Bishop's entrepreneurial spirit inspires this restaurant to rise above the rest

MANILA, Philippines - For some time now, a college friend and I have been meeting for lunch in Ristorante de la Mitre, a Filipino-Italian restaurant along Calle Real in Intramuros.

At first we liked going there because we were always welcomed with smiles and were always well-attended to. Later on, however, we found more reasons to come back.

The first time my friend took me there, I noticed she was speaking very softly to the waiter and shaping the words carefully, at the same time pointing to the item on the menu.

I did the same without asking. “He’s going to think we’re treating him like an idiot,” I told her.

“No, he won’t. He can’t hear us,” she replied.

When the waiter came back, he set the table efficiently. When he was done, he took a quick glance around the room and, spotting a raised hand, he was off to take the order of another customer. Interesting.

On my next visit, I went there alone and I tried the same thing on a different waiter. I pointed to a cold coffee on the menu and stretched my lips as if they were made of gum. He nodded and asked if I wanted empanaditas to go with that. I was mortified. “Yes, please,” I said. “And, I’m sorry I thought...”

“Okay lang po, mam,” he laughed and was off.

Le Mitre is an establishment that gives deaf mutes equal opportunity as normal workers to earn a living. Students of hotel and restaurant management course having their internship in the restaurant are also initiated into a customer-oriented approach to service.

On a Saturday morning, when business was slow, café supervisor Evangeline Paras told me Le Mitre was originally intended to cater to the dining needs of bishops when they visit the office of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). Dumaguete Bishop John Du, who has an entrepreneurial spirit, came up with the idea of opening the café to the public.

In his own diocese, Du created stalls that he rented out to poor vendors at modest rates to help them earn a living.

In establishing the café, he partnered with his friend Elvira Go, who in turn, shifted the direction of the business to social entrepreneurship.

“Tita Elvie said we have to provide employment to the less privileged. So they will feel that they are not cast aside,” Sr. Vangie said.

The three deaf mutes who work in the café were scholars referred to them by De La Salle University chaplain Fr. Mike Garcia. They graduated from a diploma course in the College of St. Benilde called Bachelor in Applied Deaf Studies Specializing in Entrepreneurship.

Before entering the scholarship program, they have done menial jobs in various companies. Vergel Lescabo, who was born deaf, had worked as a dishwasher in a Jollibee branch. John Joseph Virina, who became deaf when he was seven years old, had done minor jobs in information technology firm KLG, while Nepthali Gonzales, also born deaf, was a clerk in the municipal hall of Santo Tomas, Batangas.

In Le Mitre, they were entrusted with regular waiting jobs both inside the restaurant and in catering for events. They are also in charge of keeping track of the inventory in the stockroom.

Sr. Vangie said integrating them into the daily grind of the café was not that difficult because they had already been trained.

The normal employees have also accepted as one of them.   “It’s nice because the other employees taught John to make sounds. So, sometimes he can say ‘good morning.’ In turn, they (deaf employees) taught them sign language,” she said.

“They are used to working already because they have been trained. They know the things they should help with,” she said.   

Le Mitre opened on July 28, 2010 with a small menu, limited implements, and a humble expectation of the number of diners.

“The number of people was unexpected. We expected 30 to 50 persons. Tita Elvie expected 70, but it was a hundred!” said Sr. Vangie. “So when people kept coming in, we lacked dining implements, so we kept washing dishes. After that, we decided to expand and buy more implements. Now we have more than 100 customers everyday.”

The menu soon expanded as bishops requested dishes to be included in the menu. Le Mitre now also has a catering capacity for 300 persons.

Sr. Vangie takes prides in the healthy preparation of items in the menu.

She herself finished home economics in a provincial college and was the manager of the official residence of then Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal before she ran Le Mitre.

She recalls that the bishop is fond of sinful treats like crispy pata, kare kare, callos, and dinuguan. To keep him from falling ill, she learned to cook his favorite foods in the healthiest way possible.

“I studied healthy diet. Our goal back then was to make him happy while taking care of his health,” she said.

Sr. Vangie is especially proud of their mushroom-filled empanaditas that are flaky and tasty as if it were stuffed with pork.

“One way of evangelizing is for the diners to feel they are taken care of,” she said.

Aside from empowering disabled persons, Le Mitre also supports local coffee growers by buying coffee at a higher price than other retailers.

Before, they used imported coffee but have discovered the benefits of buying coffee from indigenous communities in Lagawe, Benguet, and Sagada.

“Coffee production is laborious, so if the product is bought cheap, their (farmers) labor is not compensated,” Sr. Vangie said.

Parish priests in the coffee growing regions buy beans for P300 to P350 per kilo, while other retailers buy beans for P75 per kilo.

Le Mitre is a young business that is still undergoing growing up pains. It presently has 14 regular employees and hosts as many as 12 students trainees for a certain time period.

The secret to its rapid expansion and staying power, Sr. Vangie said, is the importance that they place on service.

“From the time of the interview, I tell them that we work for service. Our difference from other restaurants is we carry the good name of the bishops,” she said.

The café is aptly named after the hat worn by Catholic bishops.

Their Tita Elvie, who remotely supervises the establishment, participates in the daily tasks whenever she’s around.

“When she visits, she attends personally to the guests. When she sees that there are tables that need to be cleared, she puts plates away. Sometimes, she goes grocery shopping with me in Divisoria,” Sr. Vangie said.

She also makes it a point to teach employees to take care of the business as if it were their own.

“When I give them a specific job, I trust them to do it. I also tell them to treat the restaurant as if it were their own,” she said.

In the next few months, Le Mitre will open a 30-seater coffee shop next to the main restaurant.