Another tragedy hits New York

Did I promise I would not miss another column deadline and then miss it again? Forgive me, audience of five, I was nose-deep in my thesis. Expect another absence when I have to defend it. Until then I will be restless and tense, I must admit that this stimulates me. I suppose that comes with being (what people call) a "creative type."

Who dares call us such names? Well, the other types, rigid residents of their left brains, they would spoil a perfectly good alliteration. How melodious (but senseless) "rigid resident of right brain" would have sounded! But I’m getting creatively carried away. According to the other types, that’s what happens to us creative types. We get carried away thinking of possibilities, how to make something traditional new, how to add a new twist to traditional to make it exciting and up-to-date. They want to stick to the tried and tested.

When creative types run into the other types inevitably something happens. Creative types test boundaries. The other types, who as luck would have it usually have the money, like to stick to the status quo. Now you have tension created by an immovable object and an irressistible force. Nothing will happen but fur will fly. Since fur is no longer politically correct, e-mail will fly.

According to an e-mail I received from my soul-sister Amy Besa in New York, there is a small controversy over what to serve at a cocktail reception for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Should it be American or Filipino food?

Someone called Romy Dorotan, Amy’s life and restaurant partner, for a menu. Romy and Amy own and run Cendrillon, the Filipino fusion restaurant in SoHo that has been prominently featured in American media. They have put Filipino food on the mainstream map. I am told that one of their regular customers is William DaFoe. This makes me regret that I have never been to Cendrillon, though I’ve sampled, enjoyed and gotten really fat on Romy’s chef-ing. He transcends cooking.

If forced to describe this restaurant I have never been to, I guess I would label it "Filipino fusion cuisine," based on a menu they sent me by e-mail, the one they suggested for the cocktail-reception that would mark President Arroyo’s visit to New York:

Cassava chips with chicken adobo

Wild boar tocino

Ube crostini with laing and bacalao

Mini-bibingka with salted quail eggs

Purple yam tartlets with blueberries, etc, etc.

Reading the menu on my computer screen, my curiosity is major-ly piqued. Cassava chips? Would that be shaved thinly and fried like potato chips or desiccated like those veggie chips I love (with the incredible label I Can’t Believe It’s a Veggie Chips)? Now that I’m in Laguna, I should be experimenting with cassava side dishes.

Wild boar tocino? I know wild boar adobo but tocino? This Romy is really imaginative and innovative. Ube crostini? Crostini are crisp thingies like crackers, like biscocho. Would the laing and bacalao be spreads then? Separate spreads or laing made with bacalao?

This is really so interesting. In my brain – the seat of my senses – taste and smell are up and dancing, excited by this new menu of familiar Filipino specialties given a twist that will bring them to the cosmopolitan table. This e-mailed menu is wonderful. It hasn’t bored me half to death as most menus do these days.

Mini-bibingkas with salted quail eggs! An improvization on little party pizzas. The idea of salted quail eggs just really grabs me. I know how to make salted duck eggs (itlog na maalat). Might I not salt little quail eggs in little glass jars give them away for Christmas? That would be pretty, delicious and new. This menu gives me ideas.

Yams are gabi, right? How imaginative to mix them with blueberries. My imagination runs merrily on then lands with a thud at the next sentence: The next day, we got a call...it had been decided that Filipino food would not be served... It was decided that Gloria would probably not want Filipino food since she gets to eat it all the time. Not this menu, I don’t think so, I argue in my mind. I live in the Philippines and while I have seen all the ingredients and dishes in this menu and recognize them as Filipino, I have never seen them put together this way. If I were Gloria, I would probably love this.

I catch myself. Maybe they’re serving something better. I read on: ...they would rather serve something she does not get regularly. We were told they would rather have filet mignon. You have got to be kidding.

I guess that’s why Filipino food doesn’t make it to the mainstream. Filipinos themselves at the moment of truth brush it away for the French. True, Cendrillon’s menu was not traditional Filipino but it was imaginative, exciting, world-class. It was New York Pinoy. If New York Pinoys can’t see that, that’s another tragedy that’s hit New York. By the way, President Arroyo can order filet mignon from the room service menu of any of the hotels she stays at.

Sayang na naman, right? There was another opportunity for us to show what we do well and we threw it over for an unimaginative steak wrapped in bacon. I guess if we refuse to learn then we deserve all that cholesterol.