PAN: A New Culinary Language by Chef Reverdy Pineda
How Chef Reverdy Pineda brings Filipino hospitality, Japanese technique and Scandinavian ingredients to the same table in Norway
Words by Mye Mulingtapang | Photos courtesy of Pan
A conversation with Chef Reverdy Pineda about heritage, hospitality, and the courage to start a new chapter
There's a particular kind of confidence it takes to walk away from something that already works. Bread N Butter had the loyal customers, the reputation, the years of trust built loaf by loaf. By most measures, that should have been enough. Instead, its founder, Chef Reverdy
Pineda, decided to start again — not by abandoning the bakery, but by building something new beside it. That decision became PAN, a Japanese-brunch-meets-Filipino-hospitality concept that has quietly turned into one of the more thoughtful culinary stories coming out of
Scandinavia's food scene. Talking to Pineda, the chef behind both concepts, what stands out isn't a single clever idea or a signature dish. It's a worldview — one shaped by bread dough and business risk in roughly equal measure, and stitched together from three very different places: the Philippines, Japan, and Norway.
"PAN isn't about leaving Bread N Butter behind. It's really a new chapter — an opportunity to take everything we've learned from the bakery and push it in a different direction."
Why start something new when something already works?
Bread N Butter, by Pineda's own account, had always leaned B2B — a business built on wholesale relationships and consistency rather than direct guest experience. PAN was conceived as the opposite: a B2C playground, a place to experiment with savoury cooking, Southeast Asian flavours, coffee culture, and the kind of atmosphere that can't really exist inside a wholesale bakery model.
That distinction matters, because it reframes PAN not as a pivot away from failure or boredom, but as a natural extension of a bigger appetite — one that had simply outgrown the format it started in. Pineda wanted PAN to feel personal and a little unexpected, while keeping the same commitment to craft that built Bread N Butter's reputation in the first
place.
When a bakery becomes a hospitality project
Ask most chefs when their restaurant "became more than a restaurant," and you'll often get a rehearsed answer. Here, the response feels genuinely unplanned. The realization, as it's described, crept in gradually — through decisions about music, tableware, colour, and coffee, rather than through any single lightbulb moment.
What ties it together is an idea rooted specifically in identity: Filipino hospitality, brought into a Scandinavian dining room by two people who are, in Pineda's words, "both ethnically Filipinos." That's not incidental branding. It's the operating principle. Guests aren't simply served food; they're welcomed the way you'd welcome someone into a home, and every design choice — down to the plates — is meant to reinforce that feeling rather than distract from it.
The goal, as stated plainly, is for people to remember not what they ordered, but how the space made them feel: warmth, a little joy, the sense of having been genuinely taken care of. It's an old hospitality instinct dressed in new packaging — and arguably harder to execute than any dish on the menu.
“We weren’t simply creating another bakery or café — we were creating a complete hospitality experience.”
Discipline makes the creativity possible
It would be easy to frame PAN as a purely creative project, but Pineda keeps returning to a less glamorous word: discipline. Baking, more than almost any other culinary craft, punishes shortcuts. Temperature, timing, and fermentation all compound on each other, and there's no faking your way through a proof that hasn't finished.
That same discipline, it turns out, transfers almost one-to-one into running a hospitality business. Good things take time. Small decisions — a recipe tweak, a staffing choice — ripple outward in ways that aren't always visible immediately. And crucially, leadership means resisting the urge to control everything personally.
“You need to trust your team, give people the right tools and guidance, and create an environment where they can take ownership.”
It's a lesson that shows up again in the daily rhythms of running the business: checking the food, the service, the small details, and — just as importantly — checking on the team. Inspiration might spark new ideas, but it's the unglamorous routine of showing up and paying attention that keeps a restaurant consistent enough for people to trust it, day after day.
