Iconic Via Mare

Michaela Fenix. Via Mare: 40 Years of Iconic Events Through Menus, Recipes, and Memories. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc. 2016. 176 pp.

Via Mare and restaurateur Glenda Rosales Barretto are synonymous in having, in Felice Prudente Sta. Maria’s words in her foreword, moved “Philippine cuisine upwards onto a new and higher plane of creativity, innovation and artistry over decades.”

This book, with full-color photos by Pat Mateo, is part social history, even gossip, part legacy with the sumptuous recipes shared some of which had been served to heads of state, including Popes John Paul II and Francis.

Accounting for the restaurant’s success is, according to Barretto, its ability to “execute other kinds of cooking: Western, European and Asian. We learn from food festivals here and abroad. We exchange ideas with local and foreign chefs. We acquire knowledge from readings. And, of course, we endeavor to dine at the best restaurants to learn from them as well.”

But there is a true-life anecdote that also accounts for Via Mare’s emphasis on giving Filipino cuisine a lift. When then First Lady Imelda R. Marcos returned from the Cancun Summit in Mexico in 1981, she told Barretto what she had witnessed: how Mexican, not Western, food was served to the world’s leaders and guests. From then on, “Mrs. Marcos decided that state dinners would showcase Filipino food, but elegantly and with refined flavors,” the book stated.

Glenda Rosales Barretto, Via Mare’s moving force

To enter the catering business was not in Via Mare’s plans until it had to do the job for the silver wedding anniversary of Vicente Lim Jr. and his wife Nita Fernandez. Mrs. Marcos was present in that party. Right away she expressed her desire to have the restaurant cater a state dinner for then US President Gerald Ford. Barretto’s concern was not Via Mare’s capability but that her restaurant did not have enough silver, glassware and plates. Mrs. Marcos solved the problem, ordering her home stylist Ronnie Laing to buy what Via Mare needed.

The other international guests served through the years included Princesses Margaret and Anne of Great Britain, Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji of China, President Kim Dae Jung of Korea, economic leaders of the ASEAN Summit, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC, among a lengthy list.

At one time, Via Mare was contracted by Hennessy, the cognac company, for an anniversary dinner to celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2015. In the book’s narration, “the dinner menu was crafted in France, the recipes sent to the restaurant” for execution as modern haute cuisine. The menu included mussels cream soup infused with saffron, smoked salmon topped with cocoa, crab soufflé with zesty lemon, foie gras on jellied consommé, grilled wagyu with cognac and celeriac.”

The dessert was “a sorbet encased in a petal-like structure made of chocolate which opened up when hot chocolate was poured on it.” The recipe for this last masterpiece is included.

Restaurant habitués included Foreign Secretary Carlos P. Romulo and wife Beth Day Romulo. Barretto kept his gracious thank-you letters that praised her for mastering “the art of Filipino cuisine because each item revealed your gentle touch and your keen knowledge.”

In another handwritten letter, Romulo expressed appreciation for her attention to detail, her “time and effort to help us make our parties the success that they were…It is personal interest that transcends the limits of complying with a duty to a customer.”

That attention to detail extended to “the fabled Czech amber crystals used at Via Mare’s very first catering.” The aesthete in Romulo got so impressed that “he requested that henceforth those crystals be used only for his functions.”

Barretto is convinced that more than the accolades and the national and world recognition, the backbone of Via Mare, a Latin phrase to mean “the way of the sea,” are the people. An eighth of the book is devoted to the employees. Some have been there since the restaurant’s founding in 1975. Notable is Marquez “Mother” Reyes for his “keen eye for design, observing and meticulously noting the preferences of clients and how hotels and other restaurants do their settings.”

Another is Dalia Zamora who made Via Mare’s pride—bibingka and puto bumbong. Manang Dal was said not to have used any equipment to measure the quantity of her ingredients but just relied on the lines of the palm of her hand. From there she could intuit the best variety of rice for her rice cakes.

Via Mare: 40 Years of Iconic Events Through Menus, Recipes, and Memoriesought to be in the libraries of colleges and universities that boast of hotel and restaurant management programs. But more than these, it should have pride of place in every Pinoy home.--Elizabeth Lolarga

Via Mare’s famous pairing of pancit luglug and puto bumbong

This article first appeared in the Jan. 5, 2017, issue of www.verafiles.org.

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By the Half-moon Driveway of the ICM House of Prayer

you can paint this sun-filled scene in viridian

   better yet drown it in a sea of ultramarine

throw in the marked pointedness of pine needles

   & shade the barks of trees with burnt sienna supreme

 

this rosebud here must have the blush of an infant's bottom

   that palm frond there can learn a lesson or two on stillness

as for that poinsettia petal, it wears too much lipstick

   bleed it some more till it yells "Pink!"

