Discovery Suites’ David Pardo de Ayala has a little kitchen helper

MANILA, Philippines - She snacks on black olives. She likes the taste of raw basil. She eats pesto by the spoonful and she loves “stinky” cheese. She’s hooked on bitter chocolate.

Nothing unusual in all of that, except that Sofia is only five years old, and these are not the kinds of foods that would usually appeal to a child.

“She has a unique sense of taste,” says her dad, Discovery Suites’ resident manager David Pardo de Ayala. Before his present posting, he was corporate chef of the Discovery hotel group, which includes Discovery Suites in
Ortigas Center, Discovery Suites Tagaytay, and Discovery Shores in Boracay.

He doesn’t mind being called “Chef David,” despite the broader scope of his current responsibilities.

“It took me 20 years to earn that title,” he says of his successful career in the kitchen. He is also a “proud daddy,” a title he holds above all others.

“Sofia is a hotel baby,” chef David says, which should somehow explain her extraordinary food preferences. “She has a strong affinity to food. She grew up in an environment with constant references to food, cooking shows on TV and bookshelves filled with cookbooks.”

Living in a hotel, restaurant cuisine is everyday fare. “We always tell her to try something new,” says the doting father. But the best time for father and daughter are weekends, when they get to cook together in the kitchen. “It has become a tradition,” Chef David says.

Sunday night is cheese night, when they enjoy all sorts of cheeses. She calls it “Sofia’s Fromage.” Where did she learn such a big word? From her favorite TV animation series about a fictional mouse, Angelina Ballerina. She loves breads such as sourdough batard. Her food favorites cover a wide range, from tonkatsu to spicy dilis.

For her birthday last May, she held a culinary-themed party where her friends learned to make pizza and meatballs. “But they did not know how to knead the dough,” Sofia relates. “They were rolling the dough when they should be pushing. And it should not be oval. It should be flat, like a
pancake,” she says, sounding like a pro.

“Kids like using their hands. It’s very playful, very tactile,” chef David observes. “Kids also like to work with yeast. Seeing the dough rise for them is magical.”

Chef David’s own first foray in the kitchen was when he was 10, using Pillsbury pastry ready mixes. His first attempt at making lemon crepes was a disaster, he recalls. Fortunately, his mom was able to turn it into something edible. She was an accomplished cook, he says, as was
his grandma. “She was a living repository of Colombian cooking.” His only regret is that he did not get to learn from them.

David studied at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York where he met his future wife, Janelle Rodriguez, who was also studying at CIA at that time. He came to the Philippines in 1997, “with the bold recklessness of youth,” he recalls. He worked as a chef for a number of prestigious restaurants before he joined the Discovery
Suites in 2005.

He credits his wife for her patience in letting Sofia try new things in the kitchen while she keeps a watchful eye. “Letting kids do things increase their self-confidence,” he says. David also likes to take videos of his hija unica, which he sends to his relatives in Bogota, Colombia where he was born. Sofia is the first apo and only girl, he says. They were three boys in the family.

A video stored in his cell phone shows Sofia making pesto, which she annotates casually. “A pine nut fell,” she says directly into the camera without missing a beat. She’s a natural. Thus, the concept for a TV show was born.

Featuring chef David and little chef Sofia, Kitchengarten “offers more than the usual instructional cooking. It is a unique lifestyle family and educational program featuring recipes designed to be simple enough to be prepared at home, with possible adult-supervised involvement of children,”  David explains. He’ll invite a friend to talk about mushrooms, for example, or the history of pizza. Or an episode could feature salt, the only “rock” you can eat, he says. Kitchengarten will have its premiere airing on June 26 on Cignal TV.

Father’s Day today is another special day. Being in the hospitality industry, however, David finds himself working, even more so on a day such as this day, much the same way as on Christmas or Valentine’s Day. Discovery Suites offers a special Father’s Day package as well as special offerings at 22 Prime, Restaurant 5, Serendipity Lounge, Terra Wellness Spa and Balance Fitness Club, all for the most special man in the family.

“You never know how it will rattle your world until it happens,” says David on the subject of fatherhood. “There is no happiness like it. Nothing compares to the enjoyment from family.” For Sofia, this is his wish: “I want, when the time comes, that she will be as fortunate as I was.
My mission in life is clear — the happiness and well being of my wife and daughter. Everything else is secondary.”

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For inquiries and reservations, call Discovery Suites at (02) 719-8888 or e-mail: rsvn@discovery.com.ph.