Good eating is essential to good living

Leave it to the owners-partners of the Area Home Store chain to be in the forefront of anything new. Pioneers in the home accessories and furnishings retail business in the country, they were the first to come up locally with a café to complement their stores. Almost, but not quite in-house, in the sense that it stands separately and is not within the store premises (across from the first Area Home Store in SM Megamall), the first Area Café was opened in 1996, two years after the SM store opened.

According to Kathleen Tambunting-Talmadge, Area Home Store, Area Cafe and the new O Café president, she and her partners are all foodies. Having lived abroad for so many years and also traveling to all corners of the world, their passion and appreciation for good food runs the gamut of the various Western cuisines.

"With the Area Home Store doing so well," says Talmadge, "our thoughts ran to, what else, but food, since we all love to eat. We told ourselves we should open something related to food, although we didn’t know exactly what it was going to be."

They also noted the trend of most home stores abroad to have their own in-house cafes. It seemed like a good idea, so they went for it. Clients would have a place to refresh themselves after shopping or wait for gift-wrapping to be done, and companions of shoppers somewhere to sit and eat.

The menu was simple: good sandwiches, soups, salads, pasta, desserts and panini. "We were the first to introduce panini," says Talmadge, panini being Italian-type sandwiches. "Basically, the café was Italian," continues Talmadge, "and meant to be a panino bar. Maybe not everybody knew then what a panino was, but it was in keeping with the rationale of the store to bring in new things and keep people up to date. Now Area Café has evolved into something more global. Our chefs? We’ve trained them and we taste everything ourselves."

The sleek presentation of Area Café dishes is backed by fantastic flavors. The Diabolico, for example, has grilled chicken breast, gruyere cheese and salsa picante on pane Toscano. Grasso features Italian sausage, crumbled bacon, emmenthal cheese and red peppers on ciabatta. For pasta, among the many recommended are Al Sole with sun-dried tomatoes, capers, anchovies and olive oil, and Canneloni, pasta roll ups filled with spinach and covered with béchamel and parmesan. There are hot soups and salads, small plates of pate served with grilled crostini and pizzas. Coffee, drinks and dessert deserve a section of their own in the menu. From iced cappuccino to the espresso macchiato to red and white wine, the meal would still be incomplete without an ending of Italian-style cheesecake or apple crumble or banoffee pie.

Décor is contemporary. On one wall hang black and white photographs, the work of Spanish photographer-painter Jose Lasheras, who is the husband of Giovanna S. Mabanta, one of the owners-partners, and who has been published by Vogue and other magazines and has exhibited widely in Europe and in Ayala Museum in Makati City.

Not content with one café, and opening branches where there are Area Home Stores (like in SM Megamall, Glorietta and Alabang Town Center Expansion Wing), they recently opened their fourth Area Café branch in Robinsons Galleria, along with the new O Café. Simply called O, for Orient, the café features popular and traditional foods from Thailand, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and India – with most of the recipes coming from the family of Al Tambunting, Talmadge’s brother and also an owner-partner, who designed the café’s interior.

"Oriental is the trend these days," says Wilma C. Santos-Huang, general manager of the Area companies. "It’s a nostalgic look at the past when Asia was called ‘the Orient.’"

The Power Plant Mall at Rockwell Center is the only venue with all three – Area Home Store, Area Café and O Café – side by side. This is so that customers of either café can order what the other café has on the menu, and either before or after dining, can readily pop into Area Home Store.

"It will be the best of both worlds," smiles Talmadge. "As you can see, the group shares not just a passion for good things and food, but also for travel. But the real reason we have plunged into the food industry is because we firmly believe that good eating is essential to good living! Filipino certainly know a lot more about the world than they used to be. They’re more global in outlook today. We really are very proud that we’re the first to bring into the Philippines a lot of the quality products abroad – including food."

The 400-square-meter Area flagship store opens this month at the Power Plant, Rockwell Center, Makati City.