Culinary rocket science meets Shanghainese cuisine in Zenses. Chef Johann Santos’s new wave dishes—like nitrogen popcorn and bacon ‘n’ eggs ice cream—will knock your five senses off

Inside a quaint two-storey dining room, chef Johann Santos gives life to his wildest impulses. His weapon? A stainless-steel tank of liquid nitrogen used to create dishes that captivate all five senses.

His playground: Zenses Neo-Shanghai Cuisine, one of the many restaurants riding the wave of molecular gastronomy, a discipline that emphasizes the science of cuisine.

This new wave of hyper-whimsical cooking tends to scare away a lot of diners who aren’t accustomed to seeing bizarre items on their plates—is it art or is it dinner? But chef Santos, along with his wife Isis, excels in the kind of bizarre cooking even purists would be powerless to resist.

Take the restaurant’s tempura lychee overloaded with curried crabmeat. Sitting on a small plate alongside a mango seafood aioli sauce and vinegar, it’s about the strangest dish we’ve eaten this year. Put a whole piece in your mouth and your tongue will taste various degrees of sweetness, sourness, and saltiness. The entire thing feels so wrong but tastes so right.

The pop and sigh of oysters—breaded and deep-fried—served over concentrated foam of ginger beer jelly is equally a rollercoaster of texture and flavor that hits hard and fast.

The appetizer menu is wonderful to peruse, but the à la carte offers up equally sumptuous fare: the golden fried whole grouper (sitting on creamy blue cheese sauce with grilled pineapple) and the slow-cooked ribs (with a match of strawberry sauce and coriander) are both sublime.

The dessert section is a dangerous place to linger, as you may never stop taste-testing. Highlights include the bacon, egg, and rice ice cream, five-spice chocolate cake, and coffee espuma.

Zenses also serves off-the-menu items, offered to the more adventurous gastronomes. One such dish is nitrogen popcorn, which fills your mouth with cold, dry smoke and a combination of smooth and crunchy textures. Another is shrimp head cotton candy, made of crystallized shrimp that has been cured for five months before ground into a powder.

The dishes succeed because of their muted elegance—chef Santos integrates bright, shiny things into food without letting them dominate the plate. The young chef promises to continually alter the menu, with nothing sacred and anything game. The vibrancy of his kitchen is a real asset in Manila’s culinary landscape.

Service is wonderful: unfamiliar dishes are explained, most of which are prepared tableside, adding a sense of theater to the intimate surroundings.

It may look like Zenses takes its food too seriously, but dine inside and you’ll see the emphasis is really on having a good laugh and enjoying the experience.

Eating here is relatively expensive, but it’s outstanding value nonetheless. The dining masses have yet to catch on—get in before they do.

The Big Chill
Why is liquid nitrogen a new proponent of haute cuisine?

Liquid nitrogen allows plumes of vapor to emanate from food, but what is it exactly?

More than two-thirds of our atmosphere is made up of nitrogen—a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, and non-flammable gas. Its chilled, condensed version is known as liquid nitrogen.

When liquid nitrogen is released into the atmosphere, it has the ability to freeze things in an instant—a useful technique in preserving flavors and textures of food. Dishes concocted with liquid nitrogen are wonderful palate cleansers, as the dry ice literally evaporates out of one’s mouth.

Liquid nitrogen is widely used by Heston Blumenthal, globally revered chef and owner of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck.