My 24-year food journey
MANILA, Philippines - A fter enjoying the Philippine STAR’s 24th anniversary edition last July 28, I was instantly reminded of my own journey that has, coincidentally, reached the same age, and how STAR Lifestyle editor Millet Mananquil was there documenting my own awesome ride from the beginning.
Perhaps the serendipitous events that conspired then were truly instrumental in allowing me to still be doing what I am doing today. Armed with that Jun de Leon glamour/mug shot portrait, Millet’s story recounted how my cooking days for friends in New York in the early ‘80s plus my short stint at Valentino Couture gave birth to my passion for cooking Italian. She told of my six-month immersion in Italy in late 1986, learning from the three Italian signoras — Masha Innocenti in Florence, Ada Parasiliti in Milano and Jo Bettoja in Rome — and how all that was supposed to convince Manila that I could really cook; it was a story to announce my debut via a food festival at Hugo’s in Manila’s Hyatt Regency.
I am grateful to Bubut Quicho, the Hyatt’s super GM then, for believing in me that night as I prepared my younger sister Bledes’ 21st birthday cocktail spread in the airplane of Rumors; his insistence that I do a food festival at the renowned Hugo’s gave birth to Italia in Bocca, a collaboration with the hotel’s Swiss-German executive chef Anton Weursch and Hugo’s chef Martin Kaspar in April of 1987. That was my first experience in a hotel kitchen and, adding that to having gotten my hands dirty at my uncle Jorge Araneta’s Trattoria Uno in Ali Mall some months before, I was blessed with the opportunity to learn more in a professional setting. Fortunately, the first run was successful enough to merit a second two-month one in October of 1987, Italia in Bocca II, and I guess the rest is history.
The ROAD to CIBO
The next 10 years saw me earning my stripes by doing small dinners first for family and friends, then soon after for others, who were convinced enough to take a chance on my cooking.
It was just me and longtime assistant Imelda, with guidance from supportive friend Chef Myrna Segismundo of PCI Bank’s Sign of the Anvil, and a small team of helpers carrying our pots and pans and doing our thing in our clients’ private kitchens. Thank goodness all of our clients then were supportive and forgiving enough to understand when things weren’t perfect. It was at this time that I realized that doing well in the food business had a lot more to do with having discipline and learning about commitment, than just the front-of-the-house glamour of serving up good food and setting a nice table. Being in my mid-20s and still enjoying late nights partying, the challenges I encountered catering these small-scale dinners, and eventually more daunting events, forced me to make a choice: Was this just going to be a hobby, or was I going to buckle down and finally get my act together? My deepest gratitude goes to all those very kind and understanding clients, and they know who they are. If not for them, I probably would not even have had the gumption to enter the restaurant business. In the catering trade, you can choose the nights you work, but opening a restaurant is a permanent commitment — much like a marriage. Maybe this is why it took me a decade to even think of opening the first Cibo in 1997.
CIBO THROUGH 13
The Italian cafes and bars serving up grilled panini and tramezzini in Rome and Milan made such an impression on me that I wanted to share that experience with Manila. With the fast-growing mall scene, I knew I wanted this Italian café concept to be in a mall setting, offering up good food with good prices, good enough to compete with the US franchise casual-dining concepts that monopolized the industry then. The only space available at Glorietta 3 was the open space fronting the closed entranceway to the Landmark department store. In hindsight, that open space concept with a tiny kitchen that the forward-thinking Ayala Malls leasing team took a great risk on, was the best place for Cibo to start! Although they warned me that I may have had to move to a different space in a year, with the forthcoming bridgeway opening, I am glad I did it! Moving to our current Glorietta 4 space in 1998, and coming full circle with nine more branches all over the metro and ending up at Greenbelt 5 still in the Ayala Malls with our 10th store is an absolute blessing. As we mark Cibo’s 13th year this Aug. 22, it is quite serendipitous again that, last night, just before I started writing this, I heard the familiar songs of Italian pop artist Laura Pausini at a friend’s home, the same music that has played endlessly in our stores and has had our all-Pinoy staff singing along in Italian all these years!
CAFÉ BOLA: A PINOY CIBO
When the family’s Araneta Center started its redevelopment with the Coliseum Circle in 2000, my fear was that a Cibo in the Cubao area would be a bit ahead of its time. (Cibo opened its Araneta Center branch, on home ground for me, finally with the opening of Gateway Mall in 2005.) The eureka moment of deciding to open a Pinoy version of Cibo came to both my boyfriend Alvin Lim and me, centered on his mom, Nena Lim’s (a.k.a. LVN actress Emma Alegre) delicious almondigas meatball recipe, topped with a choice of sauces on big bowls of rice. Starting to do Filipino food again came by chance. The pasta with taba ng talangka concept that I started with my Hugo’s festival crab ravioli, inspired by a seafood ravioli tasted on a side trip to Venice many years earlier, we could now make again, but pasta with Pinoy ingredients more readily available to the market with this less-intimidating Pinoy-comfort food concept. Again, quite indirectly, this new passion and rediscovery of our own cuisine was awakened.
