Rizza Umlas

The Climb

Bar work teaches pressure in public: the hand has to stay accurate, the room has to be read, and the guest has to feel accounted for without slowing service. In Rizza Umlas’s move into co-ownership of Storya Kitchen + Bar, those same working habits remain visible: composure under load, a feel for pace, and the understanding that a good night depends on more than the drink in the glass. The progression is a widening of the same trade practice. Bartending trained Umlas to recognize comfort quickly at the counter; ownership asks for that same read across the full room and the neighborhood outside it. The craft shifts scale, but the operating question stays the same: what lets people settle in and stay?

Today

Co-ownership at Storya Kitchen + Bar in Quezon City, Philippines, gathers the main parts of Umlas’s work into one operating frame: bartending, neighborhood hospitality, and the practical belief that access affects the night as much as the food or drink. Place matters in this model. Storya Kitchen + Bar is positioned against the ordinary frictions of moving through the city: traffic, parking, distance, and time. In that context, service starts before the order. It starts with whether guests can reach the room without spending the night fighting the city first. The food note attached to the venue is specific. Umlas described N.Y.O. Braised Beef as the newest item at Storya Kitchen + Bar, with the invitation, "Come and enjoy our newest item, N.Y.O. Braised Beef. And don't forget to not feast on by yourself!" The line frames the dish as part of the room’s social function: food made to be shared, not treated as a solitary plate. The current work reads as an extension of bartending rather than a departure from it. The bar trained Umlas to manage comfort in real time; the Quezon City project applies that discipline to gathering, travel, and the conditions that let guests feel local to a place.

Signature

N.Y.O. Braised Beef is listed among Rizza Umlas’s signature dishes. In this profile, it functions as a menu marker and a hospitality cue: introduced through an invitation, built for company, and tied to the social life of Storya Kitchen + Bar.

In Their Words “We saw the struggle of QC residents in going to different bars. They had to endure traffic, parking, etc.” “Come and enjoy our newest item, N.Y.O. Braised Beef. And don't forget to not feast on by yourself!”

Recognition

TGIFridays’ World Bartender Championship (2016) and TGI Fridays World Bartender Champion (2015) place Umlas’s background squarely in competitive bartending. The recognition matters here because it identifies the technical base beneath the room work: speed, accuracy, performance under pressure, and guest-facing control now carried into Storya Kitchen + Bar.