Food trends move fast in 2025, but for Chef Luis Chikiamco, executive chef at Discovery Primea and head of Flame restaurant’s dinner service, the whirlwind of aesthetics and algorithm-driven dining doesn’t shake his focus. He sees the trends. He acknowledges them. And then he returns to his kitchen and quietly does the work.

“We do look at trends. I think it would be foolish not to. Because in a way, you have to stay relevant, and part of that is looking at trends for 2025, 2024. These trends could be bases for our menu creations.”

He brings up the example of how menus these days are much shorter and feature just a few keywords rather than painstakingly crafted paragraphs on each dish. This is partly so menus can fit in one screenshot or Instagram story — and perhaps because a lot of diners come into restaurants already knowing that they want to order a certain viral dish.

“I remember growing up in the kitchen when everything was almost tower-like. Everything was vertical. Now, it’s landscape, flat. I had a hard time transitioning.”

He pointed to one of the dishes he had just served us — a beautifully plated, landscape-style riff on bistek using USDA beef, foie gras, bok choy, potato purée and fermented black garlic from his current tasting menu that changes quarterly. In years past, he said, he would have stacked the ingredients on top of each other. Now, each element is brushed, dotted, or nestled across the plate as on a painter’s canvas.

“It’s evolution. You cannot stick to one way and say, ‘I’ll just do this.’ You have to evolve with time.”

Despite embracing trends and changes, Chef Luis remains grounded in his culinary influences. Though trained in France and Mexico, he says Chinese, Japanese and Korean flavors form the backbone of his cooking philosophy. When asked to name his favorite ingredient, he doesn’t hesitate: Soy sauce.

I had the pleasure of trying one of his signature creations — a luxurious take on Chinese takeout lobster fried rice. Served in a familiar white box, it came packed with homemade bakkwa, chorizo Macau and grilled lobster. It wasn’t just a playful nod to the visual culture of food in the digital age — and yes, the dish was also flatlay-friendly! It was also a deeply personal dish, inspired by the sitcoms he grew up watching, where characters often traded jokes against a laugh track over greasy Chinese takeout. It’s a dish that’s been on the menu for 10 years. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

While dinner service keeps him busy, Chef Luis is also known for his Elements of Flavor series, conceived alongside general manager and accomplished chef in his own right, David Pardo Ayala. The series sees him collaborating with other chefs to create thoughtful, limited-run tasting menus at Flame. I was delighted to attend one such collab with HÁLONG’s Cara Davis that presented an exotic-yet comfortingly Mexican-Pan Asian fusion spread.

The kitchen as arena

Outside the kitchen, Chef Luis is a basketball fan and longtime sneakerhead. I brought up a comparison that hoops fans might recognize: How even the flashiest NBA players were still masters of fundamentals. Kobe Bryant was said to shoot 1,000 shots a day in practice. Innovation never replaces the basics — it builds on them.

That same balance of discipline and creativity is apparent in Chef Luis’ own cooking fundamentals, which he hones over years, not weeks. His version of Peking duck, for instance, was half a decade in the making.

“That took me four years before I placed it on the menu and felt really happy with it. A lot had to do with the way the Chinese do it — when they inflate the duck, baste it with hot water, then with a vinegar and maltose mixture, and let it dry. The color, the crispness of the skin, the cooking time — it all mattered,” he said. “We didn’t work on it every day, but we’d spend a week on it, and if it didn’t come out well, we’d shelve it. We’d research, then try again after two or three months — until one day, it happened. It just came together.”

Finding time for collabs and new menus isn’t easy, especially for someone still so involved in the everyday rhythm of a professional kitchen. But, also like the NBA greats, Chef Luis credits his team for allowing him to branch out into different projects.

“I have a really strong team.

If I’m not there, they can hold their own. So when I work on my collabs or I work on a new menu, my team leaders or my sous chefs from the different outlets can hold the fort.”

That leadership was tested and heightened during one of the toughest times for anyone in food service: The Covid-19 lockdown. With restaurants shuttered and strict movement restrictions in place, the kitchen became a test of adaptability and endurance.

“It became about how to deliver your product in such a way that when it arrives to your customer, it’s still top quality. What food would withstand the travel? So, things that didn’t wilt, things that didn’t go bad easily, things that didn’t dry out.”

Chef Luis’ painstaking attention to technique was reflected in another dish from the tasting menu: Lobster, tofu and wood ear mushrooms suspended in a chilled hot and sour gelée — nostalgic but elevated. Redolent of black vinegar and umami flavor, it took the comfort of Chinese restaurant soup and reframed it into something light, refreshing, and refined. Chef Luis also noted that this dish was the result of yet another collaboration. 

But for all the accolades and innovation, Chef Luis speaks most proudly about what keeps him going — his family.

“My focus is really on family. Everything I’m doing right now is for my family — whatever plans my wife and I have for our daughter, whatever my goals are, all of them are toward the family. Right now, I’m working my butt off for both of them, to be able to support them.”

“Having a child really changes your lifestyle. Now, weekends are focused on my family — especially because I work long hours here. So weekends are dedicated to them.”

At home, he still enjoys grilling and flame-cooked meals — a fitting parallel to his role at Flame, where charcoal-grilled specialties are one of the restaurant’s defining features, thanks in part to the Josper grill they are particularly proud of.

On weekends, when he’s not grilling, he brings his wife and daughter to the same Japanese spot they always go to. And while it looks like Chef Luis’ time with his family keeps him steady and grounded, he’s admitted that food trends have also caught up with his personal life.

“I grew up during a time with no cameras and cellphones. Whatever we ate, we’d take a mental picture of it. But now, it’s like, ‘don’t touch the food!’” he said, reminding us all of the urge to upload snaps of our food before digging in. 

It also reminded me that I had already carelessly dug into the food he served at the interview without so much as a single photo. Thank goodness for photographers.