Filipi Lay, Business owner

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Resident of Yarraville

Local business owner of Manok

My passion with food comes from my Dad, as he was a chef himself. Growing up, I decided to follow in his footsteps and began training as a chef after I left high school. I am of Chinese-Timorese descent, and naturally have a background in Chinese food. I did my apprenticeship at William Angliss, and decided to challenge and expose myself to cooking fine dining and pub food.

I haven’t always lived in the West. Growing up in Melbourne, home was in Preston. I moved to the Inner-West ten years ago as my wife grew up here.

I used to run a Thai restaurant in Croydon, but for five years I drove back and forth from Preston and eventually just got tired of the commute. I sold the business and took about six months off.

During this time, I went back to my true love, which is landscape and wildlife photography. It’s not uncommon to see me with over 15kg of gear while walking in the bush!

I eventually went back to work, but working in other restaurants. Deep down I really wanted to run my own business, so when I wasn’t working I would go looking for a shop. This time, I wanted to be close to home, so decided on the Inner-West.

It took me a year to find this shop. This was originally an old charcoal chicken shop. When we took over the premises, I just had a good, gut feeling about the location. My wife and I spent three weeks cleaning and renovating, and could have opened on the fourth week. However, I wanted to fine-tune my menu and ensure my recipe is up to scratch.

Manok is Tagalog (Philippine dialect) for ‘chicken’. I was actually struggling to find a name for the shop. I knew I wanted something clean and simple, something that flows. But every name I came up with was taken up!

I was stressing a little, and one sleepless night, I said to my wife “Hey, how do you say ‘chicken’ in Tagalog?” Jazmin, who is Filipino, turned to me and said “Manok”. Hence, the name!

My original plan was to do an Asia-Pacific, Filipino-inspired, tapas-style food. However, I decided to try chicken first. Chicken naturally appeals to most people. It is also my favourite meat to cook.

Manok may be a takeaway shop, but I try to treat the food with respect and love. All my recipes, including the condiments and sauces are made from scratch. My beef burger consists of good quality cuts of meat. Traditionally all chicken shops have burgers, but I didn’t want to just throw up an ordinary burger.

Takeaway chicken shop usually has a stigma of being cheap and nasty and I try to avoid that. I use Bannockburn chicken, which gives Manok the branding and the customers are very switched on about it. Some people have asked me why not use a cheaper type of chicken, but that’s not my style. It’s important to serve the type of food that I enjoy eating.

My clientele come from all different backgrounds. One other thing that I really enjoy about this is being able to interact with them, which I never got the chance to during the days when I worked as a chef in the kitchen. A few foodie stars have even come in to sample my food, but being the simple man that I am, I don’t recognize them until they talk or write about it!

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