The Heart of Nana Bambi's
"We don't need the big cities and imported products. We have it all at our back door. We just need to remember how. This is the beginning and end of dependency. It's resilience at the heart of this project."
The Track Record
Before Nana Bambi's, before the Philippines, before any of this — there were 20 years of kitchens, pubs, and lodges in the most remote, difficult, and isolated places in Australia. No formal training. No backup plan. Just hard work and the refusal to give up.
Every single one of these places was "impossible." Too remote. Too small. Too far from supply. Too many things that could go wrong. And every single one of them worked.
20+
Years in hospitality & food service
10+
Remote venues operated
250
Meals per night — Daly Waters Pub
The Stories That Matter
Took on the poolside bar and kitchen. Even the head chef didn't think it would work.
No one believed it could be done. The head chef was unsure. No formal training. Just a guy who said "let me try."
Within three months: 70–80 meals a night, solo. Then took on the kitchen AND the bar in wet season. Then the restaurant too. All of it. One person.
Isolated for three months. The highway was 2 metres under water. No road in or out. The customers kept coming — by helicopter, by boat, any way they could — for the fishing and hunting. So Aido kept the kitchen open.
Termites chewed through the power cables from the generator. No electricity. No road. No supply trucks. Three months cut off from the outside world.
Cooked by candlelight. Got stock flown in by helicopter and brought in by boat. Never closed. The customers never stopped coming and the kitchen never stopped feeding them.
The most famous outback pub in the Territory. Middle of nowhere. Nearest real town is hours away. Population of the "town" — about 20 people on a good day.
250 people a night in peak season. Beef and barramundi. Every night. In a town with no people.
250 meals a night. Beef and barra. The show ran. People drove hundreds of kilometres to eat there. The pub IS the destination — just like Nana Bambi's will be.
Just up the road from Daly Waters. A truck stop on the Stuart Highway — one of the loneliest roads in Australia.
Ran the kitchen. Fed the truckies, the tourists, and everyone in between. High volume, no excuses, every day.
The smallest town in South Australia. Population 10. One pub. One dirt road. The Oodnadatta Track — one of the most remote roads in Australia.
Cool rooms that hadn't been used in years. Diesel generator as the only power source. Then a flood closed the only road in for months. No trucks. No supply. Nothing.
Opened and operated the kitchen against every possible odd. Had Cessna aeroplanes shopping for supplies in towns hundreds of kilometres away. Changed the menu daily — cooked what was available. The kitchen ran. The pub stayed open.
Remote outback Queensland. When the floods come, the town is cut off from the world.
No supply trucks for 6 weeks. Roads closed. Town completely isolated. Every other business was struggling.
Still kept the food coming. Changed the menu daily. Cooked what was available. 6 weeks, no stock, no problem. The kitchen never closed.
It wasn't just the outback. Byron Bay Brewery — one of the busiest venues on the east coast. Airlie Beach. Green Island off Cairns. Kununurra in the Kimberley. Darwin. Tour guide work up and down the coast.
High volume, high pressure, tourist-facing operations. Every climate, every condition, every kind of customer. From backpackers to grey nomads to fishing guides.
Cyclones. Floods. Hotels prepping for the worst. The power goes out, the roads close, and the city braces.
Made it through. Every time. Cyclone prep, flood prep, disaster management — it's not theory, it's lived experience.
Now Compare That to Bicol
Every place Aido has worked was harder than Inandawa. Every single one.
