At Astro in NBS Park, local milk becomes house-made butter, yogurt, cheese, whey, and more, woven through a menu designed for relaxed, everyday dining.
I arrived at Astro just as it opened at 5 PM on a Friday. Still in its soft-opening stage, the restaurant already had a couple of diners seated inside. I took a seat at the bar counter, which looks directly through the kitchen pass, close enough to see the team beginning dinner service.
Co-founder Matt San Pedro likes seeing people at the counter, close to the movement of the kitchen. As the restaurant filled over the course of the evening, I watched Matt approach diners, introduce himself, and ask how they heard about Astro and what they thought of their meal. It’s a glimpse into the neighborhood relationship he hopes to build.
The restaurant occupies a corner of NBS Park, which is gradually becoming a quaint neighborhood pocket of its own. Inside Astro, warm wood, simple furniture, and mustard-yellow booths give the diner its easygoing character. Above the kitchen pass, a black-and-white sign reads: “For Butter Health, Drink Astro Milk.”
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I asked Matt whether Astro Milk was real and if that’s where the restaurant got its name. Astro is actually taken from a song by Radioactive Sago Project. Matt was drawn to its free-jazz, spoken-word feel and wanted Astro to carry some of that same energy through its food, service, and atmosphere.
“We are a bistro,” Matt said as he welcomed me from across the counter. “The food that we serve leans on the simpler and more balanced side of dining.”
He sees Astro as a neighborhood restaurant where people can come in for a warm meal and order the familiar things they want on any day of the week. That straightforward approach carries onto the simple-page menu, where dishes are plainly described through their ingredients. Certain words, however, are underlined throughout.
“If there’s anything special that we do, it’s that we make our own butters, creams, yogurts, wheys, and cheeses, all in-house, using local milk,” Matt explained. “Those are the various foods that you’ll find underlined across the menu.”
For Butter Health, Drink Astro Milk: The Role Of Dairy In Astro Milk NBS Park
Before opening Astro, Matt had already developed relationships with local dairy producers through his background in the coffee cafe industry. When he began thinking about opening what was originally going to be a diner, he wondered whether local milk, and, in particular, butter, could become its foundation.
In practice, the idea proved more complicated than simply making butter. Producing even a small batch requires a considerable amount of milk, leaving behind other components that would go to waste if the kitchen couldn’t find uses for them.
That challenge moved Astro away from being purely a diner and toward the bistro it currently is. Drawing from the resourcefulness of nose-to-tail cooking, the team began turning local milk into cream, butter, buttermilk, yogurt, cheese, and whey.
Chef Kelvin Pundavela described the process as the reverse of how restaurant menus are typically developed. Instead of beginning with a particular cuisine or a set of dishes, the team first considered what they could produce from milk, then worked out how each ingredient could become part of a cohesive menu.
What’s On The Menu At Astro NBS Park?
For two diners, Matt recommends ordering two small plates, one main to share, and a side for each person, “to scale up or down, depending on how hungry you are.” Among the vegetable dishes, he highlights the roasted squash and roasted beets, both served, of course, with some form of Astro’s home-made dairy products.
The beef meatballs have become an early favorite. They’re much smaller than the usual idea of a meatball; closer, I pointed out, to the size of garbanzos. The Astro team suggests eating them with their focaccia, which uses whey left over from cheesemaking in place of water. Chef Kelvin is particular about the bread. Using whey gives it a pillowy center with little resistance when pulled apart, while allowing one side to become crisp without drying out the rest.
Among the mains, the restaurant is particularly proud of the pan-fried labahita, its take on fish meunière. The local surgeonfish is cooked in cultured butter, bringing the menu back to the ingredient around which Astro was first imagined.
The same idea makes its way to drinks and desserts. The Milk Fizz is a sparkling take on the yogurt drinks commonly found in Japanese convenience stores, while the Milk Slushie is Astro’s creamier, warm-weather interpretation of a milkshake. Dessert choices include a toasted milk crêpe, duck-egg milk flan, and milk and cookies served with the slushie and brown-butter chocolate miso cookies.
By the time dessert arrived on the counter for me to try, the tables that had been empty when I came in were starting to fill up. From my seat, Astro already seems to be settling into the easy, everyday rhythm it hopes diners will return to.
Explore highlights of Astro’s menu below.
Astro is located at NBS Park, 125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City. It’s open Tuesday to Sunday, from 5 PM to 10 PM. For more information and the latest updates, follow @astro.dining on Instagram.
Photography by Renzo Navarro, courtesy of Astro
Frequently Asked Questions
Astro is located at NBS Park, 125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City.
Astro is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 5 PM to 10 PM.
Astro is a neighborhood bistro serving simple, balanced dishes. The concept began as a diner before developing into a menu built around local milk and house-made dairy products.
Astro’s chef is Kelvin Pundavela. Chef Kelvin helped develop its ingredient-led menu, which begins with the dairy products the restaurant makes in-house and finds cohesive ways to use them across its dishes.
Astro highlights the roasted squash, roasted beets, beef meatballs with focaccia, and pan-fried labahita. For dessert, try the milk and cookies served with a Milk Slushie.
