At Lanai, all the flavors are flavoring. That’s not just a win-win for the taste buds and health, it’s also a win for local farmers.
There’s a lanai that’s unlike any other in all of Bacolod and maybe even the entire Negros province. It’s a restaurant literally called Lanai that serves an all-organic menu, from appetizers and mains to drinks and desserts.
“No!” retorted Lanai owner Ramon “Chin Chin” Uy, Jr. when The POST asked him what he has to say to people who are under the impression that organic food is not flavorful. “Actually, chemically produced food is not delicious. Walang lasa, unless they put MSG or artificial flavoring, which tricks your brain to think the food is delicious.”
Cheap tricks are not needed in Lanai. Everything on the menu is actually so rich in flavor it can be a bit overwhelming. And the servings are quite generous that diners might feel full from the appetizers and drinks alone. Pacing is very much recommended.
The menu is not just all-organic, it’s also all-original and exclusive. It uses almost entirely hyperlocal ingredients, meaning they come from within a 50-kilometer radius from the restaurant. In fact, most of it is grown in farms that Chin Chin’s family owns. The rest are from partner organic farms and slow food communities in Bacolod.
“If it’s not organic, we don’t use it,” the 41-year-old Bacolodnon restaurateur reiterates. “When we design the menu we base it on what’s available in the farms. We bring the chefs around and show them what we have and they create dishes based on what they can find and nothing else. No shortcuts, everything is made from scratch.”
For example, Lanai makes shrubs and liqueurs with whatever its chefs can find in the forest. “That’s why we call them forage cocktails,” Chin Chin explains.
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The restaurant worked with two experts for its menu — Chef Patrick Go for the food and mixologist Kalel Demetrio for the drinks. Occasionally it hosts food events featuring chefs whipping up special dishes made of local organic ingredients. One such event this year gathered Chef Angelo Comsti, Chef Stefan Duhesme of Metiz, Chef Don Baldosano of Linamnam, Chef Rhea Rizzo of Mrs. Saldo’s of Cavite, and Chef Bettina of Hotel Sofitel Manila.
“We are a chef’s playground,” Chin Chin boasts about the entire Negros. “We have so much food biodiversity from land to sea.” And Lanai offers some of the best samplers of that on the dining table.
The restaurant opened in 2021 but it traces its roots way back to the Uy family’s organic fertilizer production business in 2005 that quickly gave birth to their own organic farm.
“Then binabarat kami ng mga middle men,” Chin Chin reveals about their experience with the people who bought their produce and who then brought them to the market. “So we had to find a way to sell directly to consumers.”
That led Chin Chin to start advocating for and actually working at a fair trade system for farmers. It’s one that eliminates the middle men and one that’s not based on the law of supply and demand which usually puts the producers at a disadvantage. In this business model, farmers sell directly to consumers with prices they mutually agree upon with Chin Chin’s company based on production costs and profit margins and little else.
It also prompted Chin Chin to set up his own little store in 2007. Called Fresh Start, the outlet was more of a farm stand along Lacson street, one of Bacolod’s main roads, where farmers dropped off all their freshly-harvested farm produce.
Robinsons mall took notice and invited them to join the Entrepreneur Month for small enterprises in the region. They were not met warmly by some mall goers. “They were laughing at us because there was a supermarket naman in the mall. Nobody knew what organic was back then.”
Chin Chin and company’s work was cut out for them: convince at least one consumer a day, one-on-one, about the beauty and virtues of organic products. “So in a year, we would have convinced 365 people. That was our goal.”
As they steadily worked at achieving the goal, people started requesting them to take the extra step and serve organic food, not just raw produce. They eventually did through several organic salad and juice bars in Robinsons and SM malls in Bacolod.
And then the pandemic hit. When the malls reopened Chin Chin decided not to renew their lease contracts with the malls.
It was then when they started their own full-blown organic restaurant that they called Lanai by Fresh Start.
You’ll be hard pressed to find another place that serves food this good with a storied past and a genuine, proactive advocacy like this. This Bacolod joint is truly one of a kind.
