Digital Reporter
Lucia Edna P. de Guzman
Close your eyes and imagine Japan.
Are what come to mind their art and culture, their martial arts and their work ethic, all created with a silent but strong sense of discipline that governs their daily lives?
Or is it the opposite: the angst of the youth that bubbles underneath all that discipline, expressed through over‑the‑top street art, colorful devil‑may‑care fashion choices, deviant lifestyles, and almost everything and anything that they can think of as they fight the seemingly inevitable fate to be a part of the blue‑ or white‑collared workforce?
If the typical Japanese resto has an aesthetic that harks to the former, then Tetsuo—the spicy chicken karaage concept that began at Ateneo de Manila’s John Gokongwei Student Enterprise Center (JSEC)—reflect the latter. Tetsuo is the rebel youth screaming at the void, the one who doesn’t want to be like the others, and the one no one expected to be as large and as well known as they are today.
But that’s where SparkUp found Tetsuo and its co‑owners Sean Bautista and Timmy Jacob, at the jam‑packed DULO bar in Makati at 7 p.m., early on during Tetsuo’s kitchen takeover event where they served their chicken karaage with rice, cold soba, or steamed buns, alongside the bar’s usual menu. Loud music blasted from the speakers and scenes from ‘80s and ‘90s Japanese pop culture were projected on the concrete walls, while bar patrons and Tetsuo’s loyal customers munched on crispy‑on‑the‑outside‑but‑juicy‑on‑the‑inside umami chicken.
Bautista and Jacob, both 23 years old, have been friends since high school. Bautista graduated from Ateneo with a degree in graphic design, Jacob graduated from the University of the Philippines with a degree in economics. They both landed jobs in market retail, Bautista with a specialized sneaker brand and Jacob with a fashion retail brand. The other members of the Tetsuo team have entrepreneurship backgrounds. None of them came from a culinary course.
In 2015, when they were both students, they entered a contest mounted at the Mercato Centrale and placed in the finals. However, schoolwork and other concerns prevented them from managing their own stall at the night market. Since they were current and former students of Ateneo de Manila, having a stall in JSEC by 2016 was within their reach. Sometimes they would have pop up booths at different events, and found that they had developed a following of Ateneo students and people from former events. They have (spoiler alert) their own restaurant establishment in the works, to be opened this year, making their food more accessible to non‑Ateneo students.
“We’ve always wanted to open outside but JSEC was within arms reach,” Jacob told SparkUp in the sidewalk outside DULO, away from the noise and the crowd but still with enough material for Bautista to occasionally pause to snap a photo with his DSLR camera. “We knew the market so we just tried it out and did a killing there.”
“It was a good test for the concept to see if it would survive,” Bautista added. “And the brand got sort of a cult following inside Ateneo. People already saw it as something more, people thought that it could be a restaurant that could work outside.”
(At this point of the interview, a guest whom they personally knew came out from the bar to report that there were no seats left. Jacob’s response: “go HAM… hard as a m‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑!”)
“Tetsuo is a fried chicken concept where we wanted to elevate the fast food experience,” said Bautista. “We tried to infuse elements of hip‑hop culture, anime, generally things that we’re interested in, into this fast food concept, so that it’s palatable to the millennial audience. We’re kind of just friends hanging out, cooking food for each other. That’s the kind of vibe that we want to elicit.” (And it’s probably because of that friendly vibe that no violent riots were started for karaage.)
“We don’t just limit ourselves to just being sort of a Japanese restaurant even though it heavily inspires us,” Jacob continued. “So if you’ve noticed our signature karaage, which is usually served in other restaurants with mayo and togarashi, is served with gravy which is a little different. We put the different twist to our food.”
“It speaks about our brand being the amalgamation of different influences,” Bautista continued. (“I’ll send you a copy of your pictures,” he yelled at a customer driving off in her motorcycle as he waved goodbye.) “We test them out put them together to see what works and what sticks.”
Still, they were serious about their business and their brand. They weren’t satisfied with having a normal JSEC food stall. They held events. They sold graphic shirts that they themselves designed, and wore those shirts during the DULO event—Bautista’s was a black shirt with the Japanese kanji for Tetsuo in white on the lapel, while Jacob’s was a black shirt with a graphic content warning on the front and a chicken having an existentialist crisis on the back. They invited DJs to play music by their stall. “We didn’t let the stall inhibit us in our way,” Bautista said. “Even at JSEC we were kind of like changing the landscape.”
“Whenever the brand does pop‑ups outside Ateneo we would work with other groups that we feel influence our brand,” Jacob said, adding that they can be kind of picky when it comes to events. “Let’s say like there’s an event where streetwear culture is incorporated or other local brands, we still have people from Ateneo come to our events and say ‘Hey, I still remember your food. I want it. I miss the food, I want to have it again.’”
“I feel like people can relate to the brand in a sense and like the sort of image that we put out,” said Jacob.
What kind of image is that exactly? “We don’t try to think about it too hard,” said Bautista. “It’s just like a personification of us.”
“The brand is very much what we’re into but of course to make a business work you have to make your interests more relatable to the market,” explained Jacob, when asked about how they put their marketing backgrounds to good use in a food business.
“We treat these small events as marketing activations,” Bautista added. “We really make our money through physical locations like JSEC and what we’re opening in the future.” They’re also active on social media, which features their own designs, photographs, and anime screenshots of karaage.
What’s next on their quest for spicy, explosive, chicken‑y world domination? “Having our own restaurant is in the plans,” said Bautista. “We don’t want to give a specific date yet, but that’s definitely in the works, coming soon, but we feel like that’s the next step for the brand to grow and take over the world.”
