And it all began in Baguio

MANILA, Philippines - For chef Vicky Rose Pacheco, childhood and summer dreams included living in a house that looked and felt like a spaceship where the family would return every year in Baguio City.

Then as now, Baguio was a food trip: Vicky’s family loved trying restaurants up and down Session Road.

Then, in college at the Hotel and Restaurant Administration at the University of the Philippines, Vicky met Anna Marie Dimalanta and her appreciation of Baguio City deepened.

Together, the two would explore the Baguio market, and pile their bayongs with as many goodies as they could carry: peanut brittle; sweet strawberries in little crates; lettuce, mushrooms, and peppers in different colors.

When Vicky dreamed up Sentro 1771 with owner Ricky Gutierrez, her goal was to capture the exuberance and bounty of the Baguio market.

Meanwhile, Anne Marie moved to New York – a vibrant food city – and a new round of adventures began. One of Vicky’s favorite memories is of a tiny Japanese chef who offered a prix fixe menu of three desserts in a tiny, intimate space in Manhattan. Anne Marie would eventually change careers in New York, though, becoming an educator and school administrator.

The thing about best friends, however, is that they become part of the family. Anne Marie had a brother, Francis, who together with their other brother Edmund became regulars at Vicky’s house where they would cage free meals from her kusinera.

The bestfriend’s brother, better known as Dr. D, is an award-winning doctor and section chief of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at St. Luke’s.

He has a huge laugh, a love for life and a fondness for eating. As far as he can remember, Vicky prepared meals to celebrate that he passed the medical boards; then, that he finished his residency. Whenever Anne Marie came home from New York, or the good doctor returned from further studies at the hospitals of Harvard, Cornell and Yeshiva Universities, Chef Vicky would cook up a storm. Ricky Gutierrez became a friend as well.

When Dr. D was starting out, only a few doctors specialized in developmental pediatrics. He found that it could get depressing, and felt uncomfortable telling parents that their children had a disorder.  Once, he told a sad mother that he himself was diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) just to make her feel better. She went home convinced her child would eventually become a doctor. 

Early on in his career, he decided that no one would leave his clinic without hope.

On his many trips back home to Baguio to visit his parents, he realized that Baguio had no facility devoted to children with special needs. Each trip became an opportunity to give back. Every quarter, he would round up his friends who were physical, occupational and speech therapists to guide and help families and their children with special needs.

Out of this, A Child’s D.R.E.A.M. Foundation was born. It is Baguio’s first pediatric therapy center that has helped over 2,000 children since 2003.

Families from the Cordilleras and Ilocos Region and Central Luzon would come to Baguio to see him and his team, and no one was turned away.

Strengthening the friendship between Chef Vicky and Dr. D is a common quest for healthy meals.

Something as simple as baon is a vital concern for Dr D. Children today must survive in an environment full of chemicals, preservatives and pollution. Measures to counter these are staggering. Even the simplest one – five servings of fruit and vegetables a day – is difficult to achieve in a busy, urban household.

Dr. D also encourages parents to avoid food with additives, artificial flavoring, coloring and preservatives. For her part, Vicky has been quietly making the 1771 menus healthier. She has introduced red rice; put salad in Sentro even when salads are not really part of Filipino dining; and offered a wider array of vegetables.

“Remember our trip to Vietnam?” Vicky recalls. “That was a revelation for me – what the Vietnamese did to vegetables. I took that philosophy for Sentro.” she recalls.

Last year, Chef Vicky and Ricky Gutierrez travelled with Dr. D to Singapore, but this time it was to cheer him on as he received an inaugural award for advocacy given by the Special Education Network In Asia. This group of educators, professionals and parents across Asia honors those who impact their communities by raising awareness for children with special needs.

The next D.R.E.A.M. project is a school for children with special needs in Baguio. Because of this, Anne Marie has come back home and now runs D.R.E.A.M. full-time.

When Dr. D asked for help to raise funds for the 12th year of his foundation, Chef Vicky decided that she would feature vegetables. In her Dine for a Dream promo last May 2015, she promised that 10 per cent of sales of Sentro 1771’s appetizers, vegetables and salads would go to the foundation. She raised more than P125,000 in a single month.

Dr. D has watched the incidence of autism rise in the Philippines with concern. From one child in 500 with autism, the figure is now one child in 68.

“Eat healthy!” he tells anyone who will listen. “Feed your children healthy food.” 

Chef Vicky knows how to tempt even children to eat their vegetables. For their dinner at Sentro, Chef Vicky cleansed palates with a fresh pineapple and malunggay smoothie. The vitamin powerhouse, malunggay, was slipped in again for the main course. Chef Vicky served a mouthwatering grilled pompano with a miso-tomato-malunggay stuffing.

Sentro 1771 is only one of 12 restaurants helping Dr Dimalanta this year. There are four months left to have a good meal and help a child with special needs to achieve his dream.