A ‘bridge’ to a fine weekend

You’ve had a back-breaking, tiring week. Now, it’s a weekend and you don’t know where to go. You’ve done the rounds of Makati and Malate, and are frankly getting tired of coming home in the wee hours drunk and half-dead. The Baywalk is too crowded for your taste. Checking in at hotels around the metropolis for some R&R comes to mind but... nah, too near. Bumping into the same faces you see each week is a great possibility and you just don’t want to be reminded of work...not until next Monday at least. Staying at home is so boring. Baguio, too far. And you’ve been to Subic and know it like the back of your hand. Tagaytay? That too. What to do, you wonder.

Well, better check out Batangas City. The city of the Bs – balisong, Balayan bagoong and bulalo (plus, of course, kapeng Barako) – has been brewing a relaxing alternative lately for famished and fatigued souls wanting to get away from their lifespan-reducing lifestyle. Now if you’re like us, sleepless for almost two days and want nothing more than to plop blindly into bed amid comfortable surroundings, then trust Hotel PonteFino to give you an "Ala, eh!" moment.

Located in Gulod Labac, Hotel PonteFino could be the city’s best-kept secret. It’s being packaged as the "first fine Filipino boutique hotel" and it’s easy to see why. From the first moment you enter the spacious lobby and be greeted by a courteous staff draped in what suspiciously looks like piña fabric, to the time you sit down and savor its filling dishes, you’ll know you’ve stumbled upon a gold mine of possibilities as far as weekend getaways are concerned.

Built on two hectares of property known as Pastor Village, the hotel stands out from the rest of the structures around with its European-style architecture designed by Ponce Verdiano. Its interiors, peppered with reddish orange and yellow hues inspired by the colors of the caballero flowers (otherwise known as fire or flame trees), is courtesy of Yoly Zimmer of Design Access Inc.

"We want to be defined for gracious Filipino hospitality. ‘Ponte‘ means bridge and ‘fino‘ is fine, and as the name implies, we want to be a bridge to fine Filipino excellence and gracious hospitality," says chief executive officer Ramon Ricardo Gutierrez, who is also the man behind the Chateau 1771 Group of Restaurants and the Malate Pension.

Batangas City, adds Gutierrez, is poised to become the next big growth area what with the international port set to open by the end of the year. To quote from that famous Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, build it and they will come. Well, that’s just what Gutierrez and company did – build the hotel in anticipation of the rush of tourists, both local and foreign. That’s called foresight, and obviously PonteFino owners have lots of it. "This is a rich province. Apart from the international port as well as the presence of Bauan port, Batangas is also an ‘energy center’ what with oil refineries and power plants here, which supplies 65 percent of energy requirements in Luzon. Batangas is also becoming a huge economic zone with the presence of big manufacturing companies," says Gutierrez, who has been in the hotel and restaurant industry for the past 20 years.

Apart from expats, PonteFino’s 60 rooms and other amenities also attract tourists from Manila as well as Batangas residents who stay for the weekend, a habit Metro Manilans could very well get into for a number of reasons. If you’re a harassed individual who wants some pampering, the hotel’s spa services offers a wide selection of massages ranging from aromatherapy, foot massage, swedish and siatsu.

And get this, they have hot lava stone massage and four-hand massage. The former has a masseuse placing warm lava stones from Taal on your back to soothe and relax those aching, knotted muscles. The latter, meanwhile, has a couple of masseuse kneading your back for a highly relaxing experience. And here’s something unique – the hotel offers the services of a hilot, that traditional massage that our grandparents used to love where an affected, often painful part of the body is massaged and, eventually healed. All this at the privacy of your room, with you either channel surfing or, if you’re billeted in the Fino Suite, catching up with those DVD movies you’ve been meaning to see but just couldn’t for lack of leisure time.

