IN Brunei, every dinner that Philippine Ambassador Virginia Honrado-Benavidez hosts in her official residence, called “Ang Bahay,” is always a royal feast, whether the guests coming are royalty or overseas Filipino workers.

On the 24-seat dining table is a colorful showcase of Filipino hospitality and cuisine. Edible décor of oranges dotted with cloves and green chives with buds on white radish whet the appetite and stimulate conversations underneath tall glass vases of flowers held by different seashells in water.

Guests savor home-cooked full course meals on Noritake Vienna porcelain dinner plates, with the logo of the Republic of the Philippines. Under the dinner plates are place mats made of capiz shells.

Hand-embroidered table napkins are individually inserted into cowry shells. The name and menu holders are also made of seashells. The long-stemmed water and wine glasses are made of crystal.

Chicken Binakol soup is served on halved young coconut, wrapped with sinamay skirt. Almost always on the menu is the ambassador’s popular chicken adobo that has been featured on Brunei TV, with other Filipino specialties such as pancit à la luglog, lumpiang gulay na sariwa, suman at mangga, and the sought-after Pinoy ice cream served from an authentic sorbetero cart.

On her state visit to Brunei in 2004, President Macapagal-Arroyo used the dinner occasion to interact with the Filipino community. Holding a cucumber stick dipped in Horseradish Cream to go with the Herb Scones, she was quoted as saying, “Our dinner is home-cooked. Very nice. The presentation is fit for royalty.”

In that dinner, roasted Pumpkin Soup was served in a real pumpkin, with its top intact, and its seeds carved out to make an edible receptacle.

When we were guests in the ambassador’s residence last October, breakfast on the first day consisted of freshly baked flat bread dipped in balsamic vinegar-olive oil dressing, to go with fried hard boiled egg (our host teasingly named “Brother-in-law’s Eggs”) in a tamarind-cilantro dressing.

‘Play of textures’

Our resident foodie Reme Baclig, a consultant to restaurant chains, describes it as “a simple dish in a tangy sweet-salty dressing.

There was a play of textures: crispy and hard on the outside, while crunchy and soft in the inside, as well as a play of flavors, with the blending of the tangy tamarind flavor and the characteristic punch of the cilantro.”

Pièce de résistance for the evening meal was the dessert: Chocolate Cake Royale. “What looked like an ordinary cake with glossy chocolate icing on the middle and top layers betrays a moist texture and rich chocolate flavor,” Baclig said. “Sweetness was subtle to bring out the smoothness of the chocolate.”

For our last supper in Ang Bahay, we had “another delightful salad—a creative take on Caesar salad with fried danggit chips in place of croutons.”

We shared the dinner event over cross-cultural conversations with members of the Filipino-Muslim association.

The surprise and finalé of the evening was a Fruit Dome.

Inside the ice-sculptured dome were colorful slices of green guava, honeydew and red, crunchy macopa with prune powder side dip. A “dramatic” dessert, if there was one.

The Ambassador capped the dinner with a demonstration of how such a simple, amazing feat is done that guests do not fail to ask for:

The ice dome is shaped by filling a toy balloon with water and freezing it for 18 to 22 hours.

The hollow portion is created by the inner unfrozen water that is released when a hot metal ring bores a hole to create an igloo-like dome.