Dining adventure at Claude Tayag’s Pampanga home
Word of MouthBy Sandy Daza
Whenever I hear the words Pampanga cuisine, there is one family name that comes to mind: Tayag.
Whenever I hear the words Pampanga cuisine, there is one family name that comes to mind: Tayag.
When Japanese cuisine was first introduced to me, one of the dishes that caught my attention was tonkatsu. This is boneless pork chop, breaded with panko, or Japanese breadcrumbs, then deep-fried to a crunch. Served with sweet-and-sour dark sauce, this became one of my favorite Japanese dishes.
One of the very first pastry recipes I made was a French apple pie at the Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. I made that so often that I felt I had perfected the recipe.
When I was a student in a hotel and restaurant school, I stayed in a dorm where a group of schoolmates and I put up a food group. We were eight in the group, with seven coming from different countries all over the world.
When I was a kid, any new foreign cuisine that I had tasted good—Italian pizza in the form of 3M pizza along Timog Avenue, then Matsusaka Garden for Japanese in Cubao, Kowloon along West Avenue and a few others for Chinese.
Lately, we have been looking around for places where we can set up branches of our restaurant, Wooden Spoon. Based on the response of our diners, we are encouraged to expand all over the metropolis and eventually in the Visayas, Mindanao and abroad.
My Sunday routine has consisted lately of badminton in the morning, church at noon, a late lunch at either Podium or anywhere in Megamall, followed by a nice quiet movie with cheese popcorn and a bottle of chilled water.
I have noticed a trend. Successful restaurants get copied, with the “Greenhills version” turning out to be cheaper though still with the same quality, or quite close to it.
Being in the restaurant business, my nightmare will forever be pests—ants, cockroaches, flies, mice, mosquitoes and rats. Wherever there’s food, shelter and water, you are certain these pests are around waiting to pounce. This is something people don’t want to discuss, but it can’t be ignored because pests invade homes, offices and especially food establishments.
The first time I went to Taipei, I had just come from the United States with a box of .41-caliber ammunition. My dumb move didn’t sink in until I was in line at customs to be checked. Blessing came in the form of a storage facility at the arrival area where I could leave my luggage for my overnight stay. I would have still been in there in some jail if not for that storage room.
The very first time I tried Indian cuisine was in New York City. It was bursting with flavors I had never come across with, and which I found very interesting. But that evening, I got sick and decided to stay away from Indian food for a long time.
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