The lights suspended above me resembled a cluster of metal children’s jackstones, only with bulbs at the end. Alyanna Uy, my host remarks, “Our lights were built for us, that’s all custom-made. My dad is an architect and he couldn’t find lights that would match the image we wanted, so we had them built. We want all of this to remind you of home.”

I was in the heart of Prologue, Uy’s latest restaurant which recently opened in Scout Gandia in Diliman, Quezon City. The lights illuminated a high-ceilinged dining area with huge glass panels on the side, showcasing the kitchen. Beyond it, I espied a cook in a black Star Wars cap tossing pizza dough before laying it out on a baking sheet and putting it into a massive brick oven.

The restaurant looked and felt like a cross between a food hall and a warehouse, with thick wooden planks lining the walls and roof. The tables looked made of the same materials, and as Uy mentions, they were constructed specifically for Prologue. Off to one side was a bookshelf artfully decorated with novels and knickknacks. The bar was a lovely riot of various wines, liquors and spirits, all suspended from a metal shelf above the actual countertop facing the windowpane façade. Despite the industrial look, or perhaps because of it, there was a very warm, homey, comforting vibe to the whole place.

Uy, the owner of Prologue, explains the whole idea of why the restaurant had such a striking name: “Epilogue is our other restaurant in S Maison in Conrad Hotel. Epilogue is what we like to call a fine bistro. Prologue is the more casual, accessible younger sister. That’s why we call Prologue the neighborhood kitchen. We serve comfort food, but with our own twist. It’s cheaper than Epilogue but we maintain the same quality. We make most of the things here from scratch; our pizza, pasta, we make every bit. We cook them in our brick oven. Even our coffee is roasted in-house.”

“An epilogue is all about endings – in our case, the culmination of a chef’s journey – while a prologue is the beginning of the story. We want to take you back to where you first learned how to eat – truly appreciate food and flavors, as opposed to mere nourishment – where you first learned how to cook, which is at home,” she explains. “That’s why the atmosphere, the food we serve is all about home. When you’re at home, mom makes food from scratch. We do the same with our condiments and other base ingredients, but we also do this to maintain the quality and consistency since we control most of the process.”

I couldn’t help but notice that Epilogue was in Mall of Asia in Manila while Prologue was practically in the opposite direction.

“We also did that on purpose, that Epilogue is in the South and Prologue is in the North,” says Uy with a smile. “We start in the north and end in the south. We launched Epilogue first. We begin at the end. Prologue is where we serve breakfast, to start the day, while in Epilogue we serve cocktails and dinner.”

The chef’s journey which Uy mentioned earlier pertains to master chef Hiroyuki Meno, a veteran of a number of Michelin-star restaurants around the world.

“I have been working with Epilogue for two years and three months,” states the soft-spoken but cheery chef. “I worked in Bali for five years, and France, prior to that. I started in different cities in Japan, like Kanazawa, but I originally came from Fukuoka.”

“The food of Prologue is Chef Hiroyuki’s culinary resume of the places he’s been to,” notes Uy. “That’s why we have dishes like Beef Rendang and Nasi Goreng. We’ve got a number of Filipino dishes as well, but we also have some stuff we call Melbourne Brunch cuisine – the whole brunch culture thing. He even makes his own coffee blend for the restaurant, the Hiro Blend. We also have coffee cocktails – we don’t want to attract the bar hopping crowd, so we don’t serve typical cocktails. Some people want coffee with a little alcohol.”

It was a bit too early in the day for me to nurse an alcohol buzz, but it felt perfect for breakfast and that was exactly up Prologue’s alley. As they say, you should start the day right, and what better way to do that than with Breakfast in Bread, a robust bun served in home baked sourdough bread with a choice of Iberico Loin Ham, Norwegian smoked salmon or Ratatouille. I got the ham, a personal favorite of Uy’s.

“Even our bacon and ham, we smoke it ourselves. We just get the meats from Spain,” added Chef Hiro. It was topped with a sunny side up egg and had some spinach stuffed in it. I couldn’t decide whether I was eating a sandwich or a pie – it was like those bread bowls filled with corn chowder, except it was stuffed with beautifully smoked ham and even bacon. The one thing I was sure of was that I loved every morsel.

We then went from Breakfast in Bread to Big Breakfast, an English-style platter with a sunny side up fried egg, homemade Iberico bacon and sausage, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes and home-baked rye bread. They do not scrimp on the Iberico meats at Prologue. No way.

From something happily British to something recognizably Filipino, we got ourselves ready for the Rib Eye Tapsilog – marinated Rib-Eye steak, fried egg, fried garlic and garlic rice. I have been eating iterations of this dish for decades since it first came out in the mid-1980s but I have never tried one made by a chef who’s done work in Michelin Star restaurants. It’s the difference between a Ford Pinto and a Ferrari Pista. Zoom! 

Chef Hiro, it turns out, is especially fond of sisig, and he shows his affection for this uniquely Filipino pork treat with Sisig Pizza – crispy pork face, a whole fried egg dropped right in the center of the pie, calamansi and chili mayonnaise, on hand-tossed pizza dough and mozzarella cheese. This particularly chewy pizza combines the crunch of the chopped-up pork morsels with the toothsome cheese and dough.

Like a color wheel, we subtly transitioned from something Filipino-Italian to something more culinarily and culturally Bolognese with the Homemade Sausage Tagliatelle with tomato cream sauce, oregano, Italian parsley and thyme. The creamy sauce served to bolster the extravagant mouthfeel of freshly made pasta, something Chef Hiro says he and his cooks make every single day for Prologue.

Regarding the subject of mouthfeels, this next dish is something that has that in spades. The Chia pudding, a healthy mélange of almond milk, bourbon vanilla, honey, granola, mixed berries and sliced banana felt like silk to the touch, a contrast to the delightful crunch of the granola and berries. It went particularly well with the Brioche French toast – Rosella water pear compote, cookie crumble, cheese ice cream garnished with raspberries and blueberries. But the belle of the ball was the Soufflé pancake with mixed berries, Chantilly cream, homemade granola, raspberry sorbet and bourbon vanilla. The Japanese are masters of making cakes as airy as the thoughts of a teenage girl’s crush and this was truly BTS-levels of fluff right there. The experience was enough to make me reflect on whether I’ve had better pancakes. I’ll let you know when I have an answer.