lunch at Tapella

A meal of Spanish cuisine is always something I look forward to, and my recent lunch at Tapella in Greenbelt 5 did not disappoint. The place has such an inviting, comfortable feel to it. It was a great place for business lunches before during my banker days. And it still is an apt choice now for enjoyable meals with colleagues, friends and family.

We started with this generous salad of mixed greens with a tasty tamarind balsamic dressing.  It also has some of my favorite things-- candied walnuts and goat cheese!  The greens and tomatoes are the freshest.  It is an appetizing sweet-sour start to a good meal.

Next on the menu is the refreshing Mango Gazpacho. This is a classic Spanish-style cold soup of tomatoes and olive oil, and Tapella's version has crab meat, salmon roe, and mangoes as a twist!   

The next starter dish is another must-try! This very tasty sisig is made with eggs, morcilla or blood sausages, and pork over shoestring potatoes. It's very special! I can imagine sharing this with some friends over drinks at happy hour!

Truffle-based pastas are popular these days. Tapella's Truffle Cream Pasta, though, is a real feast for the senses.  It reaches you at the table with a heavenly, mouthwatering smell. The use of Spanish jamon as bacon makes it a truly singular experience, delicious yet not overpowering at all.   It is a really delightful dish even my picky children will surely like.

Tapella's Maya-Maya fish recipe is a hit with me too-- it is garnished with lots of my favorite mussels and mushrooms! This is indeed a light and pleasant dish with its white wine parsley sauce.

For dessert, chocolate is always a no-fail choice.  But this Lava Cake turned out to be one of the best I have ever tried.  I love warm chocolate desserts, and this cake is not too sweet, moist and thoroughly warmed just right.

Tapella is offering Christmas set meals til the New Year. Check it out.

Or if your celebrations are at home or in the office, you may call them for catering services. You can choose from set menus or have them customize one for you.

I can't wait to go back for some wine, tapas, paella, and lengua. Here's their menu!

Tapella is at the Ground Floor of Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center in Makati City.

Phone Nos.: (02) 757-2710; Telefax: (02) 757-27-11

Mobile No.: +63917-712-4546

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Elsewhere

"Elsewhere", a solo show by artist Jonathan Ching opened at the Silverlens Galleries last October 29.  This successful show of photographs and paintings will end this Saturday, November 21.

Just like before, this artist presents us with an unconventional view of aesthetics. In his multi-panel paintings and his photographs, we glean insights into the memories and interpretations of the artist--the allure of the simple, the attraction of the broken-down, and the beauty in the unexpected.  

Big and proud, these signature detailed impastos must require so much both physically and mentally. All the work and time to translate thoughts and experiences and plans into creating these evocative artworks must be a repetitive cycle of exhaustion and gratification. From one small moment when Jonathan Ching sees something we are blind to, and feels something we are numb to, the knock on his door opens us to a whole new world, a step into beauty and hope. The whole process takes the artist "elsewhere", just as we eventually are too. 

As Paulo Coelho says, "Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way."

BOTTICELLI'S DAUGHTER

SOMEWHERE CALLED RED

INTO THE FOREST

WARM IS THE COLOR OF MY DREAM

THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA

ELSEWHERE

ELSEWHERE

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FATES and FURIES by Lauren Groff

It is utterly conceivable that one marriage can have different meanings to the couple it brings together.  The ideal is a true unity of spirits, a true communion of souls.  Yet it connects two people with different histories, different upbringings, different psyches, and different needs.  Thus makes a conventional marriage with two different realities. Two people inhabiting two completely different spheres in one marriage.

Using the female deities of Fates and Furies as metaphors, the novel is divided into two parts, each part aptly and respectively named.  The first part, Fates, is the story as seen from the view of Lancelot, nicknamed "Lotto".  This half of the narrative personifies destiny, portraying Lotto as the knight-in-shining-armor that his namesake is.  Lotto was fated to be born into wealth and privilege. Lotto was fated to be actor-turned-genius-playwright. Lotto was fated to have a solid marriage with the ever-devoted Mathilde.

The Furies half of the narrative is the story of justice and vengeance. For Mathilde, who comes from a history of tragedy, abandonment, and exploitation, this marriage is a lifesaving act.  She will do anything and everything to save Lotto and their commitment to each other.  Thus her fears harbor her secrets. Her story lets us in on her behind-the-scene life: a life of both devotion and betrayal, filled with acts that save and acts that squander.

It is difficult to judge who is the good and who is the evil, which secret builds up and which secret destroys. Characters, in life and in fiction, have to deal with complexities and surprises using tools they have acquired growing up, resulting in equivocal acts that are difficult to clearly classify.

This book, though, is undeniably a good read.  It is completely satisfying--  shifting versions and emotions, two points of view, and all its beautiful sentences.  I end this entry with some of my favorites.

"If one might die at any moment, one must live!"

"Some Cupid kills with arrow, some with traps."

"Please. Marriage is made of lies. Kind ones, mostly. Omissions. If you give voice to the things you think every day about your spouse, you'd crush them to paste. She never lied. Just never said."

"Paradox of marriage: you can never know someone entirely; you do know someone entirely."

"Never's a liar."

"Happiness feeds but doesn't nourish."

"Because it's true: more than the highlights, the bright events, it was in the small and the daily where she'd found life."

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A Quick Getaway to Puerto Princesa

My girlfriends and I planned a quick trip to Puerto Princesa in Palawan last August.  Despite the torrential rains in Manila, Palawan only had intermittent showers, so we were able to experience and enjoy roaming around and visiting their notable tourist spots. And we saw many of its famous mountains and mountain ranges.

