Donia has exploded onto the London food scene

Shah at the time was best known for Bintang, the pan-Asian restaurant his parents opened in 1997, as well as the Latin-Caribbean Guanabana next door. The couple became so well-established in Kentish Town, where they also live, that any landlords looking for a reliable tenant would approach Shah and Maglanoc first. Last November, however, marked a decisive shift for the couple and their Maginhawa Group with the opening of Donia, a contemporary Filipino restaurant on the Kingly Court site formerly occupied by Imad's Syrian Kitchen and Asma Khan's Darjeeling Express.

There had been no long-term plan to open Donia; Maglanoc had been looking for a Soho site for their Filipino bakery Panadera, and Kingly Court was pushing for a West End outpost of Bintang.

"Our method has always been to visit a site and envision what we can do with the space," Maglanoc explains. "It's a bit of a reverse engineer process to having an existing brand and finding somewhere to place it. Instead we think, what's missing, what's needed? I'd always thought that if we were going to introduce another concept, it would have to be for a special site like this."

Filipino food, to many Londoners, remains an unknown quantity. What, then, was the approach to Donia's menu? "Keeping things as simple as possible with the best technique," Maglanoc says. "I try and think about Filipino food in a way that I would be able to explain it to non-Filipinos." How, then, would she explain the fundamentals of the cuisine? "It's very punchy. There are a lot of stews, a lot of sauces and a lot of influences from different places."

Most Filipinos in London know their food heritage from their communities, which, Maglanoc says, has meant they have been unwilling to spend money in restaurants on what they perceive as home cooking. But younger, British-born Filipinos have also been exposed to the melting pot of UK British food culture.

"I love Filipino food," Maglanoc says. "But I love a good pie and mash too." Both come together on Donia's menu as a lamb shoulder caldereta pie, in which a chilli-spiced meat stew is contained in a golden dome of perfectly executed shortcrust pastry.

Filipino food in the UK

The opening of Donia has been a recent rare bright spot for Filipino food in the UK. It was announced in January that Romulo Café in Kensington, the first international outpost of the Manila-based Romulo restaurant group, had closed after eight years of trading. Jollibee, the fried chicken chain that opened in nearby Earl's Court in 2018 and is ploughing ahead with UK expansion, has seen its losses widen from £4m in 2021 to £6.5m in 2022. Why has Filipino food yet to take off in this country?

"The southeast Asian market has a lot to compete with, right?" Shah says. "I've been in the restaurant business since I was 12 years old. My dad is Bangladeshi and my mum is Filipino, but Bintang was originally a Malaysian and Indonesian restaurant. My parents went down that route because they had bills to pay and it was an easier concept to market. The timing wasn't right then for a Filipino restaurant, but people are more open-minded now than they were 30 years ago.

I've been filtering out the Malaysian and Indonesian dishes at Bintang that didn't resonate with me, adding the more traditional aspects of Filipino cuisine."

Might Donia be the restaurant that finally takes Filipino food mainstream? The Evening Standard's critic Jimi Famurewa wrote that ‘a meal here can feel like a prolonged loop-the-loop of pure, unbridled pleasure', awarding the restaurant a rare five stars.

"I'd love to be able to confidently say that Donia will be the restaurant that opens Londoners' eyes to Filipino cuisine," Maglanoc says, admitting that the review had sent her into her own loop-the-loop of pleasure. "But at the end of the day I don't want us to be under that pressure. Is Donia providing a good experience to all guests whether they're Filipino or not? Is the food executed to a level that we're happy with and can improve every time? That's what I'm pushing for."

Maglanoc knew of Shah, who is 15 years older, because her sister used to go clubbing with him, but it wasn't until she accompanied her brother to a head chef interview at Bintang in 2017 that she met him properly. At the time Maglanoc was working on a degree in graphic design.

Shah was considering introducing a pudding menu to Bintang because he felt there was little representation of Asian desserts in London. He asked Maglanoc, who had always enjoyed baking and pastry cooking, to help him on the project, which became Mamasons.

"I just thought, wow, this is great," Maglanoc says, who starting dating Shah shortly afterwards. "I loved advertising, I loved branding, I loved food and I loved fashion. I'd never thought that it would be possible to make that combination work for me."

An ice-cream parlour was risky enough, but seeing the queues outside Gelupo on a winter's day made the couple realise it had potential. But one with Filipino flavours, such as ube, a purple yam, and citrus fruit calamansi instead of strawberry and vanilla, was even riskier. And although the ube became a hit on social media, Insta fame didn't dictate the offering.

"It's great if people want to come and take photos," Shah says. "But there has to be a value to everything we communicate. Our black buko ice-cream is based on charcoal made from coconut shells. It's a very traditional recipe from the island of Mindanao in the south of the Philippines that we wanted to showcase."

The collection of restaurants became the Maginhawa Group in 2019, when Maglanoc and Shah began to find it difficult to explain to people a diverse collection of six (now seven) brands. Maglanoc chose the name Maginhawa after a restaurant street in Quezon City in the Metro Manila region of the Philippines with a community feel that she felt was the equivalent to Kentish Town Road.

