Take me to Carrera!

It’s a great line: "Let’s go have lunch then check out a couple of Porsches."

But that’s really how it works, for tucked within the glass-enclosed Porsche paradise that is PGA Cars along Edsa, close to the Ortigas Avenue intersection (on your right before you get to Ortigas if you’re southbound; northbound you’ll have to make a U-turn under the Boni Serrano/Crame flyover; or you can take the back entrance on Florida Street, where the neighborhood association might collect a parking fee), is Carrera Café, easily mistaken for a "guy thing" because of its decidedly macho/speed monster look. But the food knows no gender, and you can enjoy it even if your mode of transport is the MRT that rumbles by every so often. Just get over the initial intimidation of entering a showroom full of cars you cannot in a thousand years afford.

Carrera Café is half a level above the showroom, accessible via a circular staircase from the showroom floor where sit, at any given time, several toys for the Big Boys–really rich Big Boys, mind you. Bright yellow or sleek gold Porsches, shiny black BMWs–it’s enough to make a girl forget she’s a lady. But go on up for pleasures a lot more affordable, and drown your unrequited desires with some of the most delicious calories around.

Carrera’s menu is a work in progress, as chefs Jun Pascual and Edmund Kerr continue to experiment and test their creations with a select group of regulars and other willing patrons (like me). Head chef Jun is a self-made chef, starting out as a dishwasher at the old L’Orangerie at the corner of Edsa and Buendia; a great place to start a culinary career, if you ask me. This Bulacan native took the first step of his delicious career by buying a ballpen and notebook, and he watched the chefs around him do their thing.

Pretty soon he was promoted to the salad section, then the grill and then to the hot dishes. By 1986 he was in charge of the popular restaurant’s catering service, and among his clients was stockbroker and insurance executive Robert Coyiuto, Jr., who certainly knew a good thing when he tasted it. In 1990 Chef Jun set up kitchen at Coyiuto’s Prudential Guarantee penthouse, regaling insurance executives and close friends with his gustatory delights. When the Porsche dealership and PGA Cars came to be in 1997, and the idea for an in-house restaurant came up, it was iginuhit ng tadhana for Chef Jun to man the Carerra kitchen.

Among Carrera’s standard dishes, hands down a favorite (at least mine) is the roast duck with orange sauce, the skin so crisp it crackles like a fresh sheet of paper. And they don’t hold back on the portions here: you get a full half duck, end to end. If you can’t finish it, share–this is one dish that does not doggie-bag well.

On a recent visit we chanced upon a few new items on its second round of testing, and we gladly "volunteered" as taste-testers. We tried the paté, a rich blend of thyme, marjoram, sour cream and brandy that elevated "ordinary chicken liver lang po"–said Chef Jun–to something extra-ordinary. A crab salad and a shrimp cocktail did not excite our palate, but the fresh tomato soup with seafood certainly did–a tangy take on bouillabaisse, again a rather rich concoction that is best shared, so you have tummy room to enjoy the rest of the meal.

And boy, was I glad I did–leave room, I mean–because my stuffed roast pigeon was a real show- and appetite-stopper. A de-boned bird was filled with a simple but tantalizing stuffing of rice (Calrose, according to Chef Jun), black and green olives, Chinese chorizo and raisins (mercifully limited in number), then slow roasted and served with an orange sauce. The bird I had was roasted just right–skin crisp, meat succulent, stuffing flavorful with the juices and spices that did not overwhelm. I am embarrassed to admit I did not share this one; I cleaned the plate all by my gluttonous self.

My equally gluttonous friend had a stuffed pompano, also de-boned, first grilled then baked with a rich stuffing of crabmeat and julienned vegetables. She didn’t share either. There is a new veal loin dish I want to try that is grilled and then baked with mozarella cheese and fresh tomato and herbs. That’s certainly reason enough to go back.

I’d like to be able to say I discovered Carrera Café one day when I went car-shopping, but the truth is I heard about it from a friend of a nephew who has a friend who has his sports car serviced at PGA (if you take the back or service entrance you’re very likely to run into a number of Ferraris or maybe even a Lamborghini, at least a handful of Benzes and BMWs waiting to be attended to for the slightest imperfections; if you follow the circular drive–or take the car elevator–up to the top, you’ll find the cleanest repair shop this side of the track)–you get the picture: this is definitely not my regular tambayan. It took me a while to get around to actually going there, because hey–those shiny cars with their seven-figure price tags can be pretty intimidating.

But now I just let images of Porsches and BMWs dance in my head as I dig into my roast duck or stuffed pigeon, with the thought that though gluttony may lead to the Third Circle of Dante’s Inferno, the road down is paved with the most delicious delights.