As featured in 10 Best NEW Homegrown Restaurants in Manila of 2019!
We celebrated Joshua’s 12th 🎁 at Linamnam private dining by Don Baldosano at their kubo-inspired home in Greenvale 2.
Linamnam serves modern Filipino food 🇵🇭 with a 16-course tasting menu at ₱1,700/head.
Here is our Linamnam experience with the family…
Linamnam MNL by Don Baldosano
31 Greenvale 2, Marcelo Green Village, Parañaque City
Operating Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 6:30pm onwards
Mobile: +63 917 573-0246 (By reservation only)
Instagram: @linamnam_mnl
First Things First
We had a hard time finding 31 Greenvale 2 (Dr. Baldosano’s house), inside Marcelo Green Village (via the service road between Sucat and Bicutan).
It’s a quaint bahay kubo with a hardin courtyard and an outdoor open kitchen where Don cooks. (Tasting Menu and Family A La Carte Menu)
Don Baldosano, the cook, has Junior Masterchef experience, training at Toyo Eatery and a culinary degree at Enderun and is going for internship abroad soon.
Since we were celebrating with seniors and kids, Don agreed to create an a la carte set for the kids and seniors while serving the tasting menu to the adults.
Kagat
The Capiz daing was shaped into little crispy balls with kamias and paired with rice “iced” tea made from heirloom rice, calamansi and lemon.
It was like fried wonton using lumpia wrapper with daing-infused, butter-topped blue ternate edible flowers from their garden.
You’d feel like you were just eating at home but it was special because Don was cooking the food for you, and he entertains one group only per night.
This sisig was all veggie, seasoned with singkamas, with rendered pork fat, smoked oil, calamansi dayap on a bed of rice crisp.
Lupa
All the sauces were prepared days before, the edible flowers were from their garden, the meats were aged, the food was cooked and prepared on the spot by Don.
Burnt lettuce with tutong-like chicken floss—loved the combination.
It was a cold soup of kamote with truffle power, chicharon and chicken floss to cool you off given the al fresco setting with electric fan only.
It was a plant-based pasta of 60-day old buko roasted in coconut with caramelized ginataan sauce topped with squash.
Dagat
A unique delicious way of serving shrimp with brown butter and crab foam. Yum! Yum!
Cured and smoked tuna with coco milk, Iloilo suka and olive oil for my mom who preferred healthier seafood options.
The tuna was smoked for 2 weeks with toyomansi, brown butter and crab and paired with fermented tomato and tino-tino drink with Batangas pepper.
The squid was cooked medium in butter and served with tonkotsu broth of 2-month fermented guava jus and salmon.
Inspiring the next gen: wishing that one of my sons would be interested to pursue culinary arts and cook for the family one day. 🙂
One of our favorites—coconut flavored tutong rice topped with uni from Capiz and squid with malunggay oil.
Interesting ice mix of watermelon and lemon to clean the palate for the meat courses up next.
Karne
It was not your usual adobo or liempo dish but the cook’s take on pork with crisp vegetables.
The fried rice with fried smoked pork was a kid-pleaser as always. Sometimes you need rice to pair with the meat.
A safe dish for the kids—chicken bbq served on mashed potatoes, onions.
The “adult” Chicken BBQ comes with a black swoosh of eggplant with red vinegar, pork-beef-chicken jus and seasoned lavender and truffle powder.
We learned that Don is a cousin of the great Chef Tatung Sarthou on his mom’s Sarthou family side—with good cooking skills running in their veins.
Thirty-day aged pork with a good layer of fat sous vide and grilled with coco juice and kang kong.
Tamis
We brought Mango Tart cake from Conti’s as our birthday cake for Joshua.
An all Filipino mini-cream puff of Davao chocolate, burnt cream, papaitum, pili nut and macadamia.
Linamnam’s version of turon with coconut caramel pancake, cacao from Camsur and 3-week old fermented saba.
The last dessert was the maja fudge. The Filipino-inspired desserts were just OK and can be improved.
The dessert drink was banana pili milk made from pili nut steeped for 2 days in milk.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it’s an honor to get to taste the flavors of chef-in-training Don Baldosano. I love his passion for creating delicate sauces and delicious pairings, elevating Filipino food interpretation to a whole new level.
His food is not too sweet (as opposed to the food in Hapag) and more on the sour fermented side like Metiz or Test Kitchen 2. I like how he ages his own meats and how he uses herbs and flowers from their edible garden. Love the unique Filipino drinks, too. He needs to work on his desserts and overall service though.
Don’t expect high-end private dining because it’s in a middle-class home in the middle of a congested subdivision (which actually adds to its charm).
Linamnam MNL by Don Baldosano
31 Greenvale 2, Marcelo Green Village, Parañaque City
Operating Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 6:30pm onwards
Mobile: +63 917 573-0246 (By reservation only)
Instagram: @linamnam_mnl
Live an Awesome Life,
Founder, Our Awesome Planet
Disclosure: We paid for our meal. I wrote this article with my biases, opinions and insights.
P.S. Catch Don and eat at Linamnam this December before he goes to Europe for his internship.
I was wondering, there’s no breakdown of items ordered on the receipt. Photos are great! but no awesome planet logo?
Hi Anton! I’m from Marcelo Green but I didn’t know something like Linamnam exists nearby! Thanks for letting us know. 😊 Best regards!