Tabachoy chef Chance Anies’ next restaurant is a Filipino American grill inspired by Outback Steakhouse

“I love ’90s chain restaurants so much,” said Chance Anies, the chef and owner of the Filipino BYOB Tabachoy.

Anies grew up going to spots like TGI Friday’s, Olive Garden, and Longhorn Steakhouse — the sort of middle-class sit-down chains that have largely been on the wane for the past decade. He wants to bring back that kind of affordability and approachability in a restaurant, but make it Filipino.

His next restaurant, Manong — a word that means “elder brother” in Ilocano, the Filipino dialect of Anies’ paternal family — is his attempt to do that. “At first I wanted it to be like a Filipino Outback Steakhouse, but then I went to Outback Steakhouse and thought, ‘This isn’t what I remember,’” Anies said. Manong will nevertheless be a departure from Tabachoy’s array of Filipino staples. “I want to make it even more approachable than what Tabachoy is.”

Manong is set to open in September at 1833 Fairmount Ave., better known as the former Tela’s Market and Kitchen. “Obviously we want to make it look like home and brand it, but it doesn’t need much,” Anies said.

The space is a significant expansion from the 28-seat Tabachoy in Bella Vista. There will be more than 80 seats, as well as outdoor seating, weather permitting. One major quirk of Tabachoy — guests can only access the bathroom by going outside, walking down an alley, and reentering the back of the restaurant — will be resolved: Manong diners will be able to access the restroom from inside the restaurant. “We can arrange an outdoor route if it makes people feel more comfortable,” Anies joked.

Even more expansive than the space are Anies’ ideas for the restaurant, which will be an all-day affair with a full liquor license, along with a coffee program designed by Mat Falco from Herman’s coffee. Anies hopes to offer silogs (rice platters), pancakes, breakfast sandwiches, Filipino spaghetti with homemade banana ketchup, a burger (“a lot of Fairmount restaurants have burgers on the menu”), a full-blown bread program, and Filipino riffs on classic cocktails and Carvel-style ice cream cakes (“definitely ube”).

A clear focus will be Ihawan-style cuisine — in other words, Manong will be a Filipino American grillhouse with pork and chicken skewers and longanisa sausages made in-house, and “not just the sweet, garlicky ones we make at Tabachoy,” Anies said. (In fact, the only item making the jump from Tabachoy is the lumpia.)

Manong will also feature a bottle shop and a market to purchase house-made goods, like the banana ketchup (which recently became scarce in retail stores after a popular additive was flagged in the U.S. late last year). The goal, Anies said, is “to utilize the space to meet the needs of the neighborhood. Tela’s was known for being a market and it was open for 12 years. We also want to be a restaurant in that neighborhood that can withstand the test of time.”

Anies is one of several chef-owners of small BYOBs taking on larger, more ambitious projects — complete with liquor licenses — for their second acts in recent months. Others include Honeysuckle, a vast expansion of Omar and Cybille St.Aude-Tate’s original West Philly counter-service shop that is also in Fairmount; Alex Holt’s roomier and more refined revamp of Roxanne in Queen Village; and Phila and Rachel Lorn’s hotly anticipated Sao, a seafood-focused departure from tiny, forever booked Mawn.

Manong also dovetails with another trend: A younger generation of Southeast Asian Philly chefs serving dishes that speak to both their heritage and the American foods they grew up with. On the Vietnamese-American mash-up menu of Hannah K, the sequel to Huyen Thai Dinh’s freshman restaurant, The Breakfast Den, there‘s a bacon-egg-and-cheese summer roll next to French toast and chao (rice porridge). Griddle & Rice in South Philly serves an “eggs benny” right alongside Indonesian breakfast platters with coconut rice, eggs, and tempeh. And at Baby‘s Kusina, another Filipino all-day restaurant and market in nearby Brewerytown, cheesy Cooper Sharp-laden breakfast sandwiches make perfect sense topped with longanisa.

One day, Anies hopes that Filipino food in America will be regionalized, “just as Italian food and Chinese food is. Down the road, it would be great to say, ‘Here‘s an Ilocano restaurant, or a Cebuano place.’” Raised a military kid, Anies moved around the U.S. — his dad was in the Navy — so the region of Filipino food he is most familiar with is the hybridized Filipino American, or Fil Am, variety. (Filipinos make up America’s third largest Asian immigrant group and in the Greater Philadelphia region there are estimated to be around 31,000-35,000 Filipinos — at least some of whom were disappointed Filipino cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle did not become the new pope.)

“A lot of my conversations are about how to mix our American and Philadelphian sides in with the Filipino side,” he said. “My parents owned a Rita’s Water Ice in Virginia when I was growing up and I worked in it when I was 14… How awesome would it be to have a halo halo done gelati-style, but properly and respectfully?”

Like many other chef-owners in Philly, Anies started off small, and on wheels. Tabachoy was originally a food cart and pop-up. From 2019 to 2022, he catered and vended around the city, with regular appearances at breweries and Herman’s Coffee in Pennsport. (Disclosure: Before opening Tabachoy, Anies worked at my former restaurant and food cart, Poi Dog, which was his first professional cooking experience.)

Shortly after transitioning the cart to a brick-and-mortar BYOB at the end of 2022, Tabachoy found itself lauded and perpetually packed, eventually securing a place on The Inquirer‘s 76 and Philadelphia Magazine’s 50 best restaurants, as well as a nod for Anies on StarChefs’ Rising Star Chefs in 2024. Returning to his pop-up roots for a spell, Anies plans to launch a series of Manong events at other restaurants in the coming weeks.

The original Tabachoy food cart is now for sale if there are any takers. “It brought us to where we are right now. I didn’t buy it for a lot of money and it would be great if it could help someone else get started on their business,” Anies said. “I don’t think I need to make money on it.”