Chef and educator RV Manabat believes that “any God-given knowledge and gift must be imparted for the better good of society.”
And impart, he does.
The millennial chef is known for sharing his culinary knowledge with the public, through his books Baking Secrets (published in 2018) and More Baking Secrets (published in 2020) and his video tutorials on Facebook and YouTube.
The knowledge he shares is an accumulation of everything he’s learned in school (he graduated from the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde’s School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institution Management and pursued a postgraduate degree in Boston University), and in other prestigious institutions and trusted sources in the United States, Argentina, Brazil, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and Vietnam.
Chef RV started imparting his knowledge in several academies and colleges in the country, including his alma mater, until he eventually opened his own cooking and baking studio in Biñan, Laguna where he conducted face-to-face classes and served home-cooked meals and pastries.
He operated for about three years until the pandemic happened in 2020, and his café had to adopt new changes. This meant suspending his face-to-face baking and cooking classes, and moving his “classroom” online.
Although he has been posting tutorial videos since 2019, he doubled the effort on his cooking and baking lessons to encourage others to start their own businesses. Thanks to the recipes and secrets he shares, many of his fans were able to start their own food business amid the economy-crippling pandemic. He currently has approximately 430,000 YouTube subscribers and 1.2 million Facebook followers.
“To be able to share, one has to be selfless and has to be extremely happy to see another person’s success. We should uplift one another—that is the best tool we have right now to recover our economy and enhance our community,” shares the 30-year-old chef/educator.
Chef RV’s videos present low-cost, easy-to-follow recipes ideal for small productions, such as puto, maja blanca, ube cheese pan de sal, Spanish bread, banana bread, cheesy milky donuts, caramel bars, vanilla cupcakes with stable buttercream icing, ube cheese macaroons and brownies, no-bake banoffee pie, and no-bake cheesecake.
His most successful recipe to date is the Moist Chocolate Cake, because, as he puts it, “Everybody likes chocolate; it is easy to make and also easy to sell.”
“We don’t just share recipes and techniques—my main goal is to help people acquire a stable livelihood and improve their quality of life by imparting positivity,” he adds.
He also has videos about making embotido, pork barbecue with java rice, pansit with crispy pork, and easy beef salpicao, plus a wide range of pastas including aglio olio pasta, cheesy meaty lasagna, creamy pesto and mushroom pasta, and truffle cream pasta; as well as hacks on popular Korean dishes samgyeopsal, kimchi, and kimchi fried rice.
“The videos are for everyone who enjoys food, or simply for people who want to be entertained through food.”