A Japanese feast for the senses

Once a year, Lisa Alvendia sets a table fit for a king. More accurately, she sets close to a dozen tables – each one bedecked with carefully selected details and décor, each one exploring sublime themes with an unfailing eye for the correct motif, the perfectly positioned centerpiece.

This year, Alvendia – author of Creative Catering and Entertaining and a former restaurateur and caterer herself – came up with her table settings for the International Wine and Food Society, Manila Ladies’ Branch, at a private dinner held at the South Forbes Park home of Rene and Yaying Dragon recently. She called it her "Japanese Cherry Blossom Buffet."

For those used to simple restaurant settings, Alvendia’s settings can be eye-popping. She’s been known to decorate one table like an African safari, another suggesting a black-and-white fantasy, another a riot of Chinese colors.

This year, she went minimal, displaying 11 tables with exquisite variations on a Japanese theme, plus one buffet for display only. The overall effect was tranquil and minimal, with an entrance laden with flowers and Japanese screens set up to divide the space. Bonsai plants served almost as a garnish for the more elaborate creations on the tables.

Lisa used obis from kimonos to create her table runners – just the sort of detail that sets her designs apart – with an orange kimono hung from the wall as the main decoration. She set up Japanese plants with Japanese umbrellas, ribboned with horsetails. Pido Villanueva was her florist for the event, while the restaurant caterer was Sousaku.

For the party, Lisa had the terrace furniture relocated to accommodate 60 to 70 people who dined on the terrace. She also set up tents with Japanese lanterns. Some were inverted over a big planter with lights, while more Japanese plants and lanterns led guests along the gate leading to the doorway.

One table was low and set with Japanese imari plates, glasses and bento boxes. Another table had two bamboo centerpieces with twigs and orchid flowers on both ends. "No one wants to sit at a low table, so it was just for display," Lisa explained, adding the art of table decoration doesn’t have to be expensive. "You don’t have to spend too much on table settings. Just use what you have. You can put moss and one orchid inside a bowl, or a few stones, for example. Use your imagination."

Another table had two white bowls with chopsticks piercing through its holes and a black obi as a table runner. A particularly striking centerpiece was fashioned from a cube of floral foam covered with leaves, walis tingting and orchids in a bowl filled with glass marbles, while the runner was a handmade obi with a geometric print.

Other little details included cherry blossoms tied to each name card and name tags that were given as guests entered and tied to the backs of their chairs.

For her menu, Lisa served tempura, soft-shell crab, shrimp and fish. Instead of plain vegetables, she had asparagus wrapped in bacon and tempura-fried, offered different kinds of sashimi, soba noodles in celadon bowls, and grilled boneless chicken thighs.

"There was no buffet," she explained later, preferring individualized plating. "People are very particular about what they eat – it was all eel, sushi, California roll with mango and avocado with two kinds of nori outside, rice with black and white sesame seeds, and squid."

She had satellite buffets instead with hot and cold dishes, sake pitchers and three kinds of shakes, including green mango and green tea in big glass jars immersed in ice water with tiny glasses.

The sashimi assortment included salmon, tuna, squid, uni (sea urchin) and eel served in a glass sushi display with two chefs preparing it as guests watched. Also a sight was the serving boat full of Japanese hors d’oeuvres like agedashi tofu in small containers, seaweed crackers, and roasted squid teriyaki in small spoons. One side dish had raw vegetables with wasabi and miso dips, fried fishcakes in muffin cups, salmon tartare on a Japanese leaf and daikon.

For a salad, she served bean sprouts and tofu with a very popular wasabi sauce, and kani (crab stick) and mango with sesame dressing. Another salad had turnip, asparagus tips, vinaigrette and crunchy chicken strips like croutons, and all salads had very light dressings in individual containers so everyone could try each one.

At the cold buffet sector with the salads was a pagoda ice carving with a cold soup on the side, green tea soup and miso soup. The other side had a soba feast, with two kinds of noodles shaped into nests. Guests could pick their choice of toppings like strips of tamago (egg), nori, scallions, chicken, kani, spring onions, leeks, toasted onions and shallots. Guests could even mix their own soba sauce.

As for the table décor, Alvendia set three colored tables, all round, with table skirts in loud colors like tangerine, violet, mint green and fuchsia. All the desserts were prepared in colored glasses with a floral arrangement of orchids and twigs, and served in demitasse cups: coffee jelly with light cream, green tea sago, tofu mousse, and Japanese pastries.

Hot green tea was a very popular drink that day, along with the green tea shake. White and very light red wines were also served.

For giveaways after the party, members were all given kimonos and slippers, while painted Japanese fans with delicate paintings were tied to the backs of chairs. The men who attended got blue kimonos.

After the dinner were games in which all the prizes were Japanese, like a casserole, wasabi, watermelon and pumpkin seeds, green tea mugs with mint leaves, tea percolators with tea leaves, Japanese demitasse cups and saucers, an individual coffee maker, and restaurant gift certificates for two.

Guests included Glenda Barretto, Linda Panlilio and Elsie Araneta, and over half the women of the IWFS brought their husbands and families.

Alvendia said later that her pièce de résistance, the orange kimono, was borrowed from a friend who got it in Nagoya, Japan. When she needed a dozen or so kimonos as giveaways, she asked a Japanese friend where to buy them, and was told to go to a Japanese bridal shop because they sold kimonos that were used once and then rented out. Adding to the tranquil mood, she used a white and orange motif because "reds would clash."

For those lucky enough to enjoy a party invitation from Lisa Alvendia, it’s a given that you will be presented with a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.