The town of Binmaley in eastern Pangasinan lies near the capital of Lingayen Gulf, surrounded by 16 rivers and fishpens. In fact, three quarters of the town are wetlands, brimming with bounty from the sea, rivers and fishpens.
Putting up and actually running a restaurant are far from easy and not as glamorous as most people think. According to Ramon Ricardo V. Gutierrez, president and CEO of the 1771 Group of Restaurants that operates the Chateau 1771, Sentro and Café 1771 restaurant concepts, it is not enough to know how to cook good food.
In the restaurant space, there is the big opening and the even bigger launch. And all too often, my first impressions of the new restaurant are not about the cuisine but determined by the interiors. And with good reason, for it is my visual sense that first meets the new place, well before the food meets my taste buds.
It is lunchtime and people are waiting for tables outside the newly opened Soi restaurant on the second floor of the newly reopened Glorietta 2 mall. In each group, there is a foreigner. Thai food appeals to a wider, more cosmopolitan crowd, and Soi owner Maritel Nievera knows this with more certainty now.
In Pangasinan, a province famous for its seafood and fresh vegetables, a couple dared to be different and established this city’s first steak house.
Specialty Restaurant Inc., mother company of American-themed restaurants Burgoo and Gumbo, chooses to keep a manageable number of restaurants because it doesn’t want to compromise food quality and service.
When a man was looking for Bonifacio High Street, the cab driver took him to a new Chinese bistro with a terra cotta warrior horse on the façade. Only a month old, P. F. Chang’s at the W Global Center has become a hot spot in Bonifacio Global City.
The old Walled City of Manila was “four hundred years the flower & fruit,” rhapsodized the Manila-born National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin.
Chef Enrico Laviña, 30, hopes that his Il Duello, would be known as “the Little Italy in Quezon City.” Kathlene “Kat” Anne and Krystel “Abby” de Guzman Nantes have been running Paire, a restaurant with a unique business model of cocktails and desserts.
Drop by this resto-bar lunchtime or better yet in the evening and chances are you will hear the sizzle of, well, sizzling food (steak, squid, sisig et al) and music, as in ballads, folk songs and old standards. The lone singer is none other than the owner of the place, Davey C. Militar.
Martin Ignacio Paez Lorenzo is no celebrated gourmand, yet his success in the Philippine food and restaurant business could easily pass him off as one.
In ancient times, Vikings or Norse explorers roamed the wide areas of Europe, Asia and North Atlantic to trade and raid the lands they behold.
