Tita Nora Daza: The last culinary titan

For two or three generations of Filipino homemakers, Nora V. Daza’s cookbook Let’s Cook with Nora was the bible of cooking. No newlywed or departing migrant-to-be was ever without it. The well-worn and stained cookbook was the umbilical cord that refuses to detach itself from our collective mother’s womb, forming part of our culinary heritage that binds us together. It literally brought joy to countless Filipino dining tables. No Filipino home is without it.”

Thus I wrote when requested by Anvil Publishing to do a back-cover blurb for Tita Nora’s Festive Dishes with Family and Friends, her to-be-last cookbook before her passing last week.

Though I first met her quite belatedly during the launch of our book Linamnam on Dec. 1, 2011 at the Podium Mall, it was as if I’d known her all my adult life, reading, being guided and nourished by her cookbook, Let’s Cook with Nora, which my mother, Imang Duringhad, had a well-worn, dog-eared copy of in her kitchen. Having some 300 Filipino, Chinese and European recipes, it was the answer-all cookbook that pretty much covered the gamut of dishes that Filipinos of our generation (baby boomers born between 1946 to 1964) loved, or learned to love because of her — kitchen-tested at that, with easy-to-follow recipes, from everyday fare to special-occasion dishes.

To me, she was a living legend, a larger-than-life persona, a titan descending to mingle with us mortals, that during her surprise and unannounced appearance at our book launch, I was star-struck and tongue-tied, to say the least. â€œI read your column in the STAR,” she said. “You’re doing so much promoting Filipino cuisine.” I was so humbled and speechless that all I could muster was, “Thank you, Tita.” 

Even my darleng Mary Ann recalls that when she first moved to Hong Kong in 1980 to work for Cathay Pacific, all she had in her suitcase were her personal belongings and a copy of Let’s Cook with Nora. She was then 22 years old, and discovered soon enough that most of her Filipina batch-mates who lived in the same apartment building had the same cookbook. “It was the culinary bible in every kitchen and assured us of our comfort food while away from home. Amusingly, there were times we would argue on how to cook a particular dish and end up realizing it was a difference in interpretation of the Nora Daza cookbook. We all had same reference.” 

My familiarity with her was extended through my friendship of many years with her two of her five well-grounded children, Sandy Daza and Nina Daza Puyat, who both followed in their mother’s footsteps, accomplished in their own right as successful cookbook authors, chefs, restaurateurs and TV cooking show hosts. At present, Sandy runs the popular Wooden Spoon restaurants on Katipunan and in Rockwell Power Plant, and hosts FoodPrints on Lifestyle Network, while Nina is the editor of Appetite magazine. 

Tita Nora’s storied career is pretty much summed up in the introduction of Festive Dishes. She wrote that her culinary life began when her grandmother, Doña Cresenciana Reyes de Villanueva, from Tanauan, Batangas, “taught me how to market, light a native stove and cook rice.” And from her Pampango mother, Encarnacion Guanzon, she learned how to make her first adobo, sinigang, escabeche, cocido, butterscotch pie, cream puff and frozen fruit salad. In 1948, she took up Home Economics at the University of the Philippines (long before culinary studies became a school course), then after graduation, she got her practical experience in actual restaurant management and catering at the UP Cafeteria.

In 1955, she took a master’s degree in Restaurant and Institution Management at Cornell University in New York. When she came back, she became the director of the Manila Gas Cooking School, hosting a TV show Cooking it Up with Nora and doing the first live Filipino TV show Bahala si Mommy with actor Armando Goyena (father of the beauteous Revilla sisters). She also hosted radio programs in the 1960s with Home with Nora and At Home with the Stars. 

She is perhaps the first Filipino to pursue a multimedia career since she was also a food columnist. Then, two more cookbooks followed: Galing Galing, which was co-written with her daughter Mariles, and A Culinary Life with her inaanak (godchild), Micky Fenix.

Her pioneering career as a restaurateur began with the opening of Au Bon Vivant in 1965, perhaps the first and only French restaurant in Manila at that time, initially in Ermita, then branching out to Makati and Quezon City. Its bestsellers were onion soup, spinach soufflé, chateaubriand and almond mousse, and her versions have since become the benchmarks for our generation. 

She confides that she is proudest of Aux Iles Philippines, a Filipino restaurant she established in Paris in 1970. It was awarded Prix Marco Polo for being one of the top Asian restaurants, and got high ratings in both the Michelin Guide and Gault & Millau de Paris. Its menu consisted of fresh lumpia, adobo, caldereta, kuhol Bicol, sinigang na sugpo, cocido, and for desserts, sans rival, banana cream pie, ube pie, and a mousse of langkâ and dayap.

From 1973 to 1977, she also operated the Maharlika Restaurant at the Philippine Center in New York City. It was rated as one of the top 37 restaurants in the city during its time.

Back on the home front in Manila, she opened Galing Galing as a result of her craving for a good kare-kare, which she found wanting in any Manila restaurant. What better way than to do it herself and turn it into a business, she wrote. Her other bestsellers were binakol, lechon kawali, caldereta, laing and reina blanca. Unfortunately, the restaurant burned down, together with most of her cookbooks.

Her last restaurant venture was Mai Thai in Edsa Central complex in Pasig City, in partnership with Sylvia Cancio Lim. 

To our generation of Filipinos, our knowledge and appreciation of food, whether Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, and even French cuisine is largely due to her. Nora Villanueva Daza’s enduring culinary legacy will remain for many, many more future generations of Filipinos. You will be sorely missed, Tita Nora.