It was an honour to dine at Salo last Sunday, held at The Depanneaur, 1033 College. There were three dinners that’s part of the Toronto tour and my hub and my friend C attended the Sunday one.

SALO Series is Chef Yana Gilbuena’s pop-up dinner to introduce Filipino cuisine beyond the flavours of typical food such as adobo, lumpia, and pancit. She just finished her 50 US states in 50 weeks tour and is halfway through her Canadian tour at the time of this writing.

We arrived around 6:45 pm after Toronto was left soaking wet from the heavy rain. The light diffused beautify at The Dep’s corner; my hub loved the lighting. I was also excited to meet Chef Yana as two of my friends L and S have met her a week before during her Winnipeg leg.

Food were served fresh and on banana leaves and it was a kamayan dinner, something that I haven’t done in a long time. It was never boring too, as we get to talk with fellow diners about different things and not just food. It was also a BYOW event and my party shared a nice bottle of moscato for the night.

Salad: pea shoots, pink radish, pomelo, tomato, onions

left: Salo’s Garlic Fried Rice; right: Tocino Carpaccio

Duck with lemon grass. This is the first time I had duck and it was fatty and tasty. The lemongrass gave this Sinampalukang Manok-like fragrance and taste to it.

Left: fish with coconut and corn milk; right: spicy mushrooms

Peach-Mango turon served with ube ice cream and peaches. BEST. THING. My tablemates cheered when this arrived to Chef Yana’s surprise, as she said, “I never had seen that kind of reaction before”.

Chef Yana making a quick speech after dinner, as well as discussing about ARK where some of the dinner’s proceeds will go.

Hope you enjoyed your stay!