A is for apple pie, C for crumbly crust and coffee

It isn't Baguio's best kept secret yet. The best apple pie is on the dessert menu of O'Mai Khan, the Mongolian buffet place on Upper Session Road. I thank Mitos Benitez of Hill Station for sharing this long-ago discovery of hers. Even if her restaurant in Casa Vallejo offers the same dessert, with at least 12 sliced apples in each pie, she takes a hike to nearby O'Mai Khan when she has a certain craving. Pair this with brewed coffee and request a scoop of vanilla ice cream to make pie a la mode. Instant heaven! Photo by Babeth Lolarga

Lovely Casa Vallejo must stay where it is

The original title of this article, which first appeared in a 2012 issue of Cocoon Magazine (part of Inquirer's Hinge Publications), was "This lovely casa is here to stay." Due to the latest developments in Baguio that threaten the continued existence of this landmark building, I've asked the permission of editor Thelma San Juan to re-post this piece in this space. The photos are from the public Facebook pages of Casa Vallejo and Hill Station.

To find out more about what's happening to Casa Vallejo, please go to Change.org, particularly this site, and if you have time and you agree with the petition, do sign and make your voice heard. To paraphrase another passionate lover of Baguio, fellow blogger and theater and film artist Karlo Altomonte, we can't let Baguio turn into "a highland Divisoria."

www.change.org/petitions/felipe-de-leon-jr-chairman-national-commission-on-culture-and-the-arts-declare-the-1909-casa-vallejo-building-in-baguio-city-a-heritage-site-or-important-cultural-property-and-ensure-its-future-protection-and-preservation

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Casa Vallejo remains Baguio’s oldest building, as old as the city, in fact. Despite its place in the city’s history, it had fallen into disrepair until some adventurous developers, who’d rather be unnamed for the time being, saw the possibilities of turning this grand dame of city landmarks into a fine example of architectural adaptive reuse.

Today, it is not only a hotel with 24 remodeled rooms (standard, family, deluxe and honey room) and 21st-century amenities like flat-screen TVs and Wifi, it has become a well-located hub of culture on Upper Session Road, overtaking a giant mall on Luneta Hill and big universities that are supposed to feed the students’ souls apart from their minds.

Inside Casa is the two-year-old Hill Station of Mitos Benitez that has earned for Northern Luzon and the Philippines a place in The Miele Guide for 2011-12, a annual regional guide for the best Asian restaurants.

It’s an honor that moved restaurant Filipinas Salazar to tell the staff in more piquant Filipino: “Hey, take note, we’ve gone international so our standards have to be raised. We’re not just for the locals anymore.” The staff is motivated to improve on all points from service to testing new dishes.

Hill Station was described as “like stepping back in time” with its warm wooden beams and large windows. It menu was also cited for “a hearty repertoire” that “meanders from Old World Europe to New America and Asia.”

For Benitez it was a citation far from any dream she had when the revived Casa Vallejo and its partner restaurant opened. The resto itself occupies 300 square meters that include the main dining hall and two function rooms named after Salvador Vallejo and Justina Vallejo Garcia, the grandfather and mother of columnist-heritage advocate Maribel Garcia Ongpin, respectively, and a garden for outdoor events like weddings where 80 people can fit comfortably under parachute tents.

Benitez, who had served the family-owned Mario’s Restaurant since she was 22, was offered the space for the restaurant. She recalled that “aha moment”: “The minute I walked in, I said to myself, ‘This is it! It’s meant for me.’”

For the interiors of the hotel and restaurant, Gerard R. Mendoza, who has done Manila Sofitel and other projects in Boracay, Australia and England, was tapped. The only big change in the dining room was the addition of a grand staircase, which Benitez privately and jokingly calls “The Titanic,” to connect it to the hotel upstairs.

Before Mendoza started work on the interiors, Benitez gave him a tour of her house where she wanted the wooden floor-to-ceiling French windows with little squares replicated.


He removed the dining hall space’s low ceilings of and exposed the original beams, never touching the original wood, except having them painted brown. He retained the posts, some windows, the fireplace with a full-length mirror by its side, the slanting art deco supports by the doors. No cement was used for the restoration work for which began in earnest in July 2009 as the city was celebrating its centennial.

Casa Vallejo and Hill Station opened in March 2010, and when Ongpin saw what had been done, Benitez recalled, “she loved it—the look, the menu—and was very proud.” Her children and grandchildren make frequent return visits when in town.

Photographer-cinematographer Boy Yñiguez, Benitez’s spouse, told Mendoza, “The walls are mine.”

Forthwith, he set up on the bar’s walls his personal collection of black and white photos from the ’70s and ’80s by his friends, mainly photographers with Baguio roots or ties like Tommy Hafalla, Butch Perez, Mannix Santos, Wyg Tysmans. Somewhere on those walls is an Ansel Adams print. Benitez likes to make guests play a guessing game of identifying it. The fairly new Vallejo-Garcia function room also has on its walls photos and paintings from the Benitez-Yñiguez collection.

