Outstanding Filipino Restaurant Wins Brixton Village Residency

Acclaimed Filipino restaurant residency Sarap London will take its first stand-alone site in Brixton Village. Budgie Montoya’s restaurant, which specialises in lechon, will spend six months in south London after winning the ‘experienced’ category in the market’s Brixton Kitchen competition. The winner of the ‘amateur category,’ Adejoké Bakare, will operate a weekend pop-up, also for six months, adding her restaurant, Chishuru, to London’s west African culinary landscape.

Sarap was most recently in residence at The Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho, which also acted as a launch pad for Chef’s Table star Asma Khan’s now fully fledged Darjeeling Express, and Mandy Yin’s thriving laksa restaurant on Holloway Road, Sambal Shiok.

Evening Standard Magazine restaurant critic Jimi Famurewa praised Montoya and team’s “snappy menu,” in a recent review, describing the lechon — slow-roasted pork belly with brittle, glassy crackling — as “a lust-making pyramid of fatty, flame-scorched pig hunks, carrying the lingering waft of lemongrass.”

Montoya and Sarap’s intention is not just to eventually open a permanent restaurant, but to be part of the creation of an identity for Filipino cuisine in London; “Filipino food is not a trend” is the restaurant’s mantra.

More soon on the finer details of the residency, which will begin in autumn 2019.