Gaita Fores on food, life & lessons learned
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| Gaita has 200 pepper mills in her collection, “One of the things I learned in Italy is that you cannot replace freshly ground pepper with anything.” |
Food, travel and her life stories were the topics of conversation
over a specially prepared brunch in her restaurant, Lusso. She reveals
that, as if serendipitously (she is celebrating 25 years in the industry
this month), just a few weeks prior to this interview she was going
through her son’s books and found her old Florentine-bound diary that
she’d forgotten she wrote in every day (“From the gray skies of Milan to
what I ate on the train”) while she was in Italy. “This might be a good
starting point to possibly do a retrospective of my work and everything
that I’ve done all these years,” she emotionally shares. From a
catering business to successful restaurants to a growing home line, she
has effortlessly kept herself relevant and exciting. Here are 10 things
you should know about Margarita Araneta Fores.
1. To this day, she has had no formal training in cooking.
She got her training from three Italian signoras within six months of
living in Italy.
Margarita, fondly called Gaita, was studying at liberal arts college
Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts when she decided to go back to Manila to
possibly get married to her Filipino boyfriend then. With some units
credited, she went to Assumption, majored in accounting and doubled up
with a lot of management subjects, just in case she would end up working
with the family’s real estate business. She passed the boards and is a
certified CPA. “I wasn’t really a numbers person, so at least it helps
that now, I can read a balance sheet and income statements,” she laughs.
With her mother’s consent, she flew to Italy in 1986 to study.
“Signora Masha Innocenti, she was an English-speaking Italian woman who
taught in her house,” she recalls of her stay in Florence. She would
have morning classes, then, come lunchtime, the signora would take them
to the markets to shop for fresh ingredients, or to restaurants to learn
more about Italian cuisine. She went on to train under signoras Ada
Parasiliti in Milan and Jo Bettoja in Roma. Upon returning home and
doing a stint at a food festival in Hyatt, she now has Cibo, Cafe Bola,
Lusso, Pepato (now a pop-up store on weekends at The Commissary in White
Space), Cibo di M, Casa di M, Gastroteca di M, and many more big ideas
under her belt.
2. Her love for Italian culture and cuisine all started when she worked at Valentino Couture while living in New York.
She first worked with the Italian friend of her mother who was the
fur licensee of Valentino. She then met Angela Istok, the vice president
in charge of licensing, and it was she who got Gaita on board to work
in the main Valentino office. It wasn’t hard for Gaita to fall in love
with Italian culture. As she says, there’s a lot of similarity between
Filipino culture and theirs. “They’re also Catholic like us, they love
their moms like us, it’s not difficult to relate to them,” she says.
Although what her job entailed was clipping articles, buying food for
his dog, checking his apartment, and making sure everything was in
order for when Valentino would visit, she says that what she learned
most from that job was understanding the strength of a brand. “This
whole thing about the color red, and even now that he has a design team
to do the designing, the brand is still so strong,” she explains. When
people tell her how good the kamias shake in Cafe Bola is and that she
should also put it in Cibo, she says, first, that’s what draws people to
Cafe Bola, and second, it wouldn’t fit the menu of Cibo. Strength of a
brand: that’s what she learned.
It was because she became friends with one of the leather goods
licensees that she learned how to make pesto (“With a mortar and pestle,
the traditional way!”) when she visited them in their home in Genova.
It was her visit to Parisian cafes and Harry’s Bar in Venice that made
her want to create that experience for the market in Manila, which is
the reason she created Lusso. It was when she hosted a whole weekend for
15 friends in upstate New York, just cooking, setting the table for
friends, making daiquiris with an Osterizer, that made her realize that
this is what she wants to do forever. “Those experiences gel and click
and you realize hey, this is the same kind of magic that I want to
recreate for people, and it became my calling.”
“Now I realize those trips, even as far back as traveling to Europe
with my mom in the ‘70s, those experiences are priceless, and you draw
from them when you put something together.” With a bashful smile she
adds, “This is the first time I’m talking about all this!”
