The new menu at two-Michelin-starred restaurant Helm sees Chef Josh Boutwood returning to his favorite essentials, exploring the many possibilities of a single ingredient through its different forms, textures, and expressions.
When one thinks of cuisine, the default is plurality, the convergence of varying components to create one thing—ingredients, in other words, make a dish. Yet thinking in the singular doesn’t necessarily result in homogeneity or monotony; the newest menu at Chef Josh Boutwood’s two-Michelin-starred Helm proves this. Aptly titled Single Ingredient, it explores how one exceptional ingredient can take on a spectrum of expressions through technique, texture, and creativity, showing that the most compelling possibilities often begin from a single starting point.
“Single Ingredient is about finding complexity through simplicity, and challenging ourselves to see how far we can take one ingredient,” Josh explains. “It means pulling the focus onto one singular ingredient per course and extracting the maximum flavor and texture through different preparations and techniques. The idea is to explore everything that one ingredient has to offer.”
This isn’t the first time Josh and his team have worked with constraint to unlock multitudes; the menu prior to Single Ingredient was the monochromatic tasting experience, which challenged the kitchen to work within a single color palette.
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What’s On The New Helm Single Ingredient Menu
In the latest degustation of Helm, the chef narrows his focus, returning to the ingredients he enjoys eating and working with the most, basic building blocks giving way to more heightened forms and flavors when approached from various angles.
Take the opening course of Tuna, which takes the leaner part of the fish (akami) and its richer, fattier sections (otoro), dicing them and mixing them with the zestier flavors of leche de tigre made with coconut cream and an infusion of galangal, kaffir lime leaves, and tomato. Adding to the contrast on a textural level is kombu jelly topped with a tuna roe foam cooked in adobo sauce and a crisp disc dusted with dehydrated tomato powder that rounds everything out.
The course of Pumpkin is also a shining example of what the menu set out to do, taking every part of the gourd to create a chawanmushi-esque dish that warms the stomach after the cold start of Tuna. Pumpkin custard is paired with diced pumpkin, before being topped with a savory pumpkin skin XO, pumpkin seed oil, a mildly sweet and acidic pumpkin lacto-ferment, and homemade sourdough breadcrumbs with pumpkin seeds that cap off the otherwise soft dish with a crunch.
Another standout is the American Lobster: poached to perfection at the ideal 59.5 degrees, the crustacean retains its firm yet tender texture without ever tasting fibrous, buried beneath an umami-filled foam of the crustacean’s own fat, sabayon, and dashi, with toasted buckwheat lending a pleasant depth and bite.
Cod was also memorable, a delicately steamed cod plated with cauliflower puree and confit bacalao, then dressed with a lightly creamy kombu sauce, the dill oil and pickled kohlrabi [a type of cabbage that tastes and feels more like a turnip] cutting through, providing the right amount of earthiness and tartness.
Red meat crowns the main courses, and the Wagyu stands out for its buttery, roasted A5 Wagyu striploin from Japan’s Miyagi prefecture, glazed with a smoky aged miso, sunchoke puree cooked in the meat’s fat, and fermented vegetable paste that actually serves as a refreshing complement to the dish. This is completed with a sauce made from beef bones and bone marrow (see how much can be done with one kind of meat), then finished with a beef tendon chicharon.
The bread course, while often thought of as an additional element to a tasting menu, gets a special spot in the middle of the menu as an homage to what Josh says is one of the most ancient and simple recipes in existence—flour, water, yeast, salt. This is composed of a slice of signature sourdough bread made from a nine-year-old starter the team fondly calls “Sebastian,” as well as a shiny brioche laminated with cheeses and sourdough glaze. A butter containing Oscietra caviar from Russia; a delightful spoonful of herbed pork fat; and caramelized butter accompany the loaves, adding new dimensions to every bite of bread.
Chocolate is exactly what the name indicates: a no-fail favorite, its various iterations compacted into a single form. Brick pastry wafer is filled with burnt white chocolate sauce, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate crumbs, and chocolate ice cream, resulting in a light, crumbly, and cold creation that’s blanketed by a chocolate foam and veil of white chocolate (yet it never manages to taste cloying). If there’s truth to the adage “too much of a good thing,” it can’t be found here, let alone when served with a warm cup of single origin coffee from Guatemala that’s pleasantly mellow with its light toffee notes, dark roasted especially for Helm.
What the new Singular Ingredient menu manages to do is keep the familiar exciting by revealing possibilities often overlooked. Josh says boredom is the last thing he ever wants a guest to feel at any point in the meal. Instead, he hopes they leave with the urge to “come back again,” not unlike the way he returns to certain ingredients, believing there’s always another way to appreciate them.
Explore more of the new Helm menu below.
The “Single Ingredient” menu is now available at Helm by Josh Boutwood for PHP 7,500 per person, inclusive of VAT and subject to a 10% service charge. For reservations, visit joshboutwood.com. Helm is located on the third floor of Tower 2, The Shops, Ayala Triangle Gardens, Makati.
