SOFAH’S CHEF JEN

As a gustatory orchestrator of Chinese cuisine—who plays on culinary scores that are staples of Filchi tradition—Chef Jen Ruste interjects personal preferences to her cuisine as how she remembers it from childhood.

Her rendition of Chicken Mango Roll—P140 of chicken white meat strips, drenched in a mayonnaise base, with Manga-Manila cubes, dredged in Japanese breadcrumbs and egg white, fried crisp and golden—tiptoes between the gustatory grammars of Japanese maki and Filipinized dumplings. This—according to her—is just a counter-Japanese dish that bears the tangs of Japan in a Chinese preparation, much so, for Chinese people who enjoys Japanese cuisine.

On the other hand, her version dish of Fish Fillet with Taoso—P190 in soy-sautee sauce with crispy garlic bits and topped with spring onions—is simply a joyous dish of fish meat tainted with light oriental flavors that will, indeed, go well with Yang Chow Fried Rice’s shrimp, garlic, scrambled eggs, squid bits, and chopped kinchay.

"I don’t want to play so much on fusion styles and modernity in all my dishes," Chef Jen notes as she personally serves her victuals with much pride. "Maybe, if you’re really a good Chinese chef, then it will reflect in your cuisine whether you’re a male or female—Chinese cuisine has been effective for thousands of years, what we need to do is slightly adjust it for the modern clientele" she follows with the biggest smile.

Trained under ISCAHM’s culinary programs, Chef Jen subliminally, and admissibly puts elements of different Chinese dishes together and create new dishes.

Her combination of the traditional fried spareribs with sauce (P180 with the usual vinegar dip of spice and salt and pepper) works pretty sonic when sampled with a Nori Shrimp Roll (P198 of sautéed shrimp chunks in a mild savory clot of seafood pasta, wrapped tight with crispy nori, and carrot chunks, and doused with the zen zests of nido soup,) simply for the camp fun of it, or maybe for the fact of not really creating something abstractingly new, but simply, fusing traditionally accepted recipes together for a new experience.

Of course, dishes like siomai (which is home groomed and highly recommended to complement the Nori Shrimp Roll,) and beef tenderloin in oriental panache (of pounded Batangas beef on a sizzling plate with Binondo-spunked OK sweet sour sauce) will work for a purist all the time, but one can always request this Chinese girl chef a special Chinese dish with western gastronomique frolics just so to keep up with the bohemian surge of Malate, Manila’s nightlife. With the skills of this young Chinese girl, there is no reason for one to question this restaurant for quality and technical cookery—from the well-accepted dishes of Fil-Chinese culture to the modern-contemporary—or what’s gastronomically allowable. For so, Sofah’s Seafood Beancurd Gumbo—P155 of beancurd, pork cubes, carrots, mushroom, eggs, in a shark’s fin base soup—can always satisfy one with authenticity, or back to a Chinese reality that Chinese female chefs are as good as the males.

With this hub’s marketable sync points as a romantically simple restaurant—a glass screen with the starbursts of Manila clubs outside, and the relaxing pastels of its interiors, the food, the chef, the service—is one mini modern Chinese resto which is as wonderful as its cuisine.

Indeed, Sofah—located in downtown Malate—is a living subject of female-inspired Chinese modern cuisine. Taste Associate Editor Jeremy C. Malcampo notes, "however one regards this restaurant—fusion or modern—after a good eat in this place, a sampler will dare not mention that feminism is happily absent."

More so, it is wonderful to discover a quaint Chinese restaurant with a Filipino-Chinese girl chef—trained with the faculties of western gastronomy—who never fails to cook the cuisine that makes her.