From chef Rhea Sycip’s Flour Pot blooms a bouquet that feeds your soul

To many, a restaurant that feeds the soul serves comfort food—meals rooted in memory and flavors that lift one’s spirits way above the days that are gray, both literally and figuratively. I just had a life-changing meal that fed not only body and mind, but what I call my old foodie soul.

In the concrete jungle of Bonifacio Global City, there is no shortage of earthly gustatory delights. Yet chef Rhea SyCip, of the husband-and-wife team that founded the beloved Fatted Calf in Tagaytay, has cultivated a captivating garden, a buttery yellow spot under the sun far away from her home on the ridge. From its sunshine-colored front doors to botanically themed interiors, and from whimsical decor with lighting fixtures that are actually giant whisks, wall sconces that are real bundt pans, rows of rolling pins on the walls and masses of fresh flowers, Flour Pot sets the stage for more than just exemplary dining.

And exemplary that dining is. I would gladly make the trip from Quezon City to BGC for the sake of the Mediterranean toast, a beautiful slice of sourdough topped with whipped local ricotta, orange slices, figs, dates, pistachios, and edible flowers. I would return for dukkah-inflected hummus, steak and eggs rimmed with a chimichurri made of carrot tops, and a salad of the finest smoked duck. I would savor again the best buttermilk biscuits I’ve ever had, served alongside buttermilk-marinated fried chicken, grits, and honey. There’s so much more, in a menu where nothing is ordinary, and I haven’t even touched on chef Rhea’s famed desserts.

 But these are not the reasons why Flour Pot resonates so much with me.

The story of Flour Pot is that of a chef who commits to supporting an ecosystem of small farmers, foragers, fishermen, poultry growers, and dairy producers from the far north to the deep south in a way that allows them to earn a decent living.

It is something you can taste on the plate and feel in your heart even when you don’t know or even care about these back stories. I didn’t expect to be as moved until chef Rhea began to explain the provenance of the extraordinary dishes we were having one after another, and when she mentioned Kibungan and other far-flung farmlands my heart began to melt. 

You see, I am an old foodie soul whose heart aches when I see stories of farmers dumping their vegetables in an agricultural system that has gone terribly awry. I have traveled too often through the mountains of the Cordilleras where I see farmers planting to the very edge of the road and working precariously on steep mountainsides, so steep they look almost vertical.

 “These farmers have hands that hold on like claws,” chef Rhea tells me, and feet that are used to such precipitous inclines. I have seen, as she has, how hard our farmers work to put food on our tables when their own sustenance is on the line.

At Flour Pot, an entire narrative unfolds that involves helping local farmers and purveyors, rescuing produce and turning potential catastrophes for hardworking farmers into opportunities that translate into some of the most amazing plates.

Even as I tasted one incredible pasta after another, each with its own story to tell, it was the strawberry-filled brioche donuts that finally soothed an ache in my soul. The rescue of a ton of strawberries produced a donut that was more fruit than dough, and which continues to sell way past the pandemic times in which it was created. Like the famous crying mountains of Kibungan, a series of overlapping waterfalls, so, too, is my soul now cryåing tears of joy with every bite of those precious berries.

As you eat your way through the menu, a silent narrative unfolds. This is more than food that fills the tummy and delights the mind; it feeds the soul of a foodie, ravaged and saddened by the plight of our farmers struggling to get their produce to the markets on non-existent roads, who deal with greedy middlemen and selfish importers, who struggle to put food on their own plates while they work to the bone to feed our nation. And chef Rhea does more that just rescue, she supports groups that encourage farmers to plan what they grow to prevent issues of wastage since we have all these agricultural shortcomings.

That’s just one woman and her team’s effort… imagine if we each did what we could to give our farmers a decent livelihood instead of waiting for the powers that be to actually do something… It’s food for thought.

So I encourage you to come to Flour Pot for unexpected dishes like the roast chicken curry born of years lived in Thailand, for an amazing pasta made with river prawns and ikura, for a chimichurri made of carrot tops that feeds my inner rabbit. You will find the delicious, buttery flower-topped “bou-cakes” tottering on their sides, the signature rum cake and other baked triumphs in a beautiful space that faces a park. You will love the food even if you don’t know the exact details about the provenance of its ingredients though the menu is a roadmap to small farms and producers throughout the archipelago. 

As you enjoy your sticky ribs, your succulent calamaretti, your pasta with clams and smoked mountain kiniing, you are actually allowing chef Rhea and her team to continue helping farmers. You’ll find out, just like me, that she’s just fed your soul.