Harry’s Bistro, 160 Bolaños, Legazpi Village, Makati
The menu at Harry’s Bistro is still evolving. When the restaurant on Bolaños street in Makati began accepting diners in December, owner Elbert Cuenca was adamant in letting clients order what they wanted from the menu. Bestsellers will stay on but non-movers might be dropped and replaced.
“Look at the menu and see what calls out to you. Here at Harry’s, we go with emotion,” Cuenca told us at dinner.
Pork ears
I paired the arugula with a sliver of pig ears and was pleased with the peppery-pork bite
The one-page menu printed on both sides lists a couple of salads, several mains (labeled “Plates”) and a longer, more eclectic list of appetizers or small plates. Think savory, gelatinous pig ears or grilled octopus skewers with alternating bites of crisp potato pave.
Cuenca recently added shareable plates: grilled bone-in, USDA-grade steak and Kurobuta pork tomahawk, each order good for two to three diners.
“When we were coming up with the menu, my brother Adrian, who handles the kitchen, and I didn’t want anything highfalutin’—none of those tasting menus or the like. What we wanted were the classics, dishes that people were familiar with and could look forward to eating again and again.”
It’s a sentiment diametrically opposed to the one he held when he opened his first solo venture almost 25 years ago in 2002. Restaurant 12 at Greenbelt 2 was a concept ahead of its time. “I would invite different chefs to cook and serve their food there for a month. But at the end of a chef’s stint, if a guest returned wanting to reorder a particular dish, it would no longer be available,” Cuenca recalled.
Restaurant 12 was open for less than two years before the novelty wore off, and it shut down, but he would go on to open other dining concepts including the popular Elbert’s Steakhouse.
At Harry’s Bistro, there’s Steak Frites, US double gold tenderloin topped with Cafe de Paris butter and served with a side of fries. It’s one of the mains that are made for one but can be shared if a couple or a group orders other items.
“That’s really what my wife and I do when we eat out. We order several small plates, maybe four or five, that we then share between us. It allows us to get a broader feel of a particular restaurant. If four are good and one is a dud, that’s still pretty good,” Cuenca said.
His wife, Liza Ilarde, agreed. “Yes, we often eat that way because I get full quite quickly. By doing this, we get to sample different dishes.”
Burrata salad
We took to heart what Cuenca said and ordered a few items that called out to us including the burrata salad, a huge globe of buffalo cheese over a salad of arugula, frisée, and cherry tomatoes; the aforementioned grilled octopus; and pork ears.
The bistro also serves cocktails like refreshing Negroni (left) and bourbon-based Millionaire 26.
When no one was looking, I paired the arugula with a sliver of pig ears and was pleased with the peppery-pork bite. Cocktails in hand—a Negroni for me and the bourbon-based Millionaire 26 for my companion—it was a fitting start to the meal.
Chicken Kiev
For our mains, we shared the Steak Frites and the Chicken Kiev, the latter an old-school favorite of breaded chicken fillet stuffed with herb butter. Slicing into the chicken and seeing all that melted butter ooze out onto the plate brought us back to our college days when we would cross Katipunan Ave. to go to a restaurant known for this dish. It was nothing like the one served at Harry’s, that was elevated with a side of silky mashed potatoes topped with haricot verts, but it was close enough.
Harry’s Bistro serves familiar faves in classy, modern setting.
“People long for the classics, they crave familiarity. That’s why we have items like fish and chips, beef Stroganoff, pan-seared salmon, grilled striploin steak, even a burger. It’s familiar food and you know immediately what you’re going to get,” Cuenca said.
After close to 30 years in the restaurant industry, Cuenca has seen food trends come and go. Harry’s Bistro could well be the distillation of everything he’s learned in the past three decades.
Harry’s Bistro, 160 Bolaños, Legazpi Village, Makati. Call tel. no. (0962) 420-0449
