Bravo, Mommy and Romy!

Dr. Solita Camara-Besa is not my real mother but I call her Mommy anyway. All I know is that she is big, warm and wonderful and she is the mother of my very dear friend, Amy Besa, who was co-mom to my second daughter, Sarri, way back in the ’80s when Sarri was in school at the State University of New York. Sarri spent much time with Amy and her husband, Romy Dorotan, who was starting his career as a chef even then.

Over time Romy set up Cendrillon in SoHo, a Filipino restaurant with a French name. Cendrillon is French for “Cinderella,” I guess to give life to their dream of setting up the first Filipino restaurant of some prestige. Cendrillon got a lot of New York press and even television features. They claimed Willem Dafoe as one of their loyal customers. But after 13 years, they decided to close down Cendrillon and opened instead Purple Yam, another Filipino restaurant in Brooklyn.

Well, last Tuesday, March 2, was our Mommy’s 95th birthday and Amy had been planning her birthday party, which was held at Enderun, for a long time. Amy flew in from New York two weeks ahead. Then Romy followed. Her brother Wee and his wife, Winnie, and their daughter Emily came late because they were delayed by a snowstorm in Philadelphia. Nevertheless they made it. So did the party.

Months before it took place, Amy and I were e-mailing each other. “Do you know somebody who can supply me with organically grown ducks?” she asked.

“My restaurant partner, Tina Tan, can,” I said confidently. “How many ducks do you need?”

“Fifteen,” she said.

“I will give them to you as my birthday gift to Mommy. I will deliver them when you tell me to. Don’t worry about the ducks.”

The ducks earned me the title of participant in the birthday activities. The party was held at the Atrium, outside Restaurant 101, at Enderun. What a menu of Filipino food there was. It began with three pass-around appetizers: Spring pillows (small lumpias) that sat on a pineapple sweet-and-sour sauce served on small white Chinese soup spoons, bibingkang galapong with white cheese (very small, too) sitting on a tiny piece of banana leaf, and ube pan de sal with Vigan sausage. If you wanted to live dangerously, you could drink lambanog cocktails made with either calamansi or buko, young coconut.

Then you walked into the Atrium where three buffet tables were set. At the far end you could get fresh lumpiang ubod with shrimp and pork, but instead of the standard sauce it was served with ground Tarlac chicharon. Then there was lechon Bacolod-style, stuffed with lemongrass, onions, garlic, and black peppercorns. It was roasted by Mang Enteng, who flew in to roast the two lechons himself.

“He didn’t fly in for Alain Ducasse,” somebody whispered, “but he flew in for Mommy.” 

Then you had my duck — itik, it was called on the menu. The duck breasts were braised in coconut milk, lemongrass, turmeric, galangal and chilies. The duck legs were made into a confit with virgin coconut oil and served with bignay sauce. Romy said this was something of a failure because he could not control the oven and therefore overcooked it a little, but nevertheless it was delicious. Everything on the first buffet table was outstanding.

The second buffet table was at the back of the room. There they had different kinds of fish roasted in banana leaves and served with different delicious sauces, including three outstanding vinegars made from the sap of coconut, sugarcane and nipa; bringhe from Pampanga, pancit Efuven from Iloilo, and homemade noodles served with fresh vegetables and kalabasa sauce. Everything was also delicious.

The third buffet, off-center, was dessert. Romy made leche flan with organic eggs and carabao milk served with his own homemade macapuno. He also baked buko pie and made four ice creams — mango, barako, macapuno, and ube. There were cakes from Becky’s Kitchen, because Becky and Amy are also very good friends, and other local delicacies from all over the Philippines. Everything was delicious. I love the way Romy cooks. He cooks Filipino food that tastes richly traditional though he puts his own twists, like using chicharon as a sauce for lumpiang ubod, and somehow succeeds in enriching the traditional flavor. Romy Dorotan to me is the best Filipino chef in the world. Nobody can cook our food like he does.

Unlike most of the guests, I washed down my dinner with red wine. I had no problem ordering it from the crew of students, some of them mine, who served the dinner. It reminded me that the night before I had dinner with a friend who teaches Diplomacy at the Lyceum. He said they had their “diplomatic dinner” at the Dusit Thani Hotel again this year. I asked him how it went.

“Fine,” he said.

“Isn’t it strange,” I asked him, “that you teach at the Lyceum, probably a three-star university, and have a diplomatic dinner for your students?”

“I teach at Enderun, one of the country’s most expensive colleges and therefore five-star, and get invited to events where our students serve at tables. Something is happening to the world.”

Yes, something is happening to the food world anyway. It is turning slowly, definitely and deliciously organic. I’m sorry the world could not be invited to Mommy Besa’s 95th birthday, but it must make her so proud. Her guests were served extraordinarily well by her children, especially by her only daughter, Amy, and her chef husband, Romy Dorotan. Bravo!