Sarap London

This Filipino word for delicious is a perfect name for an exciting new restaurant concept in London that has food critics raving

- Bambina Olivares

In the kitchen of a hot new bistro-style restaurant in London’s swanky Mayfair, a young Filipino chef-restaurateur is tweaking a sinigang recipe.

It’s not quite there yet. “I’m still working on it. It’s not sour enough, and it must be more maasim [sour], you know?” Ferdinand “Budgie” Montoya admits, a tad ruefully, that he doesn’t speak Tagalog. But truth is, judging from the menu of his restaurant Sarap, he does. Fluently. Because as every Filipino knows, our language is food.

“I don’t need to speak the language to know how to cook it,” he says. “You know, there’s a food language and a food that people understand in the kitchen.” And Sarap certainly understands this.

Born in Davao, raised in Sydney and now living in London, Montoya opened Sarap at 10 Heddon Road earlier this year, a residency space that had previously hosted many successful London restaurant concept pop-ups. The Mayfair address is a statement in itself. Step out into Regent Street and the Burberry flagship is in front of you. Walk down a block and you’re on Savile Row. You’ve got to be bold to situate a Filipino bistro in this area; it immediately comes with a host of expectations in terms of menu, quality, price and service.

Fortunately, Sarap does not disappoint. Described as possessing “a Filipino soul and a London heart”, it is reassuringly familiar and intriguingly novel at the same time. The interiors are contemporary yet comforting, with industrial details interspersed with lots of greenery that evokes the tropics. The menu is surprisingly brief, but all the right dishes are there and, more importantly, the flavour profiles are spot-on: sour, salty and sweet, not to mention crispy and crunchy.