When Fat Cat & El Gato traded places with Offbeat
Most collaborations in Manila's dining scene stick to safe territory. Two bars team up, two restaurants share a menu, and everyone posts about it. Rinse and repeat.
Last Oct. 3 and 4, Fat Cat, El Gato, and Offbeat asked a different question: What happens when you stop thinking inside the box of what a collaboration should be? I was able to visit the first night.
The answer: The kitchen team turned cocktails into courses. The bar team turned dinner into drinks. For two nights at Offbeat restaurant in The Shops Ayala Triangle Gardens, nothing was what it was supposed to be.
"It's a bit like Freaky Friday," said Angelo Comsti, chef and owner of Offbeat. He's been working in the food and beverage industry long enough to spot the difference between a stunt and an actual creative challenge. This was the latter, a complete swap that required both teams to work in a language they don't usually speak.
Cocktails to courses
The first plate that arrives is The Fool. It's a croquette, but not any croquette you've had. Inside is shredded chicken inasal mixed with mashed potato with sinamak sauce, spring onion oil, anatto oil and powder, and onion powder. It's named after a Fat Cat cocktail, but it tastes like a memory of every Ilonggo meal you've loved.
Chefs Jules Cercenia, Denise Banga, and Anthony Jandusay weren't just copying flavors from a drink recipe. They were asking: What does this cocktail want to be if it had to feed someone?
The Tower comes next. The original cocktail has smoky notes and is made of orange and gochujang. The dish is inihaw na baboy with smoked orange humba sauce (usually made with pineapple, here swapped for citrus), muscovado gastrique, tausi fried rice, fried banana blossoms, and gochujang oil.
Dessert is Temperance. Inipit filled with cranberry sauce and yogurt whipped cream, circled by milk foam and caramelized oats. The original drink is white chocolate, cranberry, and milk kefir. The dish version is sweet but doesn't feel heavy. They even considered a mamon version during the planning process, but settled on inipit, the popular sandwich-style pastry from Malolos, Bulacan.
Dishes to drinks
Ron Cruz, owner of Fat Cat, introduces the drinks himself. Bibingka in a coupe glass. Bourbon, cream sherry, egg yolk, coconut cream syrup, shio koji. It's Christmas morning, if Christmas morning makes you sit down and think, instead of just unwrapping things.
Inihaw is next, the strongest of the night. Mezcal, tapuy, sweet vermouth, black garlic syrup. It tastes like 2 a.m. around a charcoal grill, smoke in your hair, the kind of conversation that only happens when everyone's guard drops.
Then Pesa arrives, and it's my favorite even though it shouldn't work. The Offbeat dish is Pesang Baboy, which applies the pesa cooking method (typically used for fish) to pork belly cooked in light ginger broth. Cruz turned it into a highball with baijiu (China’s most popular spirit), ginger lemongrass cordial, and miso, then carbonated. It's light and funky and umami-deep. The kind of drink that makes you stop mid-conversation and take another sip just to figure out what's happening.
Pinangat changes the energy completely. It's like an old-fashioned: strong and savory, made with pinangat spices, honey ginger. The entire menu felt like a playground of "what ifs."
By the end of the night, people aren't leaving. The lighting is just right, laughter reverberates through the room, intimate conversations unfold at every table. They're still comparing notes or talking about what's been happening in each of their lives. The menu and lighting allow everyone to be a little freer.
It's a fun way of experiencing two places in one. You get Fat Cat and El Gato's inventiveness, Offbeat's playfulness, all in a single evening. When a team is this creatively committed, this willing to play, you want to stay a little longer.
The madness of thinking differently
The entire process took about a week to plan. Just a week for both teams to learn each other's vocabulary, to figure out what a drink becomes when it has to sit on a plate, what a dish becomes when it has to be poured.
Both teams already knew how to execute. What made this work is that they know why things taste the way they do. Why sweetness cuts heat. Why fat carries spice. Why bitterness adds weight. Why texture isn't just something you feel, it's something you build.
Fat Cat, run by husband and wife Ron and Fifi Cruz, recently won Tatler Dining's Best Bar of 2025. Their bar began as a dream inspired by their two adopted cats, Doja and Stevens, to create a space focused on playing jazz records. Inspired by Japanese kissatens, they wanted the place to be an extension of their home.
Offbeat is run by longtime friends and collaborators Angelo Comsti and Don Baldosano, who dig deeper than Filipino staples. They spend time in markets and carinderias, hunt down obscure culinary texts, and conduct extensive research before a dish ever appears on the menu. Offbeat takes techniques from everywhere and filters them through local instinct, unapologetic about both influences.
What made both nights electric wasn't just the skill. It was watching two teams push past the usual boundaries of what a collaboration should be. No one was trying to recreate New York or Tokyo. They were building something that could only happen here, now, with these people.
"It was a group effort," one of the chefs said. That's underselling it. It was a room full of people willing to have fun with an idea.
What's next
The whole night and vibe of the restaurant reminds me of a forever favorite quote from Jack Kerouac's On the Road: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles."
That's what this felt like. People willing to burn bright, to try something that could fail, to have fun with an idea.
Comsti hints there are more unusual collaborations coming in November, one involving a bakery.
Until then, go to Fat Cat, El Gato, or Offbeat. Bring someone whose company you actually want. Let the food and drink do what they do best: Crack open conversations, make you notice things you'd usually miss, give you stories you'll still be telling months from now.
Because that's the thing about places like this, they're not just feeding you or getting you tipsy. They're asking you to think differently about what food and drink can be. And if you're paying attention, they might convince you.
* * *
Follow @fat.cat.ph, @el.gato.ph, and @offbeatbistroph.