3. It is because of her son Amado that she finally decided she would make a career out of cooking.
“It was because of him that I said, ‘Hey, you have another life to
look after,’ and that made me make a decision,” she reveals. She started
to make a name for herself in the culinary world in 1987, and by the
time her son Amado was a year old, she says the hype was dying down. She
came to the realization that the food industry was not about the
glamour and media attention. It was about discipline, commitment, and
being on time. (“I was famous for always being late.”)
She recalls the irony of how it was so difficult to feed Amado when
he was growing up, and how all he wanted was fried chicken. “It would be
embarrassing, my family would always see us battling because he
wouldn’t eat, I’d try to cook and puree all these things for him and he
just wouldn’t eat it,” she shares. Fast-forward to now: Amado is 21
years old, studying in a liberal arts college in New York just like
his mom did. “He’s become an absolute foodie,” she excitedly shares. He
doesn’t cook, but he constantly updates his mom on articles about
Filipino cooking or the newest foodie places.
4. On living up to a “big family name”: “Maybe I was always wanting my parent’s approval.”
She is the second of five siblings, but growing up in the same house
with her first cousins, she felt more like she was fourth in a brood of
eight. “I found myself always being an over-achiever in school, I always
wanted to have good grades,” she recalls. She says that it’s that love
for life and sharing love for each other by sharing meals that she
learned most from her family. “Both sides of the family were really into
food and celebrating around the table like most Filipino families, and
maybe that’s what I’ve always wanted to celebrate in the food concepts I
put together, each in a different way.”
5. Gaita’s favorite markets and restaurants around the world:
Markets:
1. Union Square Greenmarket in New York City, USA. “It’s really cool
because lots of chefs go there talaga, and New York being so
cosmopolitan, it’s nice that a farmer’s market is still such a big part
of what makes the restaurant scene thrive.”
2. Campo dei Fiori in Rome, and Mercato di San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy.
3. Farmer’s Market in Quezon City. “Of course I grew up with it
behind my house! I still have my suki there especially for fish and
sometimes for flowers.”
Restaurants:
1. Vecchia Roma in Piazza Campitelli in Rome, and Osteria Francescana by Massimo Bottura in Modena, Italy.
2. Mario Batali’s del Posto and Danny Meyer’s Eleven Madison Park, both in New York City, USA.
3. Restaurante Martin Berasategui in San Sebastian, Spain.
6. On opening restaurants and having to close some: “I find
that the closures are the biggest and most important lessons of all.”
“In the beginning, I was so saddened by having to close Pepato, but
then I realized there are just certain things that have a lifespan,” she
opens up. A friend of hers describes the restaurant inspired by Gaita’s
grandparents to be an “energy,” and now Gaita realizes that the concept
needed to move on and reinvent itself. Floor size, economy, people’s
mindset, these are just some factors that contribute largely to the
success of a business. Although she still hopes that it’ll reopen again
as a restaurant, she says, “I always find that with every closure, there
is a new opening.”
7. Gaita Fores in numbers:
11: Number of staff when she started Cibo in 1997. “Nine of them are
still with us now!” Today, Cibo has 11 branches and 300 staff members.
9: Average number of events she caters and styles a week.
200: Pepper mills in her collection. “One of the things I learned in
Italy, freshly ground pepper, you cannot replace with anything.”
17: Years she has been together with her boyfriend Alvin. “He bakes
really well! You have to be structured because everything is measured in
baking, me I cannot. I cannot!”
3,000: Number of pizza crusts their group made in the span of five
days when they learned how to make pizza from a pizza master in Ischia,
north of Naples. “When we got home to Manila, nothing that we learned
came out. The water is different, the weather is different, the yeast
reacts differently. It was so hard, I was so frustrated, up to this day
it is quite a challenge.”
