Woman on Top of the Citi

AT the top of the Citi, on the Penthouse level of Citibank Tower in Makati, executives who breathe the rarefied air of big business gather for power lunches and close million-peso (as well as -dollar) deals over dinner. Keeping these business bigwigs happy is no simple task, but Chef Flora takes it all as part of a day’s work.

Young enough to be the daughter of her discriminating businessmen clients, this cute little 30-year-old chef called Florabel Co has earned their respect as a seasoned chef, so much so that the clients just leave their food choices for their daily fare and special functions to her.

Chef Flora has worked for this Le Souffle-run outlet for six years now. The same attention to detail CEOs have for their spreadsheets and budget forecasts, Chef Flora has for each client dining at the Top of the Citi: she knows their preferences and allergies by heart. During our interview, a waitress comes up to ask what bread a certain lawyer liked. Without missing a beat, she answers, "Wheat bread with strawberry jam." And that’s not all. Knowing a certain lawyer who frequented the Top of the Citi was attending a function they were catering, she prepared a dressing without garlic and pepper for him, remembering his allergy to both ingredients present in the vinaigrette.

She even knows if the guest prefers distilled, mineral, hot or cold water to go with his meal. She makes a mental note of these details and always checks the orders once they are posted in the kitchen. Her meticulous attention to detail goes beyond the food. Noticing the Nora Jones CD playing she asks, "Ako pumili niyan, ok ba?" The trio of ostrich eggs arranged on a handcrafted bowl is her purchase from a friend with a farm in Cagayan de Oro. Personal touch seems to be her middle name.

Nancy Reyes, a frequent judge of cooking contests, calls her a "hustler sa competition". Chef Florabel is a veteran in cooking contests as she has joined at least ten in her young culinary life, often winning the top prizes. She sees it as a fun activity where she wins things for her kitchen and prize money for doing what she loves to do–cook. As a high school teenager at ICA, the enterprising Flora baked boat tarts and chocolate crinkles to sell to her classmates. The very first cake she baked she merely dumped all the ingredients into a bowl. To her dismay, it was a flop. Undaunted, she read cookbooks to find out what went wrong and tried baking again. "The best teacher is experience," she firmly believes.

Unlike many who seek international culinary education, this graduate of UST values long hours of work as the more valuable training. After her practicum and one year of work at Via Mare, it has been six fruitful years under Jessie Sincioco of Le Souffle. Jessie saw her "strong leadership quality" early on, and has been overseeing the Top of the Citi for five years now. She represented the Philippines in the Mandarin Hotel Singapore’s Filipino food festival celebrating the Philippine Centennial. She has been part of Le Souffle’s catering team for many banquets, including the Aga Muhlach-Charlene Gonzales, Ruffa Gutierrez-Yilmaz Bektas weddings and the recent debut of KC Concepcion.

While Le Souffle has adequately instilled in Florabel the discipline of Western cuisine, it is cooking Filipino food she loves best. She has added a Filipino Corner to the menu at the Top of the Citi. Elevating the quality of home-cooked dishes to match the sophisticated taste of her diners, she uses only the best ingredients: prime rib eye for her Bistek Tagalog, prawns for her kare-kare, salmon for sinigang. Her Chef’s Award Winning Chicken Adobo, a boneless chicken leg topped with tomato and grated kesong puti, has become a hands-down favorite, even among expats and foreigners.

She is driven to use more locally available yet often-overlooked products like tilapia and hito. Elevating the lowly hito into "Grilled catfish in tamarind soy sauce with bitter gourd salad" garnered her top distinction in the Pinoy Nouvelle Cuisine Competition in 2002. Guided by the three m’s–masarap, malinamnam and malasa–she won the Battle of the Champs that same year. Her culinary innovations stretch the boundaries of old favorites: her Saba Empanada Halo-halo marries the sweet flavor of the plantain pastry with the halo-halo’s varied ingredients, accompanying leche flan ice cream and halayang ube accent. This nouvelle dessert and her Turon Leche Flan consistently wow guests at functions.

Pinning Chef Flora down for an interview is no easy task. I arrived at the Top of the Citi at the appointed time only to find her missing. She apologized, having to rush to the hospital with a chef requiring a heart procedure. When our interview and photo shoot finally took place, we were disrupted by a staff meeting, a future bride walking in to check out the restaurant, some friends dropping by, a phone call to a doctor about an employee’s sibling, and even several celebrities calling to say hello. All that and she even managed to pamper me with an outpouring of culinary creations. This woman is really on top of things!