; more on that later). “Cooking with flame is so primal, and you have to rely on intuition to make it right,” he said when we last met at Juniper. Speaking of which, Savage has found a new location, but they’re planning to open next year.
The dinner this week for media and other guests was planned as a revisit of the restaurant, which is why they served familiar favorites. “As my oldest restaurant, over time, it gets shaded by the popularity of my newest restaurants. Does that make sense?” he said.
The meal started with Serrano ham, which we placed over his now-fabled sourdough. This was followed by Duck prosciutto on toast: everything sliced almost paper thin, but hefty with flavor. The duck, with the texture of fine leather, holds all the flavor of the curing process, accented by a punchy garlic emulsion. A delicate Cured Hamachi with ponzu, garlic, and orange segments served as a palate cleanser, and the fish felt velvety and sparkled with the marinade.
The mains included a Sea Bass, almost Lovecraftian in its presentation. Chilean sea bass and cauliflower puree, house-made XO sauce, and smoked dashi were capped with a freaky-looking black veil of squid ink and tapioca. This was divine, and we felt time slowing with every chew, the subtle soft flavor of the fish reflected in its fresh bounciness contrasted with the crispy black cap.
There was the Chicken, Truffle (truffle-stuffed chicken breasts with caramelized onion and white onion puree). The flesh, by itself, was already creamy, and reminded us heavily of a chicken dish we had inside the Eiffel Tower.
The Berkshire Pork was a pan-seared chop coated in a caper and mustard-cream sauce; the taut flesh basically squeezes out flavor every time it made contact with teeth and tongue. It tasted remarkably clean, and the caper sauce gave it zing. The Lamb Shank, sticky, soft, and rich with gelatin; evidence of the long, slow, and caring cooking it received, had a very mild flavor. Lamb jus and mint puree give it a little more bang.
Frankly, we thought that after all this, dessert would be a disappointment. Not one bit: he brought out Honey, Cream, with the cooked cream reduced almost to a solid, paired with wild honey and topped with honeycomb caramel. This resulted in a much denser cousin of clotted cream (reflective of Mr. Boutwood’s British roots): so dense, in fact, that it hardly wanted to leave the spoon. It’s basically just a big indulgent bite of cream; the idea of thrusting a can of whipped cream in your mouth made (almost) solid.
“The Test Kitchen still remains one of the most progressive restaurants in terms of our development ethos. It technically is the birthplace of all other creations we have in our restaurants,” he said. “It technically still is our test kitchen, and it carries the name quite strongly.”
