WHO KNEW this was right in the smack in the middle of Mandaue City? (CDN PHOTO/JUDE BACALSO)
Why this vegetarian restaurant is worth the 5 flight of stairs to get to it
(Photographed with the Fujifilm XT10 using the Fujinon 16mm prime lens)
It is obviously a tongue-in-cheek reference to herself when Chip Lopez is dubbed professionally as The Lazy Chef, which she attaches to her gourmet brands. There is nothing indolent about what she does.
“You can come up, of course. But I’m still cooking,” she messages back when I tell her the team from Cebu Living Magazine (the Inquirer’s free magazine) finished early and are already headed her way. Come up, of course, is ascending five flights of stairs to the rooftop of her family’s building, right along the busy highway of Mandaue. You would never know that at the top of the nondescript green office building is Chip’s by-reservation-only healthy eats restaurant named after the Greek’s second word for time, Kairos. It is a reference to an opportune moment, and not just any entry on a clock, thank you.
AVOCADO NOURISH BOWL is a salad that has, well, everything you would want, really.
Chip moves about in an open kitchen, set in the middle of an area that can only be described as rustic, with furniture made from found or leftover wood and crates, interspersed with a garden patch in the middle for fresh herbs and a vertical garden on the walls for the freshest salads, picked a few minutes before they are served.
She’s mixing a nourish bowl, a macrobiotic salad that contains roasted chickpeas, shaved cucumber, homegrown blue kale, wild arugula and mint, black rice, roasted squash, avocado dusted with sweet paprika with a balsamic vinaigrette. “It’s basically a bowl of everything that makes a good meal.” In keeping with macrobiotic principles, it uses fresh produce in season and is kept in a balance of yin and yang, the Chinese principles of equilibrium. Although most macro diets push for the decreased use of animal products, Chip considers today an indulgence: “I am obsessed with this cheese that my friend hand-carried from Spain, so I put it into everything we are eating today!” She’s crumbled a bit of it and sprinkled it generously over our Avocado Macrobowl.
Chip’s own journey into whole foods that require little to no cooking came from her own health issues, prompting a change in lifestyle that included yoga, her initial intention. “While studying yoga in the US, they kept asking me to make whole food. I guess there really was no escaping becoming a chef.”
The next course is a departure from tradition. Instead of making them from tahini, Kairos’ hummus is made from yogurt and topped with slow roasted tomatoes, garlic chips, and homegrown sweet basil picked from her garden on this very rooftop, and served with grilled sourdough crostini.
By the time the sun set, the entire mood of Kairos has also shifted when the string of lights overhead were turned on, and the city’s neon glow came on after a burst of oranges and muted reds, and a brilliant blue in the dusk-bit sky. I tell Chip I’d like to live here, in a space that looks like one of those New York rooftops in the movies, with a hammock and the industrial feel of an old building.
Except that there’s a giant Jollibee sign that reminds you where you are. Oh well.
(Kairos vegan and vegetarian restaurant will open for a minimum of 10. Make your reservations through their Facebook page: Kairos by The Lazy Chef or follow them on Instagram: kairosbythelazychef)