| Challenge |
Australian Outback |
Inandawa, Bicol |
| Nearest town |
Hours away (Daly Waters, William Creek) |
Ragay — 10 minutes |
| Road access |
Dirt tracks, closed by floods for months |
Highway 68 — sealed, open year-round |
| Power supply |
Diesel generator only (William Creek, Shady Camp) |
Mains electricity available |
| Supply trucks |
Cut off for weeks/months (Cunnamulla, William Creek) |
Daily deliveries possible from Naga, 1 hour away |
| Emergency resupply |
Cessna planes, helicopters, boats |
Phone call to Naga, truck arrives same day |
| Available workforce |
Almost nobody — you do everything yourself |
35,000 people in Ragay municipality |
| Customer base |
Tourists passing through (seasonal) |
Farming community + highway corridor (year-round) |
| Fresh produce |
Flown in by plane, shipped by truck from 500km+ away |
Grows in the backyard, 12 months a year |
| Climate for growing food |
Desert. Drought. Nothing grows without irrigation. |
Tropical. High rainfall. Everything grows. |
| Natural disasters |
Cyclones, floods, bushfire, drought — all experienced |
Typhoons — similar to cyclones. Already knows the drill. |
If he can run a kitchen by candlelight in a flooded camp with termite-eaten power cables and stock flown in by helicopter — he can run a hub on a sealed road 10 minutes from town with mains power and a mobile phone signal.
What Nana Bambi's Actually Is
It is not a restaurant. It is not a shop. It is not a farm. It is all of them — connected.
- Feeds & Supply — processing local ingredients into affordable animal feed. Every farmer in the corridor needs this.
- Market — fresh produce, meats, dairy, specialty items. Things you can't get anywhere else between Ragay and Sipocot.
- Market Butcher — proper butchery. Our animals, processed properly, sold fresh.
- Panaderia — fresh bread, pastries, local favourites. Baked daily on site.
- Alejandro's Cafe — meals from our own kitchen, our own ingredients, our own recipes.
- Dairy — goat milk, cow milk, buffalo milk. Cheese, butter, cream. Made here, sold here. Partnership with BFDC in Pili for pasteurisation.
- Deliveries — reefer truck takes our products to Ragay, Sipocot, Libmanan, Naga. We go to the customer.
- Livestock — cattle, goats, buffalo, chickens, pigs. Every animal has a job. Every animal improves the land.
- Regen Gardening — vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, food forest. Grown regeneratively, no chemicals.
Everything connects. The farm feeds the kitchen. The kitchen feeds the market. The market feeds the community. The community feeds the farm. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is imported that we can make ourselves.
To the Family
I know this sounds big. I know it sounds like a dream. I know you've heard promises before from people who never delivered.
But look at the track record. Not plans — results. Kitchens opened in places where nobody thought it was possible. Floods, cyclones, termites, no power, no road, no stock — and the kitchen never closed. Not once.
What I'm asking you to believe in is not a stranger's promise. It's Aileen's husband. It's the father of your grandchildren. It's a man who has spent 20 years learning how to make something from nothing in the hardest conditions Australia can throw at him.
Bicol has everything. The land. The water. The climate. The people. The ingredients. The market. All that's missing is someone stubborn enough to put it together and never give up when it gets hard.
I've been through floods, cyclones, drought, and fire. I cooked by candlelight when the termites ate the power cables. I had Cessna planes bringing groceries when the roads were underwater for months. I served 250 meals a night in a town with 20 people.
Inandawa has a sealed highway, mains electricity, a town 10 minutes away, and the most fertile land I've ever seen. This is the easiest place I've ever worked. And this time, I'm not working for someone else's pub — I'm building something for our family. For our children. For this community.
This is not about making money. This is about showing Bicolanos that we don't need to depend on Manila, on imports, on big corporations. Everything we need is right here. We just need to remember how. That's what Nana Bambi's is.
What Happens First
Not everything at once. One step at a time. Just like every kitchen before this one.
- Land title confirmed — Aileen is handling this. It's the foundation.
- September 2026 — boots on the ground. Survey the land. Meet Benedict Almario at DA Ragay. Meet the barangay captain. Introduce ourselves properly.
- One concrete slab. One roof. One feeds store. That's the first build. Not 12 spokes — one. Prove it works.
- First bag of feed sold. First farmer drives in. First cash in the register. That's when everyone will see it's real.
- First staff member hired. One salary paid from the operation. That changes everything.
- Then we grow. Slowly. Carefully. One spoke at a time. The same way every kitchen before this one started — small, and then it wasn't.
Named for
Nana Bambi — Aileen's grandmother. The woman who fed the family from the land. The woman who knew how. This is her legacy, rebuilt for the next generation.