Now if you’re the restless type, the hotel’s Batangas Discovery Tour packages are there for your perusal. The Visita Iglesia Pilgrimage will have you visiting historic churches all over Batangas while the Taal Heritage Tour lets you visit old stone structures, ancestral homes and historic landmarks. For some eco-tourism activity, the Calumpang River Tour is a laidback two-hour trip along Calumpang River where you’d get to bird-watch (bright blue kingfisher and the tikling are just some attractions) and relish delicious kakanin when you stop at a bamboo grove, where you will also be treated to a demonstration of the local fishing practices. Just make sure you avail of this tour on a clear day. Intermittent rains will spoil your view a bit; instead of clear waters, you’ll get a murky view of the river. Now if you’re really the adventurous type, you have a choice between a trek to the Nagtuon Falls or have the Mt. Banoy Exploration Climb. Either way, you get to glimpse the province’s natural beauty. The hotel will soon open a challenge course complete with ropes courses and bungee jumping activities for those who don’t want to go out of the hotel.

As always, the Filipinos’ love for food is another reason why visitors troop to the hotel. Blame it on young chefs Vicky Rose Pacheco (one of the hotel’s consultants) and Dennis Victor Edillon Jr. (executive chef of PonteFino) for those additional pounds and added waistline inches. But it’s not easy to say no to the sumptuous buffet spread of local Batangas dishes made irresistible with new twists.

Aptly called New Batangas Cuisine, chef Dennis researched, experimented and made over familiar dishes. The "poor man’s dish" sinaing na tulingan, for instance, was flaked and tossed in pasta for that tasty east-west marriage of flavors. He takes pride in the bulalo served in the hotel because it’s not the greasy kind you get in many restaurants around Batangas. The idea is to simmer the bulalo for 24 hours, skim off the grease from the top of the soup, add vegetables and, voila, a healthier yet still tasty version of bulalo. Feeling adventurous, chef Dennis has also played around with the classic Caesar salad, adding just a hint of Balayan bagoong in place of the usual anchovies. The result is a creamy yet light salad with the bagoong teasing your palate. Just think of hide and seek. One moment, you get a whiff of the distinctive saltiness of the bagoong, then all of a sudden it disappears. If that doesn’t leave you asking for more, we don’t know what else.

"But of course, there are certain dishes in Batangas that you don’t fool around with, like the guinataang langka," says Dennis, adding that these dishes are good enough as is.

Listening to the chef talk about his research on Batangas food is like having a crash course in local cuisine. For instance, he talked about the origin of the maliputo, which can only be found in Taal Lake, like the tawilis. We learn that the maliputo starts out as talakitok and is originally a saltwater fish. As the talakitok swims through the Pansipit River, it adjusts to the freshwater environs and finally becomes maliputo. It’s softer too, unlike the "fake" maliputo which is actually a talakitok. Confused? Don’t be. Just remember that a maliputo has a yellow streak under its belly. Unlike the tawilis, chef Dennis has no problems sourcing the maliputo. The tawilis, owing to its perishable nature, is usually grilled and cooked as sinigang. "I just treat it like salmon. I just steam it, add sesame oil, ginger, light soy sauce. I also use Japanese miso instead of sampalok," explains chef Dennis, a gold medal Chefs on Parade winner who used to work at the Peninsula Manila.

Dennis recently gave members of the media a sampling of the freestyle Asian-Continental cuisine PonteFino guests can look forward to at each visit. Just consider the following entrees: Seared Pepper Beef Carpaccio, Quesong Puti and Goat Cheese Mille-Feuille (the two cheeses baked in puff pastry with caramelized onions); and Roasted Pepper and Tomato Soup (a soup with a zing tempered by the sweetness of the carrot puree and fresh gherkins). We personally liked the Asian Tuna Tartar, a mellow mix of sashimi-grade tuna and Asian spices and dill. A popular choice is the Balayan Caesar salad complemented with the crunchy, croissant-shaped Tiger Prawn Saltimbocca (which is really a simple dish of prawn wrapped in bacon and potato). The common tilapia is given a cosmopolitan flair with a crust of macadamia nuts, mint and green peppercorn. But the piece de resistance is undoubtedly the Affogato Barako, a very simple concoction of homemade chocolate ice cream drizzled with a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream and hot Barako espresso. Simple but packed with a lot of punch.

Sometimes, though, it’s these simple things that are well appreciated and keep you coming back for more, especially after having a stressful work week. For Hotel PonteFino regulars, this is getting to be a hard habit to break. Well, nobody’s complaining.

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For inquiries, call 437-2103, 421-9710, or fax 421-2059; (Batangas sales office) (043) 723-3466 or fax (043) 723-3488.