No food crawl in the burgeoning Kapitolyo food strip in Pasig City is ever complete without a visit to Gostoso Piri Piri restaurant. Since its opening in 2014, Gostoso has become a favorite stop among diners in the area looking to try authentic Portuguese barbecue and piri piri sauce.
The young restaurant has developed a cult following in the community, thanks to its grilled chicken marinated in herbs, salt and olive oil that is made even more special with a kick of its signature piri piri (the Swahili term for “pepper pepper”) sauces.
Gostoso’s piri piri sauce is an heirloom recipe from the restaurant’s Portuguese partner Chef Joao Braquinho and is based on a generations-old chili recipe from the Alentejo Region in Portugal. The sauce selections come in four variants: hot, mild, barbecue and garlic lemon.
Two years after Gostoso’s successful outing, the partners thought it’s about time to introduce more dishes that would highlight the restaurant’s piri piri pride.
Gostoso tapped Him Uy De Baron, executive chef of Japanese restaurant Nomama and Korean food joint I Am Kim, to help expand its menu.
“We partnered with Chef Him because we wanted to offer something new and we wanted to see how else our sauces can be used,” Tatiana Olondriz, one of Gostoso Piri Piri restaurant’s partners, told The Standard Life.
“When I met him, I felt that he understood our concept, and I was right because Chef Him was able to integrate all of our sauces in his dishes,” she related further.
Chef Him took cue from the restaurant’s Latin-inspired concept and its rustic and grilled flavor profile in coming up with five new dishes that are good for sharing with family and friends.
A delicious prelude to the meal is the Tostones (P90), which are Latin-style canapés on fried flattened plantains, that come in three kinds: chorizo and guacamole with hot piri sauce, pulled beef with barbecue piri sauce, and mushroom and pumpkin with mild piri sauce.
Chef Him’s Inverted Nachos (P185) offers a different take on the snack favorite as the toasted tortilla chips, house-made chorizo and guacamole are served over a Latin-style cheese sauce that’s melted on a sizzling skillet.
Rounding up the new appetizer choices are the Mushroom and Squash Empanadas (P190). A vegetarian version of Gostoso’s popular Bolsas, these empanadas envelop fresh mushrooms slow-cooked with squash, spices and gouda cheese, and are fried to golden brown and finished off with piri-dusted sour cream.
For the main dish, Chef Him created Grilled Tuna in Chorizo and Clam Broth (P230) and Twice-Cooked Beef Ribs (P275).
The tasty seafood dish is made of Manila clams sautéed with chorizo, garlic and white wine, along with fresh marinated tuna that’s been grilled to medium.
The beef dish, on the other hand, is a treat on the plate with its huge portion of beef ribs braised until fork-tender, grilled with Latin spice and served with charred salsa verde.
The five new dishes are all cooked or served with Gostoso’s piri sauces. But for those who want to turn the taste up a notch, Olondriz encourages diners to mix and match the piri sauces with their food and dip to their heart’s delight.
“Garlic lemon is typically paired with seafood while barbecue goes well with chicken or pork. The hot and mild piri sauces go with anything!” she enthused.
Complementing the new and existing Gostoso dishes are five cocktails created by “mad scientist” mixologist Kalel Demetrio.
The artisanal cocktails are concocted with local produce and ingredients that are also used for the dishes served in the restaurant.
“I always try to check the things they have in the kitchen and use those. It’s one way of saving them from another inventory,” Kalel shared with The Standard Life.
For instance, Amore is made with vodka, calamansi liqueur, black jelly vodka, ginger lime, cilantro and piri liqueur. Meanwhile, rhum, vodka, cucumber, beetroot liqueur, rosemary syrup, lime and cumin found their way in Bonita.
Seeing that the restaurant has lots of corn in its inventory, Kalel created Caramelo which is a mix of rhum, corn juice, muscovado sugar and chamomile liqueur, served with torched caramel cube. Gostosojito is Gostoso’s take on mojito and is made of rhum, piri liqueur, lime, muscovado, guava syrup and calamansi liqueur.
Perhaps the most intriguing cocktail is Ex-girlfriend, which is a concoction of gin, vodka, orange and pineapple juice, ginger syrup, lemongrass and bitter melon. The sweetness of orange and pineapple is tempered by the hint of bitterness from the ampalaya – perfect for those who haven’t moved on or are still refusing to move on.
With new dishes that complement the restaurant’s signature sauces and new cocktails that pair well with the entire menu, Gostoso Piri Piri is expecting more friends and families who will discover the taste of the Latin-inspired cuisines.
“We wanted people to come, hang out, bring their friends. We’re not a formal sit-down restaurant, we’re very casual and very reasonably priced,” said Olondriz.
Gostoso Piri Piri restaurant is located at 51B East Capitol Drive, Kapitolyo, Pasig City. For inquiries, call (02) 477-7330 or like Gostoso Piri Piri on Facebook.