And when the chefs came marching in

People stopped, looked, and watched as the three famous chefs came marching in. So as not to intimidate the young crowd, mostly of honeymooners, they left behind their formal toques and donned instead white baseball caps with their chefs’ uniforms, like saying, yeah, we are chefs, and yeah, we’re cool.

Glenda Barretto is synonymous with her Filipino specialty restaurant Via Mare. Her cooking attracted expo visitors to the Philippine Pavilion at Expo ’92 in Seville, Spain, the World Expo ’98 in Lisbon, Portugal, and recently the World Expo ’05 in Aichi, Japan, where the Japanese went gaga over her halo-halo, turon, and baked pumpkin. This very elegant lady is the author of four cookbooks: The Asean Seafood Cookbook, Flavors of the Philippines, Shipshape and Via Mare Seafood Cookbook.

Myrna Segismundo is the managing director of TV Food Chefs, which operates 9501, the exclusive dining lounge at the ABS-CBN Compound. She was once the chairman of Chefs on Parade, a national culinary competition for professionals and students. This always very jolly chef has authored two cookbooks: The Party Cookbook, and Philippine Cuisine. An advocate of the preservation of traditional Filipino cooking, she now writes on Filipino classics for Food Magazine.

Claude Tayag is an artist by profession, a chef by passion and a wonderful full-time hubby. His specialty is Pampango food. He is the first Asian chef to be guest chef at InterContinental Manila’s Prince Albert Rotisserie, where his taba ng talangka risotto and his fried foie gras lumpia were hits. He has no restaurant, but at times he cooks for groups on special arrangement in his art studio home, Bale Dutung, in Angeles City. This artist chef also writes for the Philippine STAR on food and travel. Watch out for his first food book due for release this year.

To bring even just one of these chefs to your kitchen is almost impossible, and to have them all three in one kitchen is a to-see-is-to-believe kind of thing. But indeed Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort and Spa succeeded in freeing them from their busy schedules and flying them all to Cebu.

Armed only with their paring knives and original recipes, the three chefs came very prepared, in full force, and took over the Shangri-La’s main kitchen. The in-house chefs and staff had no choice but to throw in the (kitchen) towel and wave their white aprons in surrender. They stood aside and gave way to sianse-rattling new masters in uniform.

The first day was The Lechon Challenge. Word has it that Cebuanos claim to be the best lechoneros in the country. They will certainly rise up in arms if the Luzon chefs gave them lessons on lechon. Remember, Cebu is the lechon capital of the Philippines. But the three chefs took the challenge and persisted.

Glenda got an uncooked four-kilo suckling pig. She stuffed it with chicken and prawn paella, and then roasted it in a convection oven. Lechon paella is always deliciously good, but the skin is always a big disappointment. It must be because of the moisture from the rice inside.

"The secret is in the temperature," Glenda says. And maybe so because even the Cebuanos were impressed that the lechon skin came out crispy and crackling, and the paella tasted wonderfully good. (I personally prefer al dente rice.)

Glenda’s lechon was gone in an instant.

Myrna showed how the fiesta fare that is the Cebu lechon could be served for fine dining occasions with her boneless version. This is good news to foreigners who cannot stand the sight of a whole pig with head and trotters.

The people’s first reaction when they saw it was, "Puwede pala ang lechon na hindi mukhang baboy." Myrna first chopped off the head and legs and then de-boned the body and brushed it with olive oil and herbs. She then rolled, tied and roasted it like a roulade and served it with liver sauce. Her boneless lechon can actually be eaten with knife and fork. The skin was crispy good and the inside was just yummy. It was gone just as fast as Glenda’s lechon paella.

And as if there was not enough lechon, chef Claude came with his five-ways lechon. And unlike Glenda’s and Myrna’s, Claude used a whole Cebu lechon. The crispy skin was first cut into small squares and served in a platter; the ribs were sprinkled with black pepper and then grilled; the fat belly was shredded and then deep fried till crisp and served in a soft tortilla with three choices for sauce; the hind legs were made into Pampango asadong matwa; and lastly, the bones and trotters were dropped into a cauldron of piping hot sinigang stock, flavored with kamias and tomatoes.

A true great fan of lechon, Claude would not be happy unless the entire lechon is used and eaten up. Burp!

After their success with the lechon, they occupied more room in the kitchen, and the kitchen staff was singing Sweet Surrender as they began to work for them. For the next five days, the three chefs ruled and cooked their specialty dishes, like Glenda’s baradibud with chicharon, rellenong manok, pork embutido, binagoong baboy, and pinais na alimasag; Myrna’s kare-kareng buntot ng baka, Bicol express, bangus belly barbecue, bistek tagalog, and Batangas bulalo; and Claude’s sisig, inihaw na isda at balo-balo, pinaputok na isda, bringhe, and bulanglang. There were also all sorts of salads and grills, and the kitchen staff just drooled as they watched them whip up dishes after dishes. And as if to leave them with a sweet memory, Glenda made them sinukmani (sticky rice with coconut), Myrna made her buco and mango salad, and Claude made maja blanca.

On their last night, they had enough of the kitchen heat and marched out to the sprawling garden for fresh air. The kitchen staff followed and assisted like good soldiers. A crowd of less than 200 came to watch closely what these three chefs were now up to. Chef Martin del Prado of San Miguel Corporation, chefs Trevor Stevens and Stephen Teo of Shangri-La also came to join them.

Now, six chefs wanted to beat the Cebuanos at their own game. That is, to teach them how to do barbecue or sinugba, the Cebuanos’ all-time favorite food. Del Monte sponsored the evening and readily supplied the chefs with tomato and spaghetti sauce for their marinades. They easily won over the apprehensive crowd after the latter tasted the new grills.

I was lucky not to be cooking and dressed like them in a chef’s jacket because the heat was really too much at times. Instead, I mingled incognito in my sarong at the Tides coffee shop and sat with different people on barbecue night. I got to eavesdrop on some interesting comments.

One Cebuano said, "These dishes are not available anywhere in Cebu. I must eat as much as I can."

A hotel staff said, "What a big difference from our buffet. We should invite these chefs every year."

And when the chefs were introduced one by one: "Siya pala ang chef ng Via Mare. I always eat there when I’m in Manila." "So she is the chef of famous TV stars. I wonder what she cooked here that is pang-artista and the favorite of Kris?" "Why does this man mispronounce his own name?" "Yeah, why does he say ‘Cloud’? It should be ‘Klawdee,’ kasi may ‘e’." "No," said another, it should be pronounced ’Claude’ as in Jean Claude Van Damme. It is a French name but maybe he does not even know that." "Kapampangan lang kasi siya at di French." "Ang gagaling nila. Ang sasarap lahat, ano?" "Sikat ba talaga ang mga yan?"

And the three chefs marched out of Cebu triumphantly, with one of them (guess who?) limping. Casualty of war, I call it. But their dishes will be part of the Tides daily buffet because the Shangri-La’s chefs are now in possession of their recipes and cooking techniques. Spoils of war? No, peace treaty, you may say.