It's a dream-come-true. I remember back when I was a little kid, my mom would always tell everybody how my dream was to become a waitress... while every other kid in my kindergarten class wanted to be a doctor, a laywer or an engineer... little did she know that what I really wanted to do was to work at a restaurant or have at least two of my own one day (one to make a name and another to make money (i mean, more money... *wink-wink*).
I've been fortunate to have been brought up in a conducive environment: Everybody's Cafe, the restaurant that my grandparents put up shortly after World War II. Our family history says that it was named as such because back in those days, there would be restaurants for the 'Allies' and the 'Non-Allies' so my grandparents decided to open one for everybody, thus the name Everybody's Cafe.
Everybody's Cafe has been my home. My parents said we lived elsewhere before moving to my grandparents' house which sits right on top of the restaurant but I vaguely remember those days.
I had little cooking pots and pans instead of barbies. I had little food scraps to play with instead of play dough. I played in a real kitchen. I could actually eat the food that I made.
I started working when I was about 6. My dad hired me as a sales person at his car accessories shop and paid me 20 pesos a day. I felt like I had a real job. I took it seriously. My grandmother pirated me to work as a cashier at her restaurant and paid me 50 pesos a day which was way more than my allowance so I get to buy myself some good stuff at a really young age. After a while, I wasn't exactly working as a cashier anymore. I would hangout at the restaurant, man my mom's little candy store, go with my uncle to the supermarket, help prep in the kitchen or simply make my own food.
A few years later, I went to college and almost forgot about my dream. I was pre-occupied completing my degree and getting the best job related to it. I took up MIS and got a job at Andersen Consulting, now called Accenture. It was then, and I think it still is one of the biggest and most prestigious international IT firms in the Philippines.
5 years later I decided to follow my heart. I left the firm in September of last year and flew to Chicago for culinary school. It may not be the most famous school but it was big enough to get my foot at the door. Of course it wasn't all that easy. I had to figure out funding, applied for any available scholarship and student loans including essay contests on the internet.
Finally, here I am, making my dream come true. I'm halfway thru school and interning at very good restaurants in California working with a few of my favorite things: Fish at Aqua and Desserts at Chez Panisse.
I've been working 7 days a week and rarely had time to think of missing home... but, now that I'm a little under the weather, it hit me hard, not only am I simply sick with a bad cold and a splitting headach, I'm actually homesick.
I'm missing the comforts of home. The corn soup that my mom makes out of white corn infused with leaves of chili, the dried herring that my dad fries and simmers in vinegar and sugar and the great home cooked stuff only found at Everybody's Cafe: Tsokolate Batirol made from freshly ground Cacao beans and peanuts, the Fiddlehead Fern salad with with red eggs and shrimp confit, the drippings collected from baking our original Morcon (a rich meatloaf made with my favorite Chorizo de Bilbao and other special seasoning), our very own Longganisa, sausage packed with lots of garlic and bits of pork fat, the ox tongue with white mushroom sauce, the bone marrow soup that my grandfather originally makes with corn and chickpeas (deadly!), the ox-tail stew with peanut sauce, the fried pork rind served with a cocktail of pickled garlic, carrots, shallots and bitter melons, the catfish with yellow ginger, the sweet and sour lapu-lapu filet (lapu-lapu is a red grouper with soft, white and delicate flesh), the fatty milkfish belly, the sour broth with 'ulang' (i don't know if there's a direct translation to those crustaceans, they look like a cross between a langoustine and a cray fish with a head bigger than the tail, but they come from fresh water), the taba ng talanka (crab fat that we squeeze, season and bottle for later use) that I simply eat with warm steamed milagrosa rice (small sweet grain that produces a very aromatic steam) or sometimes with angel hair pasta and sun dried tomatoes, the fried or steamed sweet fat blue crabs that we serve with green mango and tomato chutney...
I can't wait to eat them all again. Just thinking about them makes me feel better. Well, not really because now I'm getting hungry.