Restaurant & Bar La Fiesta Where the East, West and local cuisines meet

Cooking is his passion. It is his love and life.

Dharmen Makawana’s love affair with food started at the age of 15 in a barbecue party with friends in Singapore. Dharmen, who was asked to prepare food, got hooked, and promised himself that he will become a chef one day.

Food has always amazed him — the texture, aroma, tastes, colors and all the complex and creative ways ingredients can come together. “Cooking is a skill which you acquire through years of training. It is not something you pick up overnight and expect to do a good job,” says Dharmen.

Most of his training as a chef was held in different hotels in Singapore including Westin, the largest hotel in Asia. From Singapore, Dharmen migrated to Australia, where he stayed for 12 years until he moved to Bali, Indonesia to work for Nikko Hotel.

In August of last year, Dharmen was transferred to Nikko Saipan to work as Chef de Cuisine handling the different restaurants ––Serena, Kaenju, Paupau, Fontana Restaurant & Bar.

When Nikko opened Restaurant & Bar La Fiesta in La Fiesta Shopping Plaza on July 1, 1999, Dharmen was asked to take charge of preparing the cuisine where a blend of the East and West meets local ingredients.

The use of dried red chiles, ginger and garlic evokes a lot of thoughts and feelings about Asian cuisine. It will partly explain to you why Asians are exceptionally warm and hospitable and spontaneous and friendly. Coming from cultures known for spicy hot food, Dharmen has learned to mix his knowledge with European cultures known for dairy products.

Cozy Place

Nikko management had the former Colonial Restaurant renovated, offering a cozier place to people who love good food after a hard day’s work. Although Restaurant & Bar La Fiesta was originally established to offer a Southeast Asian Steam Boat of meat or seafood, guests have been coming back for their favorite Vietnamese Raw
Spring Roll with Peanut Salsa, Crisp Fried Soft Shell Crab with Garlic Aioli and Stir Fried Port with Garlic Stalks.

Don’t leave without having a taste of Dharmen’s concoction of frozen sour soup parfait with mango coulis and almond biscotti, half papaya with island lime and vanilla bean ice cream and banana fritters with vanilla bean ice cream and palm sugar.

Since he arrived on the island, Dharmen has been trying new recipes using as much local vegetables which are grown in Kagman. With the abundance of breadfruit on the island, he thought of mixing it with Italian cooking. The result — roasted breadfruit gnocchi with hot salami, sundried tomato and basil cream.

Amid the decline of the island’s tourism economy, using local ingredients also helps the management in coping with the bad times. Says Dharmen: “The modern chef has to decide not just how to learn cooking fantastic food but cook within a particular budget. In the old days, you prepare lavish food where you can have caviar, goose liver. But today, the chef is also a manager where he learns how to use his resources, his kitchen, his staffing and his labor cost.”

With the slowdown in the tourism industry, Nikko wants to tap the local market when it opened Restaurant & Bar La Fiesta, which is meant for casual dining. In an island where people are used to eating barbecue and spam, Dharmen believes that the locals can be convinced to regularly dine there if they are given good food that will satisfy their taste at reasonable price and good portions.

And what makes a chef happy? “When somebody enjoys a menu and says it is wonderful. Their praises are your accolade. At the end of day, it has to generate revenue, the bottomline still is if it made money,” says Dharmen.