 

must the sky remain a cheery cerulean?

   can it not weep a moody indigo?

the twin cypresses cry with their prayerful branches

   can they not honeymoon by the hermitage instead?

 

what do you do when the words are not forthcoming?

   drain your mug of lukewarm coffee,

take twenty determined strides

   & step out into, onto, step on the garden.

 

-- Babeth Lolarga

 

First published in Baguio Calligraphy, edited by Francis C. Macansantos and Luchie B. Maranan (Anvil Publishing, Inc.), 2010.

 

Photos of Baguio by Babeth 

Birth, life, love and Robin Lim

BAGUIO CITY—Midwife Robin Lim, 2011 CCN Hero of the Year, once ran into an obstetrician. They compared how many babies they had delivered that day. Both helped birth three each. Lim asked the doctor, "Do you know the mothers' names?"

Taken aback, the doctor couldn't recall his patients' names and admitted to never bothering to know, part of the detachment that his practice requires. Lim recited the names of women she had helped deliver their babies. She had known them well since they went to her for prenatal checkups.

The doctor cried all night. His wife rang Lim, founder of Yayasan Ibu Bumi Sehat (or Healthy Mother Earth Foundation) that encourages natural birth, including those that take place in water in Bali, Indonesia, to ask, "What have you done to him?" That moment with Lim served as the doctor's epiphany when he questioned his profession.

At a time when 918 women die yearly worldwide from childbirth or complications resulting from it, Lim finds the situation scandalous with the US investing heavily on childbirth technology and landing a man on the moon at the cost of billions of dollars.

Life-saver, story-teller

The CNN honor made hers a popular voice. She said it was a human rights issue that "these women are being struck down at the prime of their lives."

A protocol she wants hospitals to allow is to wait for a few minutes so the infant's umbilical cord and the placenta can fall off naturally. This also keeps the mother from bleeding too much.

She said science has shown that it takes years for a child to reach optimum health if the cord rich in nutrients is cut too soon. A proponent of prolonged breastfeeding of up to four to five years, she said giving mother's milk is "a gift to them that you can never get back."

She cited Albert Einstein, also born at home and still taking a snack at his mother's breast till age 10.

She asked individuals and organizations to "communicate, cooperate to find real solutions that the government can back up so we don't need to lose people needlessly." Her work empowers women to own their bodies so "they can have the lives they were meant to live."

She has met prostituted women who get pregnant and whose "bosses" compel them to give up and sell their babies. "It's the most tragic thing," this advocate against human trafficking said.

Lim met a poor young girl who became a prostitute to raise money for her mother's cancer treatment. The mother died, but the girl couldn't get out of the cycle of prostitution.

Lim said. "If you know how love can save lives, ask a midwife. I teach midwifes to practice with love, to look into another's eyes to say, 'I love you.'"

She called her sister midwives "the first line of defense like our lolas, a combination of hilot and medical practitioner."  She described herself as being "pro-women, pro-baby, pro-child, pro-family."

Lim embraces Lolit Dicang who runs Baguio's only birthing clinic.

In a high-risk situation, she has seen how a newborn given up for dead is resuscitated when the room fills up with midwives and relatives prodding the child with declarations of love.

A mother of eight, she manages to "chase the genie"  (her term) to put words on paper and produce books of poetry, fiction (Butterfly People) and non-fiction. Coming soon is a workbook on natural family planning to promote a lifestyle of non-violence to be published by Anvil.

She said when mothers give birth at her clinic, she sees butterflies flitting in and out. Her grandmother Vicenta Munar Lim taught her that these creatures may be fragile but they can fly. She said since then she has become "jealous of them" and saved their wings when she found dead ones.

They became her personal emblem. She explained that a butterfly begins as a crawling worm that later goes into a coffin, surviving sun and rain. One day it opens and out flies a thing of beauty. She said the human soul is similar.

Her friend, writer Edgardo Maranan, introduced her to a crowd at Mt. Cloud Bookshop in Casa Vallejo in this city, saying when CNN announced Lim as a hero, many countries rushed to claim her as theirs, including the US and Indonesia, but, he added, "To us she is a Baguio girl."

Lim took nine months of non-stop writing to finish Butterfly People, likening the process to a baby's gestation in a mother's womb. It took nine more years to find a publisher.

Maranan was the first to read the manuscript that covers six generations with action moving in the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Hawaii. He recommended this thinly disguised biography of Lim's family in northern Philippines  to Anvil Publishing.