Benitez’s personal touches can be found in the leather place mats that she asked Rhona Carrantes to design and execute. The floral design is repeated on the menu. The dining and serving plates are all from the kiln of Lanelle Abueva Fernando, Benitez’s chum from their university years. For the Sunday buffets, the staff brings out the pots hand-thrown by Sagada women Tessie Baldo and Siegrid Bangyay.

In keeping with the building’s natural ambience, Benitez also has a pot shaped out of petrified wood by Greg Sabado, always with fresh flowers in season (a bunch of Alstroemeria, a kind of lily, at the time of Cocoon’s visit).

Landscape artist Marita Manzanillo has tamed the once unruly garden at the back of the building. Like Benitez, she doesn’t believe in an instant garden so the old pine trees co-exist with 28 younger ones and new plants and trees like the jacaranda. Capiz lamps are lit for Christmas and special occasions. A trellis was set up so the sanggumay can slowly creep on it and cover an old water tank. There are abundant large gabi leaves in one spot and an herb garden planted to rosemary, oregano, pandan, among others, for use in the restaurant’s kitchen.

With all the acclaim Hill Station is receiving, Benitez has remained committed to “pleasing the locals from Day One. The white guys, those on work detail in the city and are frequent customers, too, come and go.” - Elizabeth Lolarga

El dia de Tats y Butones

      Baguio days in June tend to be overcast with hardly a hint of sun. So I guess our growing Butones was hopeful that morning for something special to happen. She had been spending a lot of time inside the house because we'd waken to wet and windy mornings that always ruined plans for a walk (actually, a sprint for her now that she's learning to run). So she'd stare out the window with the dusty screen that overlooks the common parking space, waiting for the older kids to come out and ride their bikes or for the neighbors' cars to warm up.

      But rain or shine, I had promised the man of the house that I'd treat him this once to Hill Station's Latin American luncheon buffet billed as "El Dia del Padre." He couldn't bear the idea of leaving Butones, her mamay Kimi and yaya Mackenzie home or being sent off to another restaurant so we could have this date to ourselves so he decided it would be his treat with yours truly adding my share to the bill. Who was I to contradict him?

      The little one got to wear her birthday outfit once more that was a tad loose in April, making her look like a manang than a year-old celebrator. It had a nice tulip hem and made her look like a young sophisticate like her Tita Ida who couldn't be with us.

      In late May, Padma Perez of Mt. Cloud Bookshop told us about the Hill's Father's Day plan, how she was helping the restaurant's dynamo, Mitos Benitez, with the promotions that involved writing the advertising copy in Spanglish. 

      I thought aloud to the man in the house that there may be a lot of meat involved since I was imagining the Lat-Am grasslands and cows and Argentinian corned beef. 

      I was secretly hoping for guacamole and chips and came out not disappointed at all. En punto, on the dot, I loaded my plate with tacos, the smooth guacamole dip, one or two oysters Rockefeller, the same amount of grilled barbecue potato skins, and right away I felt it was a sweet Sunday.

      While I enjoyed that first swing around the appetizer table, Kimi, who was cradling a sleeping Butones in her arms, put on a sour face and reminded me to think of her as hungry mother, too. Her gustatory discovery in the food lineup was the biscuit-like Chilean style sopaipillas that made this grandmother think of flattened Russian tea cookies. Well, we had it with everything from appetizers to dessert.

We couldn't pass up the Caesar salad, it being part of the Benitez family's restaurant tradition.

When Butones woke from her power nap, she had  an appetite for the spaghetti vongole and the not-too-sweet, just-right arroz con leche. She just had a spoonful of mashed potatoes and returned to the pasta and arroz. I could almost hear her humming her secret tune while eating.

Her grumpa, whom she calls Tats like the rest of us, was predictably partial to the oysters (the Caviteño in him) and frequently stopped by the carving station for lechon and the slow roast US beef which he preferred to eat with gravy than the chef's recommended chimichurri sauce.

Kimi was all praises for the vegetable moussaka and I for the paella Negra con aioli and made sure I had no black squid ink between my teeth. The arroz de leche mentioned earlier was the perfect foil to the cloyingly sweet flan de sevilla, a staple at the Hill's dessert list, and the tocino del cielo. The marquez de chocolate was served in shot glasses (where was the tequila?) with tiny plastic spades to scoop out the goodness. Two of those and I felt like shooting through the roof from the choco and sugar high. 

      In keeping with the Latin American-Mexican theme, there was a mariachi band, Los Bandidos (too amiable to look like bandits),  to serenade the diners with popular tunes like "Guatanamera," "Besame Mucho," "Quizas Quizas Quizas," all of which brought back memories of old chum-compadre Amadis Ma. Guerrero, now a choir singer going places.

       We went home burping all the way, craving for that most Spanish tradition: a long siesta. While there is universal consensus that every day is Mother's Day, our family insists that henceforth, every Sunday be El Dia de Padre. Entiendes?

Most photos taken by Babeth Lolarga