Tausug chef · Palm Grill and Cabel
I’m Miggy Cabel Moreno, from Jolo. I cook the food of Zamboanga, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi the way my grandmother taught me, with every name, every spice and every story left in.
Now
October 29, 2026
Palm Grill and Cabel both keep their Bib Gourmand in the second Philippine MICHELIN Guide, Manila and Environs & Cebu 2027.
The 2027 listOctober 30, 2026
Chicken Pianggang, Beef Kurma, Belachan Chicken and Sambal Istah, from ₱149 in select Luzon stores, with Mindanao to follow.
The detailsOpening 2026
After nine years in Metro Manila, Palm Grill opens its first Mindanao branch, on the third level of SM City Zamboanga.
The restaurants01 · Why
“This is for that little boy who grew up in the island of Sulu and Zamboanga, who felt there was no space or seats for him at the table.”
On family trips to Manila, the Filipino restaurants never served the food I grew up with. In 2017 I opened one that did, and kept every Tausug name on the menu.
02 · The story
I fell in love with cooking when I was eight, in my grandmother Oswalda Alcantara-Cabel’s kitchen in Sulu. Children weren’t sent away from the fire there. We were allowed to watch, to ask and to help.
My mother, Melissa Cabel, raised us on her food businesses. Between the two of them I learned to cook the Tausug way: by feel, by smell and by memory, not from written recipes.
I trained and worked as a nurse first. Then a booth at the Ateneo Fiesta, selling my mother’s piyanggang manok, kept selling out, and I knew people outside our home wanted this food too.
“To me, the aroma of burnt coconut is like the smell of Christmas.”
03 · The fire
Tausug, noun. Charred-coconut spice paste; the base of Tausug cooking.
It gives tiyula itum its colour and piyanggang manok its smoke. Done well, it tastes of smoke and toasted coconut, never of anything burnt. It’s slow food by nature, long before the term existed.
The food of ZamBaSulTa, a glossaryMature coconut, scraped from the shell, charred over an open flame until black.
Pounded by hand, the way it has always been done in Sulu.
Ground with turmeric, galangal, lemongrass, ginger, garlic and onion.
04 · The restaurants
Since 2017 · Quezon City
The food of Zamboanga, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi
Palm Grill opened on Tomas Morato in May 2017, the first restaurant in Luzon given over to the food of Southern Mindanao. Everything starts from coconut, spices and seafood brought straight from farming and fishing communities in ZamBaSulTa.
Since 2022 · San Miguel, Manila
Filipino heritage cooking, north to south
Cabel opened in late 2022 in the 1930s Casa Roces house across from Malacañang, run with my brother King and my sister Isabel and named after our mother’s family. Its menu puts Tausug dishes on the same page as adobo, kare-kare and pakbet, because all of it is Filipino food.
05 · Beyond the restaurants
06 · At other tables
07 · Watch
Five stars
“This is probably one of the best foods I’ve ever had in the Philippines, if I’m being 100% honest.”
Sonny Side, on Palm Grill’s tiyula itum, Best Ever Food Review Show
The first Filipino restaurant to get the show’s seal of approval, in front of more than 11 million subscribers. Tiyula itum, once the “lowly” black beef soup of the south, now stands for the whole country’s flavours.
More to watch08 · Recognition
09 · Books
Two children’s books about the food and life of Sulu. Nelson Canlas and my sister Maria Isabel wrote the first about my childhood; Nelson and I wrote the second together. Both are printed in Tagalog, English and Bahasa Sug, so a child in Manila and a child in Jolo can read the same page.
“Your heritage is your strength. Your story is your greatest ingredient.”