At 5:30 a.m. last week, chef patron Margarita Araneta Forés rang up her team to make sure that everything was perfect for the vin d’honneur.
Translated as “wine of honor,” this annual reception is hosted by the President in Malacañang after New Year.
The food for 450 guests had to be at the venue by 7:30 a.m. for the morning cocktails at 10 a.m.
Watching her weight, Forés drank only coffee as she closely monitored the catering. The team worked with clockwork precision. By 9:30 a.m., dressed in minimalist black shirt and skirt, she arrived at the Palace. That’s been her professional ethic: Early arrival and calm preparations lead to success.
After the event, she went to Makati to meet a client for a business cocktail, and then took a light lunch of clear chicken soup at 3 p.m. in her office. She then reviewed with the team the Malacañang reception and how to improve its next catering service at the Palace.
Lessons learned
“Everything is a work in progress,” she said. “Each event teaches a lesson. My resolution for 2016 is to hold postmortem meetings so we can fine-tune and do things better.”
Her day still not done, there was another meeting for a wedding reception, an interview with the press, followed by a trip to Ascott Bonifacio Global City to check on her restaurant, Alta.
“It’s a different animal,” she noted. “We’re on full service. The kitchen gets ready at 4:30 a.m. for breakfast. We do a pasta and salad buffet for lunch, cocktails at the pool bar, and banqueting.”
That’s a typical day for Asia’s Best Female Chef 2016, an honor given by the international culinary observer The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Then there are the occasional culinary demonstrations, guest appearances and
crisis management.
Her downtime is simple: playing with her cats at home, reading cookbooks and magazines, traveling to her hometown Bacolod or the Cordilleras to scout for ingredients, and bonding with son Amado.
Forés is still overwhelmed by the recognition—her award, aside from the main Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, decided on by a poll of respected industry personalities in the region.
“Tonyboy (Escalante) blazed the trail for us,” she pointed out. Last year, his eponymous restaurant Antonio’s Tagaytay was the first Filipino venture to be included on the prestigious list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Last November, no less than William Reed of the William Reed Business Media, the UK-based publisher of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, invited Forés to the gala dinner of the “Oscars of the food world” on Feb. 29 in Bangkok.
She was also asked to share her culinary journey at the event.
Fitting highlight
The recent news of the Asia’s Best Female Chef 2016 award, while unexpected, is a fitting highlight to Forés’ 30-year career, the first decade of which saw her as a dilettante than the driven entrepreneur she is today.
Contrary to perception that the rich don’t have to break a sweat, Forés said that entrepreneurship was in the family DNA. Her siblings had their own businesses, aside from being involved in the family’s real-estate ventures and the Araneta Coliseum.
She looked up to her grandfather J. Amado Araneta, a Negrense haciendero who developed Cubao. An early adaptor, he acquired the franchise for Matsuzakaya, the Japanese department store in the ’60s, and even opened Matsusaka way before Japanese restaurants became fashionable.
In the ’60s and ’70s, the family toured frequently when air travel was a luxury. The exposure to Europe’s best hotels and restaurants left impressions on Forés. These memories became inspirations and standards of service for her future business.
Pivotal party
In 1987, Forés, fresh from lessons in Italian home kitchens, served cocktails at the 21st birthday party of her sister Bledes. One of the guests, then Hyatt general manager Perfecto Quicho, was so impressed that he invited her to hold a food festival, “Italia In Bocca (Italy in your palate),” at Hyatt’s Hugo’s restaurant.
Forés was marketed as a scion of the landed family of the Aranetas. Inquirer food columnist Doreen Fernandez lauded Forés’ cooking, such that other publications followed suit.
Apparently, she didn’t need a publicist. The press was fascinated that a girl from an haciendero clan would be lugging pots and pans to parties.
However, she was habitually late and disorganized.
“I had to decide. I needed to buckle down, and it took me 10 years,” recalled Forés.
Her mother loaned her the capital to start her own restaurant—on condition that her siblings Veana, Joe, Jorge and Bledes would be her partners.
In 1997, Forés opened Cibo, which served quick meals of Italian salads, sandwiches and pastas. The operation was more than profitable, such that she paid back the seven-figure loan in just a year.
Running a restaurant in a mall developed her discipline. “With catering back then, you could choose your time. The restaurant has to be open daily,” she said.
Stability
It also gave much-needed stability in her life and inspired her to be creative in developing dishes and styling events.
As a restaurateur, she’s a purveyor of authentic Italian cuisine with her Cibo restaurants and the launch of the Casa
Artusi Philippines culinary school.
Her restaurants Grace Park, Lusso, Alta, and the Fiori di M flowering and catering firm have been consolidated under the Margarita Forés Concepts and Style company.
Cibo, a chain of 11 restaurants, is a separate organization.
Filipino ingredients
Equally important are Forés’ efforts in pushing the possibilities of Filipino ingredients.
To initiate a foreign palate to Filipino taste, she has combined local and European elements. A signature dish, the balsamico lamb adobo, uses balsamic vinegar as a milder souring agent to the soy sauce and potent vinegar.
In the past decade, Forés has been promoting local growers of organic produce in her outlets. In 2013, she introduced the farm-to-table concept at Grace Park.
A culinary ambassador, she showcased Filipino food in international exhibitions such as the Internationale Grüne Woche in Berlin; Salone del Gusto in Turin; Madrid Fusión; the Artusi food festival in Forlimpopoli, Italy’s culinary heartland; and the opening of the artifacts exhibit “Philippines, archipel des échanges,” at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.
Humility, responsibility
Forés has prepared dinners for three Philippine presidents; King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia during President Gloria Arroyo’s state visit to Spain; and US Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama. She collaborated with Glenda Barretto on the Apec welcome dinner reception for economic leaders last November.
The catering business taught her humility and responsibility, she said. “You are judged according to how you closed the event. No matter how great the food, the flowers and the table settings were, if something gets lost or an item was not accounted for, that’s what the client will remember.”
Although her accomplishments and accolades are fruits of hard work, Forés acknowledges that the Araneta clan has been pivotal in her life.
The de buena familia name helped to jump-start her career. Quietly, the family has been her anchor.
“They take care of the business side so I can be creative,” she said.