There’s so many series that are new to Philippine TV standards but I am so amazed how the cinematography when it comes to Philippine films and TV dramas has gone from average to international standards. Most of the new TV series that are being released this year were actually passing the international standards and one of them is the recent Netflix release, entitled, Replacing Chef Chico.

Starring Alessandra de Rossi, Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby. This is the story of Hain, a filipino contemporary restaurant that serves Filipino traditional cuisine with the fusion of each of the customer’s life stories. The main plot is Chef Chico, played by Sam, was being replaced temporarily by his sous chef, Ella, played by Alessandra after he met an accident, causing him to stay in coma, with the supervision of Raymond, played by Piolo, the consultant that Chico’s parents’ hired to decide with the future of the restaurant as it is facing a fall back in the industry.

The 8-episode long series focused on one dish that mainly tells stories about the customer who’s dining in their restaurant. They used a modern take of the traditional dishes that the Filipinos are well known of. The list of the dishes are as per below;

1. Kare-Kare Risotto – cooked for a cancer patient who loves Kare-kare. In the story, she has given up her medication to live her life with no restrictions, and Kare-kare is the main dish she had ordered to represent the life she wanted to live while counting her living days.
2. Kapampangan Tibok-tibok – requested by elderly couple who is celebrating life, however, one of them has an illness causing him to forget some of the important memories in his life. the tibok-tibok served as a reminder of his love for his wife and the beginnings they made all throughout the years.
3. Adobong Puti and Grilled Chicken Adobo – The dishes were served to two ladies that were waiting for their partner, who apparently is cheating with both of them. The dishes reminded them that there’s no contentment with someone cheating on you. No one can love someone at the same time but two can leave the toxic relationship bore by the cheating and leave the cheater behind, paying for the mess he caused.
4. Tinawon Arroz Caldo – There’s no such thing as difference when it comes to family. You may have arguments but at the end of the day, the decision of one shall be supported by everyone, no matter how disagreeable it is in your opinion. Family should seat in one table understanding that each of them needs to be heard.
5. Special turon – this was served to the kid of one of the staff, to make him feel the reward of a mother’s love no matter how absent it was nor selfish the reason was, a mother’s love will be the most selfless one.
6. Traditional Laing – They served three different Laing dishes to the influencer couple whom they thought they know very well just because they are seeing them happy in the camera but in reality, behind everyone’s camera, there’s a different story. Whatever we see in the social media can be far from what is really happening behind it.
7. Dinakdakan Empanada – A traditional Ilocano dishes combined into one, telling a story of a gay couple who will marry each other with the other party’s family being against their relationship but at the end of the day, he was accepted and celebrated by his own family, teaching viewers that whatever our family’s identity is, we should accepted them wholeheartedly.
8. Bopis – A requested dish by an elderly couple whom have built a healthy relationship with their family but decided to breakup, fitting their story to the lesson that no matter what we do, if there’s no love anymore, the result will still not be the same.

Directed by Antoinette Jadaone, this series has set a powerful standard yet again when it comes to Philippine Drama Series. I believe this actually is one of the drama series that were released lately that has very good cinematography, plot and impact to the viewers. To be honest, I didn’t expect that story will be as good as is, I thought this will be a romantic story that tackles the life of a chef and his sous chef but to my surprised, it was more than that. There’s so much story behind each episode but it didn’t overwhelmed the story at all. Even the story of each staff, it was there without us even noticing it.

All in all, I want to commend the whole production because this is a great start of producing series that can be compared to international series. I would definitely recommend this to everyone. This deserves 90% wonderroanne rating!