She said her being Filipino by blood makes her a magical realist storyteller, adding, "It's so Pinay to exaggerate."--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

Originally published by Vera Files/Yahoo Philippines, May 7, 2012

Day in a Life in Baguio

“what if a much of a witch of a wind”
& here e.e. cummings lies
on a bed of iceberg lettuce
laced with dewdrops
coming fresh from la la La Trinidad trading post

& “summer’s lie” is that
concrete pine
where a rosy rotunda
used to stand
a sight for sorest eyes

the truth being
no greater life is lived
than here in highland coffee farms
where armies of ants
are extinguished
where Seattle’s Best folded up,
undistinguished,
& Starbucks continues to rake it in

give me Benguet coffee
or euthanize me!

--Babeth Lolarga

first published in the anthology Baguio Calligraphy , Francis C. Macansantos and Luchie B. Maranan, eds., Anvil Publishing, 2010.

image from Facebook community page

Facing Down the Beast of Depression

With upbeat tunes like “Feels So Good” and “What a Wonderful World” played at the launch of Margarita Go-Singco Holmes’ Down to 1: Depression Stories, a guest wondered aloud if the condition discussed in the book is being trivialized.

Perhaps, that is the program’s point: the beast called depression can be understood and licked. What comes after is a realization that life can be given another chance.

Holmes, a clinical psychologist who has been identified with bestsellers on Filipino sexuality, summed up the condition, with help from her colleagues at the University of the Philippines psychology department, in this spoofy song to the tune of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicion”:

“Every time I wake up, I wonder what my life is good for / Every time I wake up, I wonder why there isn’t more / Why should this be so painful to me, the ex life of the party / Starting to think ‘Oh, what’s the use?’ Am I really hopeless and what’s more, just crazy / Depression torments my heart / Depression tears me apart / Depression, what can I do?”

Karina Bolasco  of Anvil Publishing, the book’s publisher, said it took them 10 years  to put together  Down to 1 as they wanted to show that  far from being “a happy smiling, singing people,” many Filipinos suffer from clinical depression.

But, she added, these Filipinos are “conveniently dismissed as genetically crazy. Have you ever noticed how parents always try to trace the family origins of anybody a son or daughter is likely to marry? First, the place of origin to establish regional traits, then the family of origin, to make sure walang lahing sira-ulo (there is no history of insanity).”

The title refers to a depressed person’s severe feelings of aloneness, even of abandonment–that no friend, partner or any other being could possibly understand what he or she is going through. Three of the 10 storytellers in the book went onstage to describe depression as a “condition too painful to bring on the table.” It is one where one feels “faith vanishing in the desert” and “looking into the abyss and knowing you don’t want to go there.”

Called the FCD 10 (formerly or currently depressed), psychology professor Kay Añonuevo, bankers Roman Azanza and Jeremy Baer, film director Peque Gallaga, writers Alya Honasan and Babeth Lolarga, restaurateur Nina Poblador, TV director Lore Reyes, author Mike Santos and fashion designer Patis Tesoro openly and bravely reveal what it’s like to be, or to have been, depressed.

Some detail their suicide attempts, their medication, what helped and what didn’t in getting them out of the condition that is beyond what Bolasco called “the blues that affect most people in the course of normal life.”

Holmes, who acknowledges suffering from the condition periodically, guides the timorous reader looking for help through a simple test. The score can be interpreted to find out if one is within the mild or severe clinical range of depression.

In her forthright manner, she demolishes commonly held beliefs and myths about suicide. To the quasi myth that “no one but God decides when your time is up ,” she writes, “This is claptrap because many don’t believe in God, even more don’t believe in a God that insists one suffers needlessly.”

Best is her definition of depression: a thief that “takes away your joy, sense of wonder, the taste of your favorite food, even the smell of freshly washed hair…Most painfully, depressions steal you away from yourself. For many, one of the worst things they fear is whether their real selves will ever come back.”

The FCD 10′s first-person tales of surviving depression resonate long after one has put down the book.  Añonuevo states with the force of truth: “While sadness is ordinary, not wanting to live isn’t!”

With admirable candor, the British Baer, Holmes’s husband, talks about the anti-depressant Prozac, how it reduced his libido (down to one from a high of making love 52 times a week) and how he and his doctor arrived at a combination of medications that is satisfactory to him.

Still on the subject of medication, Honasan musters her strength when she hears of people calling her “unstable” because she was on Prozac. She writes, “I don’t hang around them anymore. Experiences like this can teach you a lot about who you should keep in your life.”

Tesoro writes candidly about her addiction to Valium to control her rages and how she overcame it. “I got worse and worse, but when I wanted to throw that pair of scissors, not just to vent but hoping it might hit its mark, I stopped all my medication cold turkey.” Today, if she takes medication, she only has half a pill and has calmed herself through gardening and walking the land.

If anything, Down to 1 assures the suffering that they are not alone.

Originally published by VERA Files
Photo of Dr. Holmes by Anna Leah Sarabia