At Kumba, chef Tina Legarda serves up dishes that are “simple, but full of flavor.” Honestly, it’s a meal well worth the drive down south of the metro.
Over the past decade or so, BF Homes Parañaque has become a hotspot for some rather innovative dining spots that have foodies braving the traffic down south to check out. One of the newest restaurants to join that list is Kumba, which opened a few months ago. This is chef Tina Legarda’s second spot along Aguirre, just a few clicks from Bamba Bistro, the go-to spot for foodies craving elevated comfort food. This time around, she takes that same idea, but flips it on its head with a fusion of Filipino, Asian, and Middle Eastern flavors. Let’s just say these dishes were “lick-the-sauce-off-the-plate” good. Which no one did, of course, as this was polite company.
The name Kumba is taken from the Tagalog word mapagkumbaba – which translates to humility, gentleness, and finding beauty in simple things. Wanting to reimagine dishes that drew her close to home, she wanted to be “as genuine as possible, creating a menu and a space that say “‘simple but full of flavor,” says chef Tina. I imagined it to be sort of a tribute to the rich Filipino culture I grew up learning and loving.”
Much like the melting pot of food cultures that make up the Philippines’ 7,641 islands, the resulting menu is one that is a little bit Asian, a little bit Filipino, a little bit Mediterranean, with a touch of the Middle East— celebrating flavor and nuance in every bite. “None of the dishes are quite authentic. I wanted to make diners feel like the dishes are familiar—but not quite,” she points out. With 95% of their ingredients grown or sourced through vendors locally “…we take pride in injecting our Filipino roots everywhere,” enthused chef Tina.
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Browsing through the menu, it quite tempting to order everything. Life hack? Go with friends so you can order a lot of food! It’s the only way! Which is exactly what multi-hyphenate food fanatic JJ Yulo did when he organized a group of equally food-loving friends to head out to Kumba one Wednesday night a couple of weeks back.
Among the first dishes to hit the table was the duck and shiitake mushroom-filled Dandan Dumplings sitting in a luscious spicy peanut sauce and mandarin ponzu, Dear Atay, a play on chicken liver paté with bits of pork belly (which is the chef’s ode to Pinoy merienda with pandesal), and a velvety smooth hummus that was a push-and-pull of citrusy and earthy flavor notes. The pickled onions on the latter two dishes added just the right amount of tang to whet your appetite. Rounding out this set, pun intended, was the Peking Duck Flatbread, which feels like a tasty wink to that well-loved Chinese dish.
Chef Tina takes your tastebuds on quite a culinary journey via Kumba’s entrees. There was the perfectly crispy Fried Porkchop, which was topped with buttery whole cloves of garlic, followed by skewers of, ngl, legit Chicken Inasal, deep with hints of lemongrass and soy. An unexpected pairing came by way of the Fried Rice Bowl, dotted with chunks of grilled unagi, and a side of roasted bone marrow meant to be forked through the rice, then scooped up, making for one indulgent mouthful. The next dish came by way of her time living in Singapore—Black Pepper Crab Noodles—which was every bit as tasty as it looked pretty on the plate. Another bestseller on the menu is Kumba’s take on the Asian en Papilotte, steamed grouper in salt and lemon, with a butter sauce of clams and ginger poured tableside, and finished with crispy shallots and coriander.
Let’s be controversial here for a hot minute: have you ever considered maybe giving up meat? That question does pop up with three veg-forward dishes on the menu. First is Burnt Cabbage, which is a roasted cabbage wedge basted in date butter, making for an unctuous bite when strewn through the nutty Muhamarra sauce it sits in. Then take a gander to the Shroom Kebabs, smoky and char-grilled, lying atop a Beet Hummus. Lastly, but definitely tasty, was the sorta kinda odd pairing of grilled banana and eggplant arranged, much like a Jackson Pollock painting, on a rich pineapple coconut sauce. Of course, a dish like that had to come with an equally punny name, P.S. I’m Vegan. If you did ponder your life choices after giving these a try, you’re in good company!
While the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak, and there simply was just no room left for dessert. But not without a quick scan of the menu, and great resistance to temptation, such as Kumba’s take on Dumaguete’s Suman at Tsokolate, and Warm Banana Baklava served with a Langka sauce.
One of the biggest influences on Kumba is Chef Tina’s daughter, Myles, which is seen in their menu notes . “This menu is dedicated to my noodle-loving daughter, whose presence in my life has grounded me in all kinds of ways.” This inspiration carries over to their giraffe mascot that you see on the menu and shirts. “My first gift to her as a mom was a painting I made of a giraffe. The night before she was born, I wrote a letter at the back of it,” shares Tina. “I knew Myles adored it when—she must have been about three months old then—I would carry her to the painting when she was crying, and she would instantly start laughing when she saw it.” You do pick up on this playful spirit, be it in flavor or plating, when having a meal at Kumba.
Probably the best thing about Kumba is its lack of pretense, from its interiors to the vibe, and yes, most especially the food. Chef Tina Legarda sums it up with this statement on the first page of her menu, which says, “Because in every season in our lives, we find new reasons to stay humble— even in cooking.”
While it delivers on that IG-worthy aesthetic (so do snap away), everything about the place gives you that sense of dining at a friend’s home, with chef Tina as your gracious host. Conversations are punctuated only by laughter, and by ooh’s and ah’s after a spoonful here, and a bite there of her delicious food. So if you’re looking for the perfect salve for a doldrum kind of day , pile into your car, tune out the traffic (with that rockin’ playlist), and head down south to Kumba. It’s well-worth the drive over.
Kumba is located on 92 Aguirre Ave., BF Homes Parañaque. Operating hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am to 9 pm. For reservations, call 0995-1062879. Follow KUMBA Dining on Facebook, and @kumbaph on Instagram
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