From the editing room to the kitchen

"Film editing is just like cooking. You get the best of everything and weave it into something cohesive."

That was film editor Kelly Cruz talking about her gratifying jobs. A certified editor of acclaimed and award-winning films like Mulanay and Death Row, Kelly is also an avowed cook and restaurateur. She recently put up Grub Club, a dining place that serves an array of sumptuous and affordable dishes for the working clientele at the RCBC Towers in Makati.

To most people, the two jobs don’t seem to complement each other. But Kelly has admirably managed to marry the two. For a time, she was shuttling between editing work and her culinary studies. She took up a nine-month diploma course for culinary studies with Gene Gonzales.

"In cooking, you get the best ingredients and make a dish," Kelly offers. "The same thing with editing, you get the best highlights of your work to come up with a good film material. Stanley Kubrick’s favorite part of making a film is editing. It’s like making a puzzle."

Kelly took up Communication Arts at De La Salle University. In 1994, she did her first feature film, Mulanay, directed by Gil Portes. The film project landed on her lap with the help of Mulanay writer Doy del Mundo, then the head of DLSU’s Communications Department.

"I was one of the first few in our batch who got into film," Kelly beams. "At that time, it was the only thing I thought I could do."

She got into digital editing with Pre-Post, now Roadrunner, then later worked as a trainee for commercial editing. But Kelly was also into photography, which turned out to be her other passion. Since it was part of the Communication Arts curriculum at La Salle, she took up introduction to photography, advance photography and audio-visual photography.

"We had a huge dark room where we develop our own prints," Kelly shares. "The first time I saw my work, I got hooked."

Kelly attests film editing is a very profitable job. It is for this reason that she put up a post-production house, Underground Logic, with other professionals – Swiss-American director Thierry Notz of Good Morning America, English commercial director Matthew Rosn and wife Lorie and commercial editor Adrian Tecson

Her other editing credits include Bakit May Kahapon Pa, Let the Love Begin and I Will Always Love You.

Recently however, Kelly’s editing has taken a backseat to her culinary expertise which she puts to good use at Grub Club. The restaurant formally opened last May 26 at the third level of RCBC Plaza in Makati.

Kelly put up Grub Club with four other partners – her high school best friend Trisha Corpuz who is with the Regional Network Group (RNG) of ABS-CBN, Repertory Philippines talent and QTV’s Art Angel host Tonypet Gaba, Leeroy Enriquez who does the pencil pushing for the group and Bob Reyes.

"Timing had a lot to do with putting up the restaurant," Kelly grants. "We also had to find the right location. The entire time last year, we were scouting for a good location. Last December, we got the 50-square meter area at RCBC. I had a good vibe the minute I saw the place."

Finalizing the menu proved to be the next tough task. "RCBC had to approve the menu, so initially, I finished one in 20 minutes," Kelly says. "But it took me two months to revise it. I had to make sure the preparation looks good and is very visual. You eat with your eyes first. I had to make the meals more appealing."

In barely a month of operation, Grub Club has been getting a growing number of loyal customers, despite competition with the other dining places in the area. The restaurant’s best-sellers are chicken cheese wrap, porkloin cheese wrap, salpicao, sticky beef ribs and spicy beef basil. The prices for the dishes range from P99 to P130, suited to the Makati clientele.

"Each restaurant in the area has a target market," Kelly maintains. "Ours is not redundant with the prices of their menu. There’s always a sure clientele for us with that price range. In seven days, there were two guys who kept coming back ordering the same food."

Quite surprisingly, Kelly never liked cooking, but simply loved to eat. She credits her mom Remedios and dad Ruben, for influencing her taste buds.

"My dad is from Pampanga so he would cook anything," Kelly allows. "We grew up with exotic food, like frog adobo, bayawak and sawa. My mom also makes the best lengua, picadillo and kare-kare."

A friend introduced her to noted restaurateur Gene Gonzales, so Kelly enrolled at the Asian Culinary Studies in San Juan. "I learned traditional French cuisine, the mother of all cuisines," Kelly says. "In school, you’re not taught recipes, but how to prepare a dish. You should know the basics, from sauces to preparing meats. I also learned preparations for foie gras (goose liver) and sea bass."

With her classmate in cooking school, Sheryl Heradura, Kelly also ventured into the catering business. "We made little money, but it taught us how to adjust to people’s tastes and measure everything we cooked so we could cost it," Kelly shares. "It was mostly for experience. We came up with our own dishes, like the shortcut paella without the saffron but with chorizo and mushrooms, which is now part of the menu at Grub Club."

At present, the restaurant takes up 12 to 14 hours of her day, but Kelly is not complaining a bit. "When people say your food is good, that’s instant gratification. When people keep coming back, it means they liked what you prepared," she ends.