At KAEN, Marvin Agustin Wants Every Ingredient to Tell a Story

"KAEN came from a desire to simplify," Marvin says.

July 23, 2026

Hand plating dish — Black Angus Steak Tartare in Lumpia Shell. [PHOTO: Courtesy of KAEN]

For a restaurant built around live-fire cooking, you’d expect him to lead with the wood-fired grills or the perfectly charred proteins.

Instead, he talks about a rabbit he ate in Florence more than a decade ago. Then he tells us about tawilis, the world’s only freshwater sardine. Before long, he’s sharing memories of his mother’s ginataang langka, his sister’s bottled puso ng saging, and the farmers whose produce eventually finds its way onto the menu.

Listening to these stories, you begin to understand what KAEN is really about.

Months before they opened, the team cooked exclusively over wood and charcoal, learning how different ingredients responded to heat. Somewhere along the way, he realized that cooking with fire wasn’t about controlling the flame.

“Fire has honesty,” Marvin says. “It doesn’t hide mistakes. It demands attention, patience, and respect.”

Steak over live wood fire — Live-fire F1 Wagyu Striploin Steak [PHOTO: Courtesy of KAEN]

Unlike modern kitchens where precision can often be programmed, cooking over wood and charcoal asks something different of the person behind the grill. Heat shifts by the minute. Smoke changes depending on the wood. No two cooks are exactly alike. For Marvin, that unpredictability became less of a challenge and more of a teacher. The team learned to pay closer attention not just to the fire itself, but to the ingredients they were working with. The better the ingredient, the less they felt compelled to do. In many ways, fire became KAEN’s simplest filter: it revealed what was already there, for better or worse.

This eventually found its clearest expression in one of the dishes on the menu.

The Dish That Helped Shape KAEN

About 15 years ago, while traveling through Florence, Marvin tried rabbit in a small restaurant for the very first time . The meal stayed with him. Ever since, he’d been looking for a way to recreate that memory. So when rabbit from a farm in Quezon finally arrived during KAEN’s research and development, the team considered every technique they could think of.

Then they stopped themselves.

Instead of brining it or cooking it sous vide, they seasoned it with nothing more than salt and pepper before placing it over the fire.

“The result was incredible,” Marvin recalls. “It reminded me of one of the most important lessons behind KAEN: when an ingredient is truly exceptional, you don’t need to do much.”

It’s a philosophy that quietly runs through the entire menu.

That philosophy also reframes what “simple” means. At KAEN, simplicity isn’t about doing less for the sake of minimalism. It’s about knowing when to stop. When an ingredient has been carefully grown, responsibly sourced, and handled with respect from the very beginning, Marvin believes the cook’s role shifts. Rather than transforming it beyond recognition, the goal becomes preserving what made it worth serving in the first place.

It’s a quieter kind of confidence—not just in the ingredients, but in knowing they don’t always need to be transformed to leave a lasting impression.

Raw fish dish on plate — Tuna Tiradito [PHOTO: Courtesy of KAEN]

KAEN, and open-fire dining concept [PHOTO: Courtesy of KAEN] — Strawberry Smash Drink [PHOTO: Courtesy of KAEN]

The Restaurant That Asked Marvin to Slow Down

Perhaps that’s also what makes KAEN feel like a meaningful chapter in Marvin Agustin’s journey as a restaurateur. Coming on the heels of COCHI’s recent Michelin recognition, there could have been an expectation to push further toward technical ambition or culinary spectacle. Instead, KAEN finds confidence in restraint, less concerned with proving what it can do and more interested in understanding when exceptional ingredients are already enough.

It’s hard not to notice that Marvin rarely talks about dishes as finished products. Instead, he talks about where they came from, who grew them, who introduced them to him, or the memories they carry. Maybe that’s what makes KAEN feel different.

By serving its menu à la carte, guests have the freedom to gather, order what they’re curious about, and return for a completely different experience each time. With this setup, Marvin found himself smiling as guests began sharing stories of their own after hearing about the people and ingredients behind each dish.

Marvin Agustin standing, smiling — As with all his business ventures, Marvin is pretty hands-on in building Kaen. [PHOTO: Courtesy of KAEN]

“What I’ve learned is that dishes don’t always start in the kitchen,” Marvin says. “Sometimes they start with a childhood memory, a farmer’s harvest, a fisherman showing you his catch, or a meal shared with someone who loves food as much as you do.”

An ingredient’s story is just as important as understanding how to cook it. It’s why conversations about the food so often drift away from recipes and toward the people behind them. Farmers. Fishermen. Childhood meals. Chance discoveries while traveling. The memories that eventually become dishes.

Yes, there’s fire. Yes, there’s thoughtful cooking. But somewhere between the rabbit from Florence, the tawilis from Taal, and the produce arriving from Quezon, you realize the food is almost beside the point.

As Marvin says, “Great ingredients don’t happen by accident.”

KAEN isn’t simply inviting you to eat over fire and wood. It’s inviting you to look a little closer at the hands that grew them, the people who share them, and the stories that give them meaning long before they ever reach the kitchen.

KAEN is located at 6109 Albert St., Brgy. Poblacion, Makati.