Chef Jorge Mendez finds a new expression
Jorge Mendez has never been the loudest personality in Manila’s dining scene. But with every restaurant he opens, the same thing happens: tables fill, word spreads, and a loyal following grows. From Makanai to Mōdan and Some Thai, his concepts are strikingly different from one another, yet they share a quality that has become unmistakably his. The menu is inventive, deeply personal and, above all, enjoyable.
Ask Jorge what ties them together, and he doesn’t talk about technique or philosophy. “I like to play with flavors, not with the cuisine,” he says. It’s a small distinction, but it matters.
His food isn’t about dismantling traditions or creating novelty for novelty’s sake. The respect for Japanese cooking remains intact, having trained and worked in Japan for years, but he gives himself room to filter it through everything he’s seen, eaten, learned, and picked up along the way.
He describes every dish as “a translation of what I’ve experienced, what I’ve encountered, what I’ve tasted.” That’s the idea behind Undo, his new concept at Balmori Chef’s Table in Rockwell and his first time cooking in Makati.
For Jorge, Undo is “a new expression of Japanese.” Where Mōdan is more restrained and contemplative, Undo is looser. There’s “room for us to play and explore more,” he says, and the menu reflects that freedom. Hamachi gets the richness of a carbonara.
Angel hair is served like cold soba. Panna cotta meets matcha and sesame. Japanese flavors are the foundation, but their influence extends far beyond Japan. Some of the dishes, he says with a laugh, “don’t exist in Japan. They only exist because of Undo.”
That’s not him trying to be different for the sake of it. It’s simply him trusting his instincts. Asked how the menu came together, his answer says a lot about the way he cooks.
“The flavors that we were trying to search for were already there. We just had to assemble them.” What sounds easy is the product of years spent building what he calls an “archive of flavors”—memories gathered from meals, markets, travels, and kitchens that wait for the right moment to come together.
It’s also why none of his restaurants feels like the others. He admits that some of his concepts share a bit of DNA. Undo doesn’t. “There’s no silhouette of the other brands,” he says. “It’s independent.” His decision to cook in Rockwell also felt natural. He says he had long admired the chefs and concepts that had popped up at Balmori Chef’s Table, so when the invitation came, “we easily said yes.”
Undo is now open and will run until Aug. 23. Reservations are already moving quickly. If Jorge Mendez’s devoted following is any indication, his first appearance in Makati is likely to become one of the city’s most sought-after tables. It’s another reminder that the quietest chefs often have the most interesting stories to tell.