CATERING NOT JUST ITALIAN
From offering up just Italian spreads, our catering repertoire started to include Filipino menus, and consistently highlighted Philippine produce. Slowly our clientele started to discover that we could do elegant, modern Filipino cuisine, especially when hosting foreign guests. Blessed with the opportunity to prepare the appetizers for Jackie Ejercito and Beaver Lopez’s wedding reception at Malacañang, it was an honor to collaborate with the mentor of all of us who are in this exciting industry, Tita Glenda Barretto and her Via Mare team. Perhaps the chance to work to put Philippine cuisine on the map helped awaken this new advocacy. With the even bigger blessing to continue catering during President Arroyo’s administration, this passion to help bring our cuisine and our produce to new heights grew more and more. From doing the Barrio Fiesta for President George Bush’s state visit, to being part of the President’s state visit to Spain, these opportunities to do our country proud were absolute milestones for me. Even more daunting, catering on the stage of the CCP and doing it for three consecutive years brought a new dimension to our work. Preparing food on the wings of the stage, in a set, with our wait staff parading as part of the performance, was perhaps the most unforgettable feat to date.
PEPATO, THE SHOWCASE
Thus opening Pepato in 2003 was a natural progression, allowing us a venue that could showcase our signature catering operation. It also became the home of my peppermill collection that I started amassing during that 1986 study trip to Italy, after learning from Signora Innocenti the difference of the aroma of freshly ground pepper. I always knew that one day, I would open a fine-dining restaurant that would be a gallery for these grinders… and I knew it was not Cibo. And because my paternal grandfather’s name was “Pepe,” also Italian for pepper, I figured honoring my paternal grandparents, who loved to dance and entertain, would be a perfect fit in this place. That’s why my Wowo Pepe’s portrait is our main menu cover and my Wawa Angie, from the famous dancing Geronimo clan, graces our dessert menu cover, in her graceful dancing pose.
With classic Italian cuisine as the restaurant’s backbone, presenting Filipino ingredients alongside the best of Italy and the world is the heart of Pepato, Cibo di M. Our most successful novel concepts, inspired by discerning catering clients who always want something new, found their way into the Pepato repertoire. From the pasta flambé in the Parmigiano wheel, to shock-value creations like a foie gras crème brulee as a starter, to savory ingredients like peperoncino or white truffle, or even alcoholic ones like Cerveza Negra flavoring our gelato. Pairing the best prosciutto with a chico sorbetto instead of the classic prosciutto and figs, or parmigiano-reggiano with guava jelly instead of an imported honey, or the lowly itlog na maalat with truffle oil overdoing the usual egg and truffle pairing.
When we were awed by a visit from my absolute idol Mario Batali in 2005, our fresh pappardelle with that pairing of itlog na maalat and truffle oil was what we served him, together with our lamb shank balsamico adobo, and our polenta-crusted pig’s trotter, our take on crispy pata! I can still see and hear myself, running into Pepato’s kitchen to seek cover and scream out of sheer nerves, and stop my heart in my throat from leaping out! The Pepato kitchen team understood what I felt, although they may have thought I was flipping out. He autographed not only my Batali cookbooks but also the cook’s chef’s jackets for posterity. Together with Nigel Barker, Batista the wrestler, Rocco di Spirito, Lou Diamond Phillips and Tia Carrera, we will always remember all of the good food enthusiasts, our priceless Manila clientele of diners who we have had the great blessing to serve on our Pepato tables.
CHANGING TIMES
As I journey on, Manila’s dining scene has weathered many a changing climate. As a reflection of the economic climate, diners are more magnetized by less intimidating, smaller, homey spaces. Because of the lure and attraction of going into the restaurant business, competition has also become more intense — a far cry from when I started 24 years ago. It is heartwarming to see more young Filipinos wanting to express their creativity by working for long hours on their feet in a hot kitchen, discovering the dignity and honor of working with one’s hands. Even Alain Ducasse has seen the potential of the Filipino chef!
Responding to the exciting new market’s demands but still maintaining that passion for offering something new, I took the chance to grow my new baby Lusso in a tiny gem of a space fronting the awesome Greenbelt garden, standing with honor beside the Ayala Museum. In a luxe shopping and dining environment, Lusso’s large Murano chandelier that used to adorn The Manila Peninsula’s ballroom a few decades ago, shines. The wait staff, in white cotton jackets and black ties, bring back memories of Cafe de Flore in Paris, Harry’s Bar in Venice or even the Hong Kong Peninsula’s iconic lobby, where the strawberry milkshake and the burger will be forever etched in my memory. The chance to do this Old World concept in 2010 is a challenge, but to be able to serve up champagne by the glass with a conscience is an absolute joy.
It is also the time for Pepato to bid farewell to our theater-style Jorge Yulo gem and reinvent itself in the near future. The concept will forever be — and will find — a new home.
As a reflection of the changing times and the dining scene all over the world, “pop-up” guerrilla concepts in unlikely locations like people’s homes or warehouses are mushrooming all over. Enter The Commissary — our new home, a laboratory at Whitespace, a warehouse venue space with edge. Apart from our real commissary, here resides Fiori di M’s atelier and Casa di M’s as well, a new line of things for the table and the home. Gastroteca di M, the delicatessen and traiteur line that will make it easier to take our fresh pasta, breads, dips, dressings, salts, sugars and unique artisan produce from all over the Philippines into our clients’ kitchens and onto their tables, is also in the works here. Together with many other green vendors and artisans, we are a permanent fixture at the Whitespace Greenmarket, an indoor market, on every first Sunday of the month, starting Sept. 5.
With all this behind me to be thankful for, I look forward to many more years of learning, creating and giving back. As I live out another year, coming closer to celebrating a silver anniversary in this wonderful field, I look forward to even more serendipity.
