AsiaLIFE

The new restaurant at Chinese House is drawing rave reviews. Lindsay Muscato speaks to Tepui’s chef, Gisela Salazar Golding, and manager, Antonio Lopez de Haro. Photos by Conor Wall.

At Tepui, a restaurant and bar located within the Chinese House building, everything is made with a personal touch. Each menu item comes from chef Gisela Salazar Golding’s favourite influences from around the world, incorporating Mediterranean and South American flavours with Asian accents in an excellent compote of flavours.

When asked to pick out the restaurant’s signature dishes, Golding and manager Antonio Lopez de Haro lean their heads together over a menu and murmur back and forth in Spanish, before explaining that it’s a tough choice.

“In a way, it’s all our signature,” says Lopez de Haro.

“Why would you cook something you didn’t love?” adds Golding.

The restaurant’s name, Tepui, is a nod to the Venezuelan roots of both Golding, 28, and Lopez de Haro, 27. The word is an indigenous term for the flattopped mountains located in their home country.

Though Golding studied culinary arts in France and worked as a cook in Shanghai (where she first met Lopez de Haro), she was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Her dishes merge ingredients and influences with more regard for taste than geography. She says, “It’s all simple food, well done and with good ingredients. It’s not fusion. There’s nothing complicated. You can taste each thing.”

The fresh ingredients do pop. The seafood salpicon tosses a medley of shrimp, squid and mussels with onion and lime (US$8). Golding says it’s inspired by a coastal specialty from Venezuela, a seafood salad sold on beaches in plastic cups.

The traditionally French tuna tartare packs a (gentle) wasabi kick (US$8.50), whereas the duck breast (US$10) was declared “better than beef” by my Irish dining partner, and we were soon vying for the mushrooms and tiny potatoes soaked in its sauce. Many of the offerings are small plates like tapas, suitable for sharing. For dessert, Golding steered me to the flourless chocolate cake (US$5.50)—which packs a chocolate punch.

Lopez de Haro hopes to start a Sunday brunch in the garden. Other plans include a daily lunch and an expanded whiskey list, currently dwarfed by an excellent signature cocktail menu.

Since opening in mid-February, feedback has been positive. So positive that both Golding and Lopez de Haro exchange bashful glances as they explain the response from diners, who’ve said Tepui offers some of the best food they’ve had while living here. “We really feel proud that people are so grateful,” says Lopez de Haro.

The entire operation was founded on a customer-service gesture. Lopez de Haro was dining at a hotel when the owner, Alexis de Suremain, approached his table to apologize for the construction noise coming from next door. The two struck up a conversation that eventually launched the partnership.

Tepui’s personal approach extends to its marketing strategy—pure word-of-mouth. Lopez de Haro says he was riding in the back of a tuk-tuk recently when he took a call from a salesperson pitching ad space. Rolling through crowded streets already filled with signs and ads, a world apart from the chilled-out vibe of Tepui, confirmed Lopez de Haro’s desire to stay out of the spotlight.

“I think this place should be for people who live here,” he says. “It’s such a small community. If we’re good, people will hear about us.”

Tepui at Chinese House, 45 Sisowath Quay, Tel: 023 991 514. Bar open from 5pm, kitchen from 6pm to 10.30pm, closed Mondays.