Filipino roots, Japanese technique, Scandinavian ingredients: One culinary language
Japanese-inspired udon dishes offer another expression of the kitchen's international influences, co A colorful selection of pastries, cakes and drinks reflects the playful presentation and contemporar A thoughtfully composed salmon brunch dish highlights the kitchen's emphasis on fresh ingredients, J Smoked salmon, asparagus and carefully layered garnishes come together in a dish that reflects the a Pan Premium Bakery by Bread N Butter introduces a new chapter for Chef Reverdy Pineda, building on t A dark charcoal bun, crisp seafood and fresh vegetables create a striking contrast of textures in th
The most distinctive thing about PAN's food isn't any one influence — it's how naturally the three come together. Filipino heritage supplies identity and emotional grounding. Japanese cooking shapes technique, texture, and a certain restraint in presentation. Scandinavian ingredients and seasonality add a layer of simplicity that keeps the whole thing from feeling overstuffed.
None of this, Pineda is careful to note, is about mashing cultures together for novelty's sake. It's closer to translation than fusion — a Filipino flavour reinterpreted through a Japanese technique, or a familiar Asian ingredient paired against something distinctly Nordic.
“You develop your own culinary language by bringing together the things that have genuinely shaped you.”
It's a subtle but important distinction for anyone trying to understand why PAN's menu doesn't read like a gimmick. The dishes aren't there to prove a point about cultural fusion; they're there because, after years of testing, they simply feel true to who's cooking them.
What earns a place on the menu?
Given how many influences are in play, it would be easy for PAN's menu to sprawl. Instead, the filtering process is almost strict. New dishes go through repeated testing, adjustment, and tasting — but the real litmus test is far simpler than any technical checklist.
That single question does a lot of quiet work. It rules out trend-chasing. It forces every dish to justify its own existence rather than ride on novelty. And it explains why, according to Pineda, sometimes the simplest ideas are the ones that stay — while more elaborate concepts that look great on paper never make it past the tasting stage.
"The most important question we ask ourselves is: Would we genuinely want to order and eat this ourselves? If the answer isn't a strong yes, it's not ready."
Introducing Filipino baking to a new audience
One of the more compelling threads in this conversation is about Filipino baking specifically — a category Pineda believes is still largely undiscovered outside the Philippines, even as Filipino cuisine more broadly gains international attention.
Breads and pastries like pandesal, ensaymada, ube-based treats, and Filipino milk bread carry more than flavour; they carry memory, family, and everyday comfort. The opportunity, as described, isn't to reinvent these traditions but to make them approachable to people encountering them for the first time — using the same techniques and cross-cultural instincts already shaping PAN's savoury menu.
“Once someone discovers ube, pandan, or a good Filipino-style milk bread, it can open the door to a much bigger appreciation of Filipino food and culture.”
A legacy measured in feeling, not bestsellers
Perhaps the most useful idea to come out of this conversation — for any chef or entrepreneur navigating heritage and reinvention — is Pineda's definition of authenticity. It isn't about freezing a tradition in place. It's about understanding where something comes from well enough that you can reinterpret it without losing its meaning.
That philosophy extends to advice for young Filipino chefs considering Europe as a next step: start with who you are before you start with a business plan. Bring your identity with you rather than editing it out to fit a new market. Stay humble enough to learn the realities of a different culture and economy, but don't mistake humility for erasing yourself.
Asked what he'd want remembered decades from now, Pineda doesn't reach for a signature dish or a business milestone. He reaches for an idea about identity itself — that heritage and reinvention aren't opposites, and that you can honour where you come from while still building something entirely your own.
“Dishes come and go. What stays is the feeling, the story, and the courage to create something that is truly your own.”
It's a fitting closing thought for a chef whose career has been built on exactly that tension — between the discipline of tradition and the restlessness of reinvention — and who seems to have found, in PAN, a genuine answer to how the two can coexist on the same plate.
PAN and Bread N Butter continue as complementary concepts under Chef Reverdy Pineda — one rooted in bakery craft, the other in brunch, coffee, and a Japanese-Filipino-Scandinavian dining experience.
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