Chefs Ahoy!

One of the most arresting TV commercials these days presents ice cream as a work of art, as created by three “designer” chefs.

In this Selecta Gold commercial, the first of a series, three chefs — Rolando Laudico of Chef Laudico Bistro Filipino, Sau del Rosario of Chelsea Market and Café and J. Gamboa of Cirkulo — present three luxurious offerings: Chocolate Truffles, Hazelnut Brownie and Berry Strawberry, respectively.

The commercial itself is the Gucci of other ice cream commercials: it sells something luxurious, opulent and tinged with guilt. It sells something that is an indulgence, and God knows that in these times of swine flu and recession, we need indulgences (and not just the spiritual kind) to jump-start our days and wind-down our nights.

Interestingly, the Selecta Gold Series Commercial has given the three chefs celebrity status. Chef Sau says that his friends at Facebook jumped from 60 to 600 (some with interesting proposals, to say the least), while Chef Rolando, while jamming with a rock band, was asked by two pretty teenagers if they could have a picture with him. Rolando agreed, thinking it was because he sang well. Imagine his surprise when the girls told him it was because they were thrilled to pose with the Chocolate Truffle ice cream chef!

Chef J, for his part, notices that even in his Thai restaurant Azuthai, patrons would ask for Berry Strawberry for dessert, even if it is not on the menu (it is now, by special demand).

I caught up with the three chefs at Chelsea Market, which Chef Sau started and still runs, because I wanted a front row seat to what was a Fashion Watch of sorts. Except that was paraded before me was good food and ice cream, crafted with the genius of an artist.

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All three chefs were exposed to the kitchen at a young age. Sau is Kapampangan and would bake brownies as a child. Rolando, the only boy in a brood of three, would tag along with his mom to the market, and was more interested in the kitchen than his two older sisters. J lived in a house on top of the family-owned Milky Way Restaurant in the San Rafael district of Manila, and spent summers helping out in the restaurant. “Whether we liked it or not, we knew what was going on in the restaurant. During summer vacation, we’d work in the restaurant, making the halo-halo, serving juice, opening softdrinks, selling candy, manning the cash register.”

All three went beyond their love of food and cooking and made it their life aside from their living. “At the time I decided to become a chef, this (becoming a chef) was not something that people with a college degree pursued,” says J, who is now in his late thirties.

But the three men were adventurous and visionary and saw cooking as an art, not just as a means to satisfy hungry stomachs (although the end result was the same.) Chef Rolando went to the Culinary Institute of America, Chef Sau went to the South of France to specialize in French food and became a protege of numerous Michelin-star chefs such as Jacques Divellac and Christian Plumail, and Chef J also went to the Culinary Institute of America.

Here are excerpts from our three-in-one feast of an interview:

So what are your indulgences?

Chef J: Me, the gym. I go to the gym three times a week. If I don’t go, I don’t feel good.

Chef Sau: I like traveling. I think I’ve been to quite a few cities around the world. But I’ve never traveled around the Philippines. So now, I’ve been doing that. I’ve been to Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Camiguin, Tacloban, Iloilo, Bacolod, Boracay.

Chef Rolando: I like to eat. And drink. I like wine, beer, pretty much everything.

If you didn’t become a chef, what would you have been?

Chef J: An engineer, because when I was a little boy I loved playing with Lego blocks and building things from scratch.

Chef Sau: A film director

Chef Rolando: A rock star.

Who would you like to cook for?

Chef Sau: I want to cook for former President George W. Bush. He made bad decisions — probably if he tried my food, he would have made better decisions.

Chef J: I’d like to cook for the Pope.

Chef Rolando: Any head of state.

What Filipino food would you serve to world leaders like Bush or the Pope? For a state dinner?

Chef J: Filipino food is not really my specialty eh. So pag ganyan, I will call Sau...

Chef Sau: I would feed them Pampango food because it’s something unique. I would make them eat buro or sinigang na isda sa guava. Paco salad with lots of prawns. I would let him try sisig with foie gras on top.

Chef Rolando: For appetizers, I would serve them sisig. Our sisig in the restaurant is stuffed in a crispy rice basket. And it’s in a shot glass that you shoot it with a quail egg. For the main course, I’d definitely serve seafood with either a shrimp sauce or taba ng talangka sauce. I would like to elevate Filipino food and make it world class and take it to a higher level.

So how did you come up with your designer ice cream concoctions?

Chef Sau: I’m a brownie person, you know, something I grew up with. My mom likes to bake brownies, I even sold them to my classmates when I was a child.

So when Selecta came to me and asked, what flavor do you like? I said, can we put brownies?

And I’ve always liked hazelnut, the king of the nuts. So I said why don’t we do hazelnut brownies? So I came up with a mouthwatering mixture of hazelnut paste and rich chocolate ice cream laden with moist fudge brownies.

Chef Rolando: I love chocolates. And my wife and I do our own handmade Belgian chocolate truffles in the restaurant. We insist only on Belgian chocolates and we infuse them with flavors like calamansi, lemon grass, mangga, Filipino flavors. But for the ice cream, we used only unadulterated Belgian chocolate.

Chef J: Honestly, I also wanted to do chocolates, but since they were already doing chocolates, I decided to do something with my favorite fruit, plump and sun-ripened strawberry, which is really an indulgence for most Filipinos. I wanted to freshen up an old favorite and I concentrated on upping the luxe factor by giving it a creamy smoothness.

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According to John Concepcion, Selecta’s managing director, working with the three chefs was essential in making the Gold Series “truly luxurious, an unforgettable treat.”

We have luxury cars, designer bags, even blue-chip stocks.

But for the indescribable sweet luxury of ice cream, so fleetingly good it melts as you savor it, why not go for luxury as well?

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You may e-mail me at [email protected]