Chef Kevin Uy looks back on five years in Peru, bringing the soups, cevicherias, street food, and everyday flavors he remembers to FLOW’s second menu.
The simplest food can often be the most satisfying. A warm, hearty bowl of soup, fresh seafood with something bright and acidic, a fried donut still warm from the street cart. There’s a pleasure in food that doesn’t need to be complicated, only made well. “The new menu is inspired by a good mix of my life in Peru, what I would eat and enjoy daily,” says Chef Kevin Uy, or “Kev” as he’s called, of FLOW. “This is what the abuelas would cook, and what you would find in street carts and taverns.
His five years in Peru included training under Virgilio Martínez and Pía León at Central, which was named No. 1 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2023, while Kev was there. But for FLOW’s latest menu, or “experience,” as they say, it’s what happened outside the restaurant kitchen that comes into focus.
Back in Manila, these memories are interpreted alongside his co-executive chef Gabriel Ong, known as “Gato.” At FLOW, Kev takes the lead on creative direction, while Gato oversees the operations of the kitchen, working in a yin-and-yang flow tandem. If their first menu introduced the landscapes and ideas Kev brought home from Peru, its second fills in the smaller details of the five years he spent there: the soups, cevicherias, taverns, street carts, and food of ordinary days. As FLOW continues to define what remains and what changes from one experience to the next, it suggests that the most enduring memories are also the most quotidian.
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What To Expect From the Restaurant FLOW New Menu
Before each course, we’re given a card with some tasting notes, as well as an image of the traditional Peruvian dish that inspired it, providing a guide for the evening. On one side is the food as Kev remembers it; in front of us is how that memory manifests at FLOW.
The experience begins with something befittingly simple: Caldo de Gallina, a traditional chicken soup. From there, the menu moves through the sea and the sort of food one would find at the casual restaurants and cevicherias along the coast of Lima. There are interpretations of the pariguela, a Peruvian sesafood stew made from a fisherman’s catch, and ronda marina, the kind of seafood sampler found in cevicherias. The references are familiar and unfussy, and in FLOW’s treatment of them we see the precision of their fine dining kitchen.
For the evening, we got the Natural World wine pairing, built around natural wines. It’s a personal preference of Kev, who believes their generally light and bright flavors make them suited to Filipino palates. A five-cocktail pairing is also available.
As we move through the meal, we begin to not only see how FLOW interprets Peru, but also how the restaurant itself is taking shape. Kev believes, for example, that there should always be a ceviche at FLOW. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay the same. This time, the catch of the day sits in a leche de tigre made with cacao and cacao juice, alongside fermented yacon. Both cacao and yacon starred in the desserts of FLOW’s first experience, and now they find themselves somewhere entirely different. Chupe de Camaron, a Peruvian shrimp chowder, also returns in a new way. There are certain dishes, ingredients, and ideas that flow from one experience to the next as a grounding philosophy, but FLOW doesn’t repeat them so much as see where else they can go.
The meal really picks up with the main course. Pachamanca takes its name from the Andean earth oven traditionally used to cook food with heated stones, an idea carried through to the presentation as the sauce is prepared tableside using a molcajete, a regional mortar and pestle. The course centers on pigeon in three parts: roasted pigeon breast with a freshly made sauce; a rice cake of fermented black rice and pigeon peas; and a personal favorite of the evening, a confit pigeon leg coated in a sweet honey and marigold glaze. It’s the bite I kept thinking about after the meal.
After a warm Emoliente, inspired by the drinks sold from street carts in Lima and served here as an unexpected palate cleanser, the meal ends particularly strong. Combinado takes its cue from arroz con leche, or rice pudding, but finds a Filipino twist through Nangkasuy: adlai coated in cashews, paired with langka. Then there’s Picarones, a sweet treat commonly sold on the streets and in the parks of Lima. At FLOW, spiced kamote donuts arrive with Carabao-milk ice cream and warm syrup.
It’s a fitting end to a menu that began with a warm bowl of chicken soup. After all the technique and reinterpretation, we return to something freshly fried, warm, and sweet. It’s the type of simple pleasure that inspired the experience in the first place, eliciting the same simple satisfaction that stays with you after a good meal.
Explore the new nine-course tasting menu of FLOW below.
FLOW’s latest nine-course tasting menu is priced at ₱6,300 per person, with an optional ₱1,800 per person “Bridged World” cocktail pairing, or a ₱2,900 per person “Natural World” wine pairing. FLOW is located at Green Sun Hotel, 2285 Chino Roces Ave., Makati. Reservations are available on their website www.restaurantflow.ph.
Photographs courtesy of FLOW
Frequently Asked Questions
Restaurant FLOW’s second tasting experience draws from Chef Kevin “Kev” Uy’s five years in Peru, focusing on the everyday dishes he remembers from abuelas, street carts, taverns, and cevicherias.
The menu reinterprets traditional Peruvian dishes through FLOW’s fine dining approach and Philippine ingredients. These include Caldo de Gallina, Parihuela, Ronda Marina, Ceviche, Chupe de Camaron, Pachamanca, Combinado, and Picarones.
Restaurant FLOW is led by co-executive chefs Kevin Uy and Gabriel “Gato” Ong. Kev leads the restaurant’s creative direction, drawing from memory and culture, while Gato oversees kitchen operations and helps translate those ideas into precise execution.
Yes. Diners can choose the Natural World pairing, featuring five natural wines, or a pairing of five cocktails. Natural wine is a personal preference of Kev’s, who believes its generally light and bright flavors suit Filipino palates.
FLOW’s second tasting menu is priced at ₱6,300 and is available starting August 11, 2026.
