Tasting the memories (Namit, gid!)

After three days in the land of Fish ‘n Chips (London) and herring prepared a hundred different ways (Amsterdam), it was good to come home to food that I grew up with. I spent five of my most formative years in Iloilo City, where my father was posted in the ’70s, and those years were among the best years of my life. Good food, fresh air, a friendly neighborhood in whose tree-lined streets I played pikyaw and ins (patintero).

I first went to school at the Assumption Convent in Iloilo, in whose courtyard was a beautiful garden where we held programs. In the afternoons, we would have fun in a playground behind which flowed a river. Such an ideal place to learn my ABC’s. Mother Julia Asuncion, r.a., my first mistress of class (now called a class adviser), is still there up to now.

My US-based parents Frank and Sonia Mayor even made a sentimental journey to Iloilo during their most recent visit to the country. They were entertained by their old friends Jun and Lulu Macalalag, Tony and Nadja Hechanova and Sim and Lina (my ninang) Griño. My parents made sure they went to all the places we used to go to as a family, like Villa Beach, Hotel del Rio, Panaderia de Molo, even Fort San Pedro (not so wholesome anymore, I hear).

Those were really good years, I could almost taste them.

Thus, when the Mandarin Oriental invited me to the opening of Manamit! (literally "masarap"), an Ilonggo culinary festival at the Captain’s Bar, I made the decision to go by thinking with my stomach. Fighting jet lag, I proceeded to the Mandarin, and satisfied my craving for Filipino food, Ilonggo style.

Guest chef Pauline Gorriceta-Banusing (who also went to Assumption Iloilo) tempts hard-core Manileños with such Ilonggo specialties as sinugba na baboy, steaming batchoy (an antidote to jet lag), pancit Molo, kadios, baboy at langka, adobado na pantat na may gata, pinamalhan na salmon belly (pinamalhan is like pinaksiw), fresh oysters from Roxas City etc. For dessert, they had coconut bibingka (the way they used to sell them at Villa Beach), pulot (caramel pastillas that are not wrapped individually, but which you eat by the spoonfuls), bucarillos and barquillos. The culinary feast runs till May 19.

A versatile chef, Pauline runs several restaurants and a catering business in Iloilo – Villa Regatta Ilonggo Seafood Restaurant, Freska, Citrus Global Bistro, Smiling Chef Catering Services and Al Dente Ristorante Italiano. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America, the New School of New York and at the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kim’s New York). Pauline’s family owns the popular Sarabia Manor in Iloilo (her mother is a Sarabia).

According to Pauline, Ilonggo cuisine boasts simple, fresh home-cooked food. Signature dishes are known for their freshness and do not make use of too many garnishes or sauces. Their fresh lumpia, for example, is "all in." I think the staple side sauce of Ilonggo food is sinamak, which is a cocktail of fresh vinegar, sili and spices. After you’ve had Ilonggo sinamak, I don’t think you’ll settle for any other kind of sawsawan. When we were growing up in Iloilo, my sister Mary Mae used to have all her fried viands with sinamak that her lips would turn pale after a hearty meal!

At the opening of the festival, I bumped into Metro Manila’s favorite palangga Maurice Arcache, whose mother was raised in Iloilo. Maurice and I were part of the media group that was invited by Baron Travel and Air France-KLM to Amsterdam, London and the inaugural cruise of the Freedom of the Seas at Southampton, so he, too, was looking forward to some Filipino food after over a week in Europe. I saw him savoring a plate of fresh seaweeds (lato) with ginamos (bagoong). Di bala, palangga?

Who’s afraid of the big Six-Oh?

Not the 1963 High School class nor the 1967 College class of St. Scholastica’s College who recently gathered en masse for a class 60th birthday ball at the Manila Polo Club – complete with the Replay band, a Juda Liu tiered cake with party favors and a ceremony to launch their coming of age.

Theirs was a special repertoire of three class songs especially rewritten for the occasion by class lyricists Yvette Jarencio, Elsa Lava Mapua, Paulynn Paredes Sicam and Linda Leon Nañawa: Six-Oh, Six-Oh (to the tune of New York, New York); Yes, We Are Sixty Now (to the tune of Those Were The Days); We’ve Only Just Begun. Even the Happy Birthday song went their way:

Happy birthday to us!

Turning sixty so fast!

Getting older, growing wiser

No regrets of the past!

Though our bones ache – We dance!

Though our voices crack – We sing!

Living life to the fullest, Thanking God we’re so blest!!!

Three US-based classmates of the batch thought it all up at an all girls’ weekend in New York last summer: Nene del Rosario David, Yvette Jarencio and Pinky Sevilla. Why not a Sweet 60 event as just recompense for the formal debuts they never had when they were graceless and awkward? A well-deserved bonus, too, for years of hard labor in their homes (especially reiterated by those living abroad with no household help to make lives more leisurely) and careers. And best of all, an evening to toast friendship and warm memories and all that the past decades have brought into their lives.

They could have danced all night to the surprise of the Replay band who thought it would be a fairly easy night for them. Yes, they are 60 and oh-so proud of it.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])