BUDGIE MONTOYA'S FILIPINO PORK

In our new series, we celebrate the world’s best comfort food. Budgie Montoya of Filipino restaurant Sarap, shares his street-food inspired recipe

- TONY NAYLOR

Ferdinand ‘Budgie’ Montoya worked in IT prior to 2012 when, new in London, he decided to throw himself into his love of cooking. ‘I’m Filipino but I grew up in Sydney. I live in London. I’m a citizen of the world.’ In January, as a veteran of professional kitchens including Tom Sellers’ Restaurant Story, Budgie opened his ‘proudly inauthentic’ Filipino venue Sarap (saraplondon.com). These days, when not filming cooking videos for his Insta followers, he is thinking about how that ‘tiny, 22-seat’ space in Brixton Village will need reorganising to comply with social-distancing rules. His passion, however, is cooking interpretations of Filipino classics, such as barbecued pork skewers, cassava tart and stuffed pork belly, influenced by his exposure to different cultures over the years as well as nostalgia for his early upbringing. ‘The chef side of me is missing the buzz of service and that sense of purpose.

‘I was born in the Philippines but grew up in Sydney. Filipinos have a long history of working abroad, and mum wanted a better life for us. Sydney had a large Filipino community, and we went back fairly often. We stopped when I was 14 because we’re from the southern island, Mindanao, and in the 90s there was a surge of terrorism and guerrilla warfare there that freaked mum out. I haven’t visited in a long time.