Crisostomo & revolutionary food
The name itself conjures the history the restaurant is based on. When told that the restaurant’s name is “Crisostomo,” I immediately asked: “As in Crisostomo Ibarra?”
Well, yes, and more.
Located at Eastwood City Mall, chef Florabel Co’s new restaurant is both a salute to Jose Rizal’s hero and an alliteration of her husband’s name, Christopher.
“I like using the first names of my family,” she says. “Like my first restaurant is called Florabel, then I used my dad’s name for Felix, and now my husband’s name for Crisostomo. It was actually my partner Ricky Laudico who gave me the idea for what Crisos-tomo should be.”
Crisostomo is a Filipino restaurant that pays tribute to the cultures that have influenced our national cuisine: the colonizers — Spanish, American and Japanese — and the Chinese, plus Florabel’s own touch.
She explains that as a chef she often ventures into French, Asian, and other continental cuisines, but as a foodie, she will always go back to Filipino food. “It’s still my favorite food,” she says. “For the longest time I’ve been exposed to gourmet food, but really, when you’re tired and you just want to eat good food, you look for tinola, you look for gata. Even when I was with Le Soufflé restaurant, somehow what I was doing there still had a Filipino touch.”
To do research on what Pinoys were eating at the turn of the century, Florabel looked up old recipes and turned to an unlikely source for food inspiration: the novels of Jose Rizal — Noli Me Tangere and its sequel, El Filibusterismo. First printed in Berlin, Germany, in 1887, Noli was a searing social and political commentary on the state of the colonized nation. If there is a scene that is remembered by anyone who read the book in high school, it is the dinner party thrown by Capitan Tiago, father of Maria Clara, in honor of Crisostomo Ibarra, who has come home after completing his studies in Europe.
How a dinner party could be ruined by the parts of the chicken that were served to Padre Damaso (who turns out to be the biological father of Crisosotomo’s beloved) seems silly in these modern times, but in colonial society, insults, whether real or imagined, were the things that life-changing grudges were made of.
Naturally, the restaurant Crisostomo has to have tinolang manok, the dish that began a chain of events that ultimately led to a revolution and a woman fleeing to the convent. Florabel, though, is not content with the old way: her tinola has papaya and buko. The mere fact that tinola is made with papaya (which you have to catch at the right stage of ripeness) is already a treat in these times when the shortcut is to use sayote.
One thing I love about the menu of Crisostomo is literally the menu itself, printed on paper and featuring drawings of people during a time when pajamas could pass as daytime pants, when men walked around the streets caressing their roosters, and women wore veils to church and market. The dishes have references to the characters in Rizal’s two novels, his life, and other people and places of the revolution: Binagoongan ni Pia, pork stewed in bagoong (Maria Clara’s mother); Crispin at Basilio, tokwa’t baboy in vinegar and onion, (the sons of Sisa); Pork Santiago, deep-fried pork chop with atchara and mushroom gravy (a play on Fort Santiago, where Rizal was incarcerated before he was executed); Sisig Linares, sizzling pork sisig (the fiancé of Maria Clara); Elias’ Choice, oysters with garlic and cheese (the fugitive friend of Ibarra); Crazy Sisa Squid, green mango with crispy squid salad (the woman who goes insane after losing her sons); and Noli Me Talong, which is of course, tortang talong pie topped with kesong puti, among many other items on the menu.
Florabel says conspiratorially: “I reread the beginning and ending of the novels. And I loved the parts where there was a celebration or a feast.”
Among the modern references that she put is a bangus dish named after STAR Lifestyle editor Millet Mananquil, whom she has known since she was starting out as a chef. It is slices of bangus stuffed with buro, “which is her favorite,” says Florabel.
Among the all-time favorites she has put her stamp on are chopsuey, which is served in a buko shell and cooked with coconut meat; her tempura has laing in it; her humba is braised liempo with peanut sauce and anise, eaten with cuapao. Padre Garrote is a bihon noodle dish with pork leg, chestnuts and quail eggs. These are the Chinese influences on Filipino food, she says.
After opening a number of restaurants, what still inspires the chef to come up with new offerings? “My passion for eating,” she says. “I grew up in a compound with my dad, my cousins and relatives, and all of us loved to eat. I was very entrepreneurial as a kid. I would bake cookies, yema, and heart-shaped cakes for Valentine’s Day and sell them to my classmates at ICA.”
She’s no longer baking today, but Florabel offers bottled sauces for people who want to take home a piece of Crisostomo’s goodness.
There may be a global crisis, but looking around the new Eastwood City Mall, you realize that people still know how to enjoy themselves — and a big part of that is through eating. The new development has four floors of shopping and leisure outlets targeted to a more mature, upscale market than the development’s older cluster.
Kevin Tan, Megaworld retail property division head for commercial operations, says that they invited Florabel to open a restaurant because they had followed her career and liked what they saw. “We wanted new concepts but run by well-known restaurateurs. She packaged her concept so well — Filipino food with all the different countries that colonized the Philippines. The whole colonial trend is now seen in food and architecture, it’s a period that’s still very interesting to this day.”
The interiors of Crisostomo, however, are very contemporary with textured surfaces and fabrics, carefully chosen details (dinnerware are by artist Lanelle Abueva), and made even more charming with humorous gestures to all things Pinoy. The backs of the chairs are shaped like fishtails, the condiments are in containers that spell PST (patis, suka, toyo), and etchings of Maria Clara and Crisostomo Ibarra by Abigail Goy are the focal point of the interior space (the outside seating looks out on a park).
Florabel confesses that when she’s opening a restaurant, it is the interiors that she works on first, rather than the food, because she already knows the menu in her head. “Ricky Laudico, who’s my partner in Sumo Sam and John and Yoko, helped me with the interiors, and Abigail Goy has been doing graphic design for us, including for Felix and Florabel. Her dad is the famous architect Agustin Goy, who used to do the LJC restaurants.”
Florabel says that when she was invited to open in Eastwood City Mall, a building surrounded by residential condominiums and call centers, she knew she wanted to do Filipino food. “People are so busy, they find it a hassle to cook, so they end up eating junk food — but they miss home cooking. This is home cooking with a twist. My inspiration is basically a reflection of what I want to eat and how I want the taste to come out.”
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Crisostomo restaurant is located at the second floor of the new Eastwood City Mall in Eastwood, Quezon City. For deli orders and reservations, call 0918-8117334, 710-1693.
