FOUR DISTINCTIVE RESTAURANTS. Kilimanjaro Kafé – International and Filipino. Outstanding Soup and Vegan Selections. Fiji – Seafood, Asian, and Filipino. Often full; come early. Palermo – Spanish Tapas, Italian Pastas, and the most complex, nuanced Char-broiled Steaks on earth. Route 66 Diner – Retro American diner with all-day breakfast, burgers, hot dogs, and deli favorites. Click logo below for description and Full Menu.
Plantation Bay Resort and Spa is a member of:
CONFRÉRIE
DE LA CHAINE DES
ROTISSEURS
ORDRE MONDIAL DES
GOURMETS DEGUSTATEUR
Hotel with a Culinary Heart
Almost all hotel F&B departments are run by transients — hired hands who will stay a few years, then move on. This is true whether of an Aman or Four Seasons, or a Motel 6. The emphasis is inevitably on volume and profitability, and mistake-avoidance.
Plantation Bay’s Food & Beverage is a long-running partnership between its founder/majority shareholder J. Manuel Gonzalez, and Executive Chef Lee Ramas. Lee has been with Plantation Bay over 20 years, having risen from Commis 3 and along the way training in Napa Valley, Barcelona, and Paris, while eating on expense account in fine restaurants all over the world.
J. Manuel is not a kitchen professional but an ex-banker who worked and dined on four continents. His singular contributions are vast experience in fine dining (including hundreds of Michelin-starred restaurants from French Laundry to Maeemo to Odette), a disinterest in short-term profitability, and an extraordinary memory for tastes. J. Manuel was also fortunate to have learned wine appreciation in Paris from the legendary Steven Spurrier, one of the most influential wine personalities of the past century.
Together, Lee and J. Manuel have shaped Plantation Bay’s restaurants and menus into expressions of themselves and their culinary philosophy.
And the Philosophy Is — Real Food for Real People
A hamburger you can enjoy weekly, a Kare-kare monthly, or a Colombian chicharrón almost daily (your arteries are your own lookout). Or our incomparable Ube Shake whenever (available in every outlet, since we’re so proud of our world-beating tuber).
Too Much Michelin, Not Enough Satisfaction
In Lee’s and J. Manuel’s opinion, too many chefs are chasing Michelin stars and James Beard Awards with exotic preparations and expensive ingredients. Michelin-starred restaurants and molecular gastronomy can be entertaining, but in most cases you wouldn’t especially look for the same dish again, ever, or even remember what you ate. J. Manuel once had an 18-course dinner at San Francisco’s 3 Michelin Star Benu, and the only course he can still name was a Xiao long bao variant that tasted hardly different from any other Xiao long bao — sorry, Chef Corey. He recently ate at Singapore’s 3 Michelin Star Les Amis, and half the six courses relied on caviar (which tasted wooden, probably a victim of Western sanctions on Russia), while the Corton-Charlemagne in the Premium Wine Pairing tasted watered despite the Coravin needle. Really.
Celebrity chef Thomas Keller not only accepted a reservation on just two days’ notice (vs. the usual 8+ months), but “comped” this entire meal at French Laundry, such was the “clout” of J. Manuel’s San Francisco hosts.
J. Manuel takes nephew Rafael Conejos, and sons Rafael Gonzalez and Gabriel Gonzalez, to London’s famed Simpson’s on the Strand, and finds the roast beef deteriorated.
Expertise. Experimentation. Recollection. Evolution.
Long ago Plantation Bay’s first Executive Chef, a Frenchman, taught us how to make hamburger patties, a complex procedure that no hotel in its right mind would follow, but we still do. Many years of tinkering with the char-broiling, the bun, the cheese, and the topping sauces finally culminated in our Round-the-World Burger — beefy, juicy, and fully American but evocative of different world cuisines. With the cheese on the bottom.
Kare-kare is a peanut oxtail stew widely made around the country, but rarely done right. Plantation Bay’s version is as far as we know the only one made with meaty imported oxtail, and the only one that goes through a long-simmering process (no pressure-cooking or, horrors, boiling) that gently brings out all the collagen. We claim it’s World’s Best, and very few Filipinos who’ve come here would disagree.
Recently we got it into our heads to re-engineer Colombian chicharrón, based on J. Manuel’s 40-year-old memories of meals in Bogota. It took Lee several weeks, but with running commentary from J. Manuel he finally developed the right procedure, and it’s not what you’ll find by googling. Our Chile con Carne recipe was reverse-engineered from taste memory the same way.
Learn more about our food!