Tabachoy‘s co-owner Chance Anies told What Now Philadelphia via phone that he has already secured a storefront at 1300 Federal Street and has plans to open Tabachoy as a brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2022. He and his co-owner and wife Maria Anies do not have a set date since they are going through the process of securing the requisite permits and other tasks necessary to open a restaurant.
Tabachoy serves Philadelphia takes on Filipino food and the Tabachoy food cart and pop-up is a small and tight operation that has been around for two and a half years. They got their start in late 2019, right before the pandemic started, so they have been successful during a particularly trying time for restaurants in general.
Chance Anies doesn’t have the background that some chefs do, he considers himself self-taught and his father was a chef. He grew up cooking. Not all great chefs come from traditional cooking schools and restaurant backgrounds. Many chefs learn the craft as apprentices to their family members and there’s no better way to learn the cuisine of a specific geographical region than by learning from your family.
Anies has a great love and pride in the food of the Philippines and that kind of love translates into tasty food. Tabachoy means chubby or fatty in Tagalog, but the nickname isn’t meant in a mean way in Filipino culture. No less of an authority than Anthony Bourdain called the Filipino people “the most giving people on the planet” and proclaimed Filipino lechon to be the finest roast pig in the world.
Tabachoy serves some of the traditional dishes like adobo, which is cubed pork with soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, ginger, and onions, and a BBQ chicken dish made with Filipino BBQ sauce and garlic rice. Tabachoy even has their version of the cheesesteak, made Tabachoy style, which is “sliced-thin steak marinated in soy sauce and citrus, with fried onions and our house-made chili-vin wiz. Topped with atchara, scallions, and fried shallots”. You can also get the cheesesteak made with chicken or a vegan Laing, kale braised in coconut milk with ginger, garlic, and onions. These dishes are available at the Tabachoy food cart right now.
Anies has held seated dinners at other restaurants as a stepping stone to serving a full restaurant menu. At Forin Cafe, he served a seven-course dinner and he aims to get diners to want to stay and eat. Tabachoy has an upcoming wine dinner at Mural City Cellars on May 11.
In the future, at Tabachoy restaurant, Anies would like diners to feel like they are walking into a Filipino home. He said that Filipino culture is 50 percent food and 50 percent hospitality, so he would like to have Tabachoy make Philadelphians feel welcome when they come to visit.