350: Cost in pesos of the Pappardelle with salted red egg, asparagus
spears, and truffle dish from Pepato. “If anyone asks me if there’s any
favorite dish that I created, it’s that.”
8. She believes that Pinoy cuisine is on its way to becoming
recognized internationally, just like Vietnamese or Thai cuisine. “We
just have to have a real united approach in presenting our cuisine,
we’re so regional about it.”
On what our defining dish would be, she explains, “Its not ‘my adobo
is better than your adobo’ or ‘my sinigang is better than your
sinigang,’ let’s just let them meet adobo and sinigang.” She says we
have to accept the fact that our culture is exactly what historian and
activist Carlos Celdran describes it to be: halo-halo.
“I’m actually quite optimistic and really, really excited,” she
gushes. She names Enzo Lim’s Maharlika in New York City as one of the
Filipino restaurants gaining popularity. What started as a guerrilla
pop-up brunch place is now a permanent restaurant on 11th and 1st and is
on New York magazine’s hot list. She also shares that Saveur magazine
mentions something about Filipino cuisine almost every other month, how
Anthony Bourdain to this day signs his books for Filipinos writing “Best
pig in the world,” how Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin tweeted about our
adobo, and how Tom Parker Bowles wishes there was a good Filipino
restaurant in London. “Food tourism can go hand in hand with this new
approach of tourism that ‘It’s more fun in the Philippines,’” she
proposes. “Besides, the best way to anyone’s heart is through their
stomach.”
9. Though organic ingredients are more expensive, Gaita is proud to say that Cibo is now 75 percent organic.
Cibo’s egg, lettuce, herbs, chicken and many other ingredients are
now majority organic and local. She admits it is not as reasonably
priced as regular produce and it does affect their bottom line, but she
says this about doing her own part in protecting the environment versus
profit: “Bounty and grace come in different forms, not just in peso
signs.”
10. Gaita is very passionate about her current advocacy:
“Rediscovering the farmers here in the Philippines. There are so many
farmers using wonderful organic produce that I want to work with!”
She was thrilled to hear her “absolute idol” Mario Batali talk about
the same concept recently at food congress Identita Golose. She says he
explained that chefs should celebrate using the produce of the farmers
who are in their area, but to use it with the same techniques and
mindset as you would when you are in Italy.
“When you are working with food, your creation and what you put on
the table is only as good as your relationship with your farmer, and
that’s something we’ve taken for granted here in Manila,” she reveals.
She regularly goes to different provinces around the country to meet
with these farmers and discover more and more of their organic produce.
“When you taste of organic stuff, you realize how different it is. Our
taste buds have gotten so numb!”
She mentions that her squash comes from Bacolod, Paolo Araneta
supplies her lettuce, Jejo Jimenez supplies tomatoes (“Just as sweet as
Italian ones, it’s incredible!”) from Tagaytay; she also sources from a
couple who run a company called Fresh Start Organics, and another
supplier, GP Fresh from Bukidnon.
Wide-eyed and with a dreamy gaze, she says, “It’s so nice because 25
years after, its going back to where I started and I’m looking at it
with young, fresh eyes again.”
* * *
There was a moment in the middle of our interview when I noticed that
she kept mentioning random moments in her life that inspired some kind
of work she is doing today. I told her I was reminded of Steve Jobs’
commencement speech in Stanford when he said: “You have to believe that
the dots will somehow connect in your future.” She literally jumps out
of her seat in excitement, and says “It’s funny how God brings you to
these places and you realize the wisdom comes out later on!” Gaita has
this essential vibrancy, much like that of the Italian culture she has
come to love, talking passionately with hand gestures to prove a point
or tell a story. She shows us that looking back is just as important as
moving forward. For those who have ever felt like their life is just a
series of random experiences, or that life has lost its element of
surprise, there is much inspiration to be found in Gaita and her life.
“It’s been a quarter of a century and at this point, I feel there’s so
much to learn and so many new things to do.”
