Once a chef, always a chef

Twenty-five years ago, my friends and I were invited to a quaint neighborhood restaurant on Wilson Street in San Juan. The restaurant, Café Ysabel, had a homey feel to it, and its attraction was its guarantee of a personal dining experience. The owner, Gene Gonzalez, was also the restaurant’s chef, who cooked for each and every guest and made sure they enjoyed the dishes he whipped up for them.

At the time, I had just come home from years of living in Paris and found it such a “Parisienne” experience to wine and dine in a restaurant where the owner cooked for his clientele. I never saw that in Manila before and I must say, Gene Gonzalez started the trend.

Looking back at that first dining experience in Café Ysabel, I recall that I brought with me a visiting guest from Belgium, who was a “gourmet” (a connoisseur of fine food and drink) in the true sense of the word. He came from a wealthy family and grew up with a chef cooking their family meals. I thought the world of his opinions when it came to food. At the end of our meal, he complimented chef Gene Gonzalez’s cuisine and said that it was one of the finest meals he had ever experienced in Manila.

That first dinner with chef Gonzalez left such a good mark on our palates that we came back for more. But after a while, more and more restaurants sprang up, our fickle taste buds searched for other dining haunts and soon Café Ysabel became just another gastronomical memory.

Fast forward to 2009. Recently, at one of Tatler’s many functions, I saw a very familiar face that did not seem to age at all. This blast from the past was still looking good, I thought, and I did not have to think much about who he was because he instantly smiled and extended his hand when he saw me. It was none other than Chef Gene Gonzalez and before I knew it, I agreed to his invitation to dine once again at his new Café Ysabel, a stone’s throw away from the old one. The old one was originally located on Wilson Street, San Juan, and the new one is on P. Guevarra Street, San Juan. True to his trademark, the new Café Ysabel has the same homey feeling of the old Café Ysabel but this time, it’s much bigger and has a more “ancestral home” feel to it. Gonzalez has also evolved from a master chef to a master teacher: He has a school, the Center for Asian Culinary Studies.

“I decided to share my passion for cooking with the youth, who have the inclination to choose cooking as their career,” he says. “Though I am now the head of a culinary school and a consultancy group, Café Ysabel is still closest to my heart, having been my very first business venture.”

Today, Gonzalez’s team of inspired chefs and students from the school help him with the cuisine of the restaurant. He has added to his list of clients the top expatriates, embassies and businessmen of Manila’s top companies, who find his cuisine comparable to the good restaurants in Europe and the USA.

“The magic is still its genuine ambiance and its affordability. People still want to get good value for their money and they know that Café Ysabel gives them that,” Gonzalez says. “It has become also a venue for enthusiasts of gastronomy. Wine companies hold their food and wine gourmet dinners here while food companies and embassies have challenged our kitchens to bring out cuisines that would promote the quality and individuality of their country’s products.”

Café Ysabel also offers custom-made dinners — even for two. These meals are personally designed by Gonzalez or his son, Gino, who has been trained at Alain Ducasse, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, and who is also an instructor at the school.

I can’t quite believe that it’s been 25 years since my friends and I were there for our first dinner. I can rightfully say that if Gonzalez’s cuisine was good then, it is excellent now. Café Ysabel has served thousands of meals since then and has gone on a roller-coaster ride from the very worst of times to the very best of times. It has weathered the political and economic upheavals that have plagued our country. But it has managed to survive and seeing the smiles of its employees the other night — the same ones that were there 25 years ago — I went home feeling confident that an institution like Café Ysabel is here to stay and will leave a legacy to the next generation of fine chefs. Indeed, Gonzalez’s baton will be passed on to his son, and to the many more generations of food artists who believe in the value of excellent cuisine as the way to good health and good living.

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For more about the school, go to the website: www.cacschef.com.