Page 27 - foodservice news magazine Nov-Dec 2018

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SOUTH-EAST CALLING AT REY’S PLACE, OWNER JONATHAN BAYAD IS LEADING THE CHARGE FOR FILIPINO FOOD.
COULD THIS BE THE BEGINNING OF THE NEXT ASIAN WAVE? YASMIN NEWMAN INVESTIGATES.
Rey’s Place, Darlinghurst.
For near on a decade, respected food publications around the world have been predicting Filipino food’s arrival in the mainstream, hailing it as the ‘next big thing’. In New York,
the once under-the-radar cuisine looks like it has finally hit critical mass, with broad audience uptake and progressive chefs getting their dues. So when Rey’s Place, a modern inner-city Filipino restaurant, opened late last year, there was a feeling that Sydney’s time had come at long last, too.
Full disclosure, I play a small role in this story. I met Rey’s Place owner Jonathan Bayad when he was managing the bar of the newly opened Bang in Surry Hills, writing a story for this magazine. As the author of 7000 Islands: Cherished Recipes and Stories from the Philippines and a passionate promoter of the cuisine, I was struck
by Bang’s setting and modern approach to Bangladeshi food – and how a similar set-up would be just the thing for Filipino. I shared my thoughts with Bayad, left him a copy of my book, and went on my merry way.
“At the time, I thought it was a great idea, but semi wrote it off,” confides Bayad. (No offence taken.) The second-generation Filipino-Australian has been in the hospo game for over 15
years working for top Sydney operators. He’d always dreamed of opening a place of his own, but despite his heritage, he’d just never considered it. “With time, it was the one that always got more and more traction, while all the other ideas just came and went,” he explains of the life-altering shift.
In the intervening years, Bayad went on to manage Indu. then Tokyo Bird, where the owners helped him work through the concept and gave him the confidence to dive in. He recalls the firing-line of questions: “‘How many Filipinos are there in Sydney?’ Most are located south-west and south. ‘How do you get that market from there into the city?’ They already have a very strong idea of what Filipino food
is. ‘How will they feel about the modern approach you wanna to do?’”