Chiqui’s Park

Chiqui Torres has been part of the Lolarga family’s inner circle that I’ve come to think of her as blood kin. She is my cousin Telly L. Valdellon’s best friend, their friendship dating back to their high school days at the former Holy Family Academy.

Chiqui ran for Baguio City councilor once but lost—another loss for the city. I thought that she could’ve injected some of her irreverent humor into the council’s staid proceedings and her honest-to-goodness compassion in child and youth programs.
Nobody quite knows the city’s streets better than her (maybe second to another curiosity seeker, Frank Cimatu) so when she told me yesterday to stand between the Rizal Monument and the new Clean Comfort Rooms at Rizal Park at exactly 5:10 p.m, my own curiosity was aroused.

But I had my answer as I sat on the edge of a flower border earlier than the appointed time. An owner-type jeepney parked on Otek Street. Out came a huge kaldero and containers of assorted sidings that went with street side-prepared lugaw (rice
porridge). The kaldero went into a pushcart attached to an LPG.

While Chiqui descended from the top of the park’s stairs, I counted 15 heads already beginning to take spoonfuls of the piping hot lugaw from individual disposable bowls. The number of customers would double as the hour went by.

For P10 a bowl, you get a fair-sized amount of the porridge Top it with as much toasted garlic and chopped spring onions as you like. Add five pesos and pick from any of the assorted toppings like fried tofu cubes, chicken livers, chicken adobo, boiled egg.

If after you clean up your bowl, you still don’t feel satiated, tell the lady vendor, “Hirit pa!” and she’ll give you another serving of lugaw. Just add another five pesos.

This spot on Fernando Bautista Drive and Otek Street has become Chiqui’s after-five office (her day job is teaching at the National University Baguio). Her grandniece already calls it Lola Chiqui’s Park.

Chiqui is impressed by the success of this “unbranded” lugaw kariton which she discovered three months ago. It couldn’t have picked a better location (and isn’t location the key to the success of an eating place?). I get her point as she waves at the willows, pansies and the rest of Baguio’s soothing flora: Food for body and soul.