REVIEW
20 years of gastronomic memories
By Martin Masadao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:13:00 09/08/2008
MANILA, Philippines - Flashback to 1991: the then five-year-old Feliz Perez, in a crisp and pristine white dress, runs to her mother ecstatically screaming: “Mom! You missed the parade!”
Trailing behind her, also in a white dress, is Lia Llamado. The two kids are all agog at the day’s energetic pace.
The scene is at Café by the Ruins, an hour or two after the opening of the Third Baguio Arts Festival at the Baguio Convention Center. A year after the devastating earthquake that shook Nothern Luzon.
Etched in my memory are Adelaida Lim, Feliz and Lia on that late afternoon. I remember thinking then how wonderfully resilient children could be despite the chaos, devastation and loss the whole of Baguio had to endure the past year. Indeed, a sign of only good times ahead.
August 23, 2008: Baboo Mondonedo plays host to the book launch of “Café by the Ruins, Memories and Recipes.” At sunset the café is filled with families, friends, guests and fellow foodies, as the now 22-year-olds Feliz and Lia together with the café’s “master” (in Baboo’s own words) Adelaida Lim, unveil their latest cookbook.
Ecstatic are the young author’s parents and siblings. Su Llamado had flown in from the US two nights ago and seems to be more nervous than her daughter. Karina Bolasco of Anvil Publishing gives a short speech welcoming everyone present at the launch, and exclaims how fortunate Anvil is yet again to publish another cookbook. Apparently, cookbooks have been a consistent bestseller for them in the past years.
Celestina Arvisu, “sister” to Feliz and Lia, and daughter of former café partner and owner Christine Arvisu, reads poetry to coincide as well with her exhibit of drawings. The second generation of Café kids are, indeed, taking center stage and taking over from the founding fathers and mothers of this venerable Baguio landmark.
As Laida Lim puts it: “We now pass on the torch to the next generation.” I can only surmise what the café’s transformation or direction will be in the next decade.
Staples
Remembering the book launch now, I take comfort that the food served included Café staples such as vegetable crudités, freshly baked crusty bread with liver paté and fish-roe paté. All these laid out on the pine table with the ever-familiar Cordillera weave runner on white table cloth, the wooden bowls and fresh flowers.
A nice addition to the above were the stickyballs, fried wontons in two variants (a meat filling and a vegetable one) and the refreshing and fragrant guava soda. It was so good that glasses were missing from the buffet table as soon as they were set. It was only Feliz’s dad, Butch, who gave it an acerbic verdict: “It lacks vodka!”
If the evening’s refreshments were any clue to how the café would evolve with the next generation, then we’re confident the classics would remain (liver pate, fresh bread, etc.) while new recipes would be introduced. But, still, following the café’s ethos that only fresh, in-season, organic (when available) produce would be served at the café. A true testament to its reverence for “slow food”.
Vivid
In the book, Lia Llamado’s recollections of growing up in the Café (their playground) playing with the other café kids and the artists who would come and go, is remarkably vivid and introspective with the sentimental hankerings of a childhood long past, but also with the musings and exactitude of a confident young woman.
Llamado’s poetry, dedicated to the artist Santiago Bose, and her essay on installation and visual artist Roberto Villanueva are intimate and reverence-filled.
“We Need Darkness to Appreciate Starlight” is Feliz Perez’s tribute to Christine Arvisu. The piece is poignant yet replete with insight. Respectful, emotionally restrained and also introspective.
The reader realizes that the bonds between the authors and the café’s habitués are borne not only by a common love for food but also simmered by values, friendship and love through the years. Feliz and Lia are the bouquet garni of Café by the Ruins.
The cookbook section is a cornucopia of the cafe’s bestsellers and former recipes served at the café in its 20-year history. The recipes are intriguing and mostly easy to follow—I think. Some recipes don’t have exact measurements, leaving room for the reader to imagine or actually tweak the recipe to suit his or her preferences. Or to further experiment with alternative ingredients.
Yes, the recipes for liver paté, fish-roe paté, kamote bread and guava soda are included in this edition. Also present are favorites like gado-gado salad which I believe has been in the menu since the café started in 1988.
Ditto Old Nick’s Open-Faced Sandwich with Nick Joaquin’s note as epigraph—“Laida dear, Dropped in but neither you nor Bencab was around. And no beer! Love, Nick.”
One will surely enjoy the recipes peppered with Laida Lim’s notes and asides.
A fair warning to readers and cooks: if you haven’t tried or seen Laida’s Salsa Monja in the past, don’t even attempt to recreate it on your own. That would be foolishly ambitious, if not altogether sacrilegious.
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