We stayed at a family room in Aziza Paradise Hotel. This hotel is clean and convenient. And they have great breakfast food, including my favorite marinated danggit! 

We wanted to get immersed in the local culture for three days, so we opted for local food for our first lunch.  We were brought to Ka Inato. We enjoyed their seafood dishes, especially the Panginas Anghang (sisig made of shell meat), the Palawan Inihaw na Isda (very fresh parrot fish with okra, talong, and kamote tops), and the Bulalong Yamang Dagat (seafood in thick gabi soup with malunggay and other vegetables).

 

Then I noticed these bags of water with a coin inside that hung near the ceiling all around the restaurant. I could not resist asking what they were for. Guess what? They are to ward off flies! The idea is that flies will get scared when they go towards the bags of water.  What they see will be their own magnified reflection or the flash of light from the metal coin within and be frightened off!

Dinner was at the famous Kalui Restaurant.  We took a tricycle (roomy tricycles are numerous around the city) to get to the place.  The place has a warm, local, homey feel.

Their menu is very simple, comprising of mostly seafood.  We hear that reservations are required as their kitchen never stocks up.  They buy enough for what they need for the day as they don't freeze the day's catch. Everything is served fresh; you will notice it. It was a delicious and satisfying dinner.

We were also able to go thru the world-famous subterranean river. We saw the caves, the bats and the limestone structures. Along the way, we saw monkeys on the trees.

This is the cave entrance, where you enter, riding small boats with no more than 8 passengers and one boat man / tour guide. It's very dark inside the caves.  It's an experience too enthralling for pictures to describe.  The limestone structures formed slowly thru the passage of time are truly sights to behold.

After the underground river tour, we had a local lunch by the beach.  And it featured the tamilok. Tamilok is actually a shipworm, a bivalve mollusk that burrows into the woods of mangrove. It is my very first time to try this native Palawan delicacy. It is eaten raw, dipped into spiced vinegar, like a kinilaw.  It's taste is very similar to raw oysters. Not bad at all! 

And since we are talking about "firsts", I had the chance to hold on to a live python in the Palawan Butterfly Eco-Garden and Tribal Village on this trip too! 

Another not-to-miss attraction is firefly watching in Iwahig. You take a small banca and go around the river among the mangroves in the dark of the night.  It is serenely beautiful!

I end this blog with another must-try food place. Go to Rene's Saigon.  It is located very near the airport. Mang Rene is always there to give recommendations. The noodles soup and the spring rolls are very good and affordable to boot.  And don't miss their homemade french bread.

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Among The Ten Thousand Things

"Maybe they're right, and we will be safer when we finally think of everything, of all the things that can do us harm, and make rules against them."

We women tend to lie to ourselves as a matter of course. Especially in their relationships and marriages. I know I have.  I lie to myself because I want to continue to believe in what I hold true. I lie because it's easier and convenient. I lie to continue to have hope. I lie to protect myself.  We turn to lying as a defensive mechanism of sorts. 

"The point is I could, I could do the easy thing, or I could do the hard thing.  I don't even know which would be harder.  Divorce? Do you know what a nightmare? And I want to be married. I got married because I want to be married, Jack.  Why did you?"

This is what happens to Deb Shanley in the novel. She lied to herself. She convinced herself that the affair her husband, Jack, was having with a much younger woman will eventually die down, and she need not worry about it again. She makes a decision to keep quiet about it and to work at being happy. But when a box of correspondences between the illicit lovers lands in the hands of her eleven year old daughter Kay, and then shared with her fifteen year old son Simon, she knew she could no longer hide from the truth.  "She was the victim, yes, but in front of her children, she understood at once what else she would become, which was a guilty party, and she began to notice her breathing."

As a mother, when my children become exposed and vulnerable, I know cannot I hold on to false hopes any longer, and more is necessary than inactivity and passive protest. My being a mother consumes me, takes over all other characters I play--wife and lover.

And then to face a mother's worst torment: to cause her child's anxiety, burden and resentment.

"What she couldn't do, she knew in that moment, was go to her father, who might never tell her mother, if he had the box, because how could she live with him then."

"She didn't even look at most of it.  That was something Simon couldn't believe, how his mother didn't pore over every page.  As furious as he was with his father, he was furious with her too, for reasons he couldn't explain yet but that had something to do with how her reaction was not enough, not nearly enough. Though he didn't know what would be."

"And I want Kay to be able to tell me what she's feeling.  I don't want Simon to think of me as a person who lets these things happen." 

What goes on in the minds and hearts of the characters tell more of the story alongside their manifested reactions. We go thru life with a veneer of normalcy masking the other life lived inside our head. Nothing seems unremarkably out of place on the outside, but there is restiveness and turmoil underneath.

Like Deb, I've tried staying on and letting time do its work. Hoping against the odds that I can fix whats broken. But resentment builds up, in danger of blowing up. Especially if efforts and motivations flow singularly from one side only.

In the end, life always go on for all.  We see truths in a different light. And things get resolved one way or another.

"An artist seemed the greatest thing one could be, also the purest, and her whole life shrunk next to that, her father the salesman, her mother the secretary. She hadn't learned to look for the difference yet between what one did and who one was. Hadn't even known there was a difference."

Very sensitive writing and deeply explored characters make for a good story involving a time-old tale of failed marriages.  "Among the Ten Thousand Things" is an impactful debut novel.

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