"We wanted to pick something that was Filipino to reflect our heritage," says Maglanoc. "And Maginhawa means blessings and good fortune combined with hard work. We love that meaning, because a lot of our projects have been like that."

With the new name came new management structures. "The past few years have felt like a free-for-all," Shah says. "We've been opening up two places every 12 months because of the opportunities we were being offered. At one point we felt like we were building a house of cards. Each project has been self-funded and organically grown from our cash flows. We don't have any investors and have always been hands-on in every aspect of the business."

Growing Maginhawa Group

Maglanoc admits that finding a team that shares their passion has been difficult – "this isn't a job to us, it's our lifestyle" – but there are now six people working in marketing, three in accounts and four in head office.

Shah might be the one with chief executive printed on his business cards ("I don't ever use them," he laughs) but he says he and Maglanoc, whose official job title is company director, are very much a partnership: "She has the talent to run the group from the ground level by building the right structure and leading the team," he says. "Whereas my strength is processing systems and productivity. And I pride myself in knowing every single dish on the menus. So I think we have a variety of skills that allows us to be productive and eliminate any layers in the business that aren't efficient."

As to the future, Maglanoc still hasn't given up hope of opening a Panadera in Soho, but expanding the group beyond Kentish Town is not simply moving within London; the pair are also curious about international outposts.

"We get constant franchise requests from Qatar, Dubai and LA," Maglanoc says, but Shah adds they need to work out how two such hands-on owners could make a success of things overseas. "That's on the curriculum for this year," he says, "understanding where we want to go and the challenges it will take to get there."

And while Maglanoc says it's "unlikely" they will ever open another Donia, the early omens are that the site will prove to be just as much of a success as it has been for its previous residents. "When we were considering moving into Kingly Court," Shah says, "we saw Asma – we call her auntie – and asked, auntie, what do you reckon about the space? She said, ‘Omar, it has a lot of baraka', which means blessings. ‘It gave Imad blessings, it gave me blessings and God willing it is going to give you blessings.' And I was like, that's another layer of pressure and we've gotta deliver."

Yet as the Maginhawa Group has proved time and time again, blessings combined with hard work are a recipe for success.

How to grow a restaurant group

Omar Shah gives his advice for how to upsize your brand

1. Succession planning

It's very important to plan ahead and create opportunities for your team to be prepared to step up if necessary. Continuously training for the next stage in their career not only safeguards your operations but also empowers your team.

2. Process development

In operating a group, nothing is more important than process development. You can't be everywhere at once; everything depends on processes. If something goes wrong, it's either because a process doesn't exist, isn't being followed, or needs improvement. It's easy to blame other factors, but this mindset places the responsibility on you as a group operator to learn and improve faster than most.

3. Training culture

Operating a group requires a different approach to training. Essentially, we're like a school. Managers act as teachers, providing support, guidance and training to all our ‘students', who are potentially the future of our business and currently its face. Documents and training should be developed in the same way a school plans its curriculum.

4. Organisational structure

Learning the value of a chain of command is crucial, something I experience even now. Mae and I are very hands-on, perhaps too much so. Hence, it's important to step back and ensure that people who are paid to do their jobs, do them. There's also value in being in the trenches, but for long-term growth, your leaders need to have the ability to take command.

5. Choosing the right tech solutions

Investing in technology is essential. From stocktaking and invoice processing to HR and recipe mapping, there's a solution for every part of your business. Data is paramount and becomes useful when you can interpret it.

At this level, it's hard to be on the floor engaging with customers directly. Reports from software provide the ability to keep your finger on the pulse.

Five Filipino ingredients

Florence Mae Maglanoc's key ingredients in her Filipino cookery

1. Calamansi A small, cherry-sized citrus fruit, calamansi is a staple in Filipino kitchens. It has a tart, refreshing taste with a hint of sweetness, like a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange. Used in many marinades, dips and as a seasoning.

2. Bagoong This fermented shrimp paste is a bold flavour enhancer. It has a distinct aroma and salty, umami-rich taste. Bagoong is often used sparingly in Filipino stews, fried rice and as a condiment. Its intense flavour pairs well with green mangoes and is an essential ingredient in kare-kare, a traditional peanut oxtail stew.

3. Ube A purple yam that is a vibrant addition to desserts and pastries. Ube has a sweet, nutty flavour and is used in a variety of treats, from ice-cream and cakes to traditional Filipino sweets like halo-halo. It is also the signature flavour at Mamasons.

4. Banana ketchup Unlike traditional tomato ketchup, this condiment is made from bananas, sugar, vinegar and spices. It has a sweet, tangy flavour with a hint of spice, making it a perfect accompaniment for fried dishes like lumpia (spring rolls) and Filipino-style spaghetti.

5. Tamarind The seed pod from the tamarind tree is used primarily in soups and broths. It is often used in sinigang, a popular sour soup, to provide its signature tartness.