To read and to dream

The workshop of sculptor Carlito Ortega (see yesterday's post) is open to his extensive garden, and so is the study beside it.

Intensity

When Carlito Ortega is still working on one of his sculptures, it looks like an amalgam of sooty ash and gold.


Carlito is a sculptor who works in welded bronze and steel, and whose inspiration comes from Filipino folklore, labor, customs and traditions. He opens his home and workshop in San Pablo, Laguna to visitors during weekends, where he willingly talks about and demonstrates his creative process.


Carlito said that this bronze sculpture of Jesus on the cross will be a gift to a friend. He also said that whether his friend will like it or not is another matter altogether. Carlito's style is intense, and I can understand that it is not to everyone's liking.

I would love to see his sculpture of the farmer when it's done. Yes, that unfinished sculpture in the first photo is of a Filipino farmer with a hooked bolo (Carlito called it by a certain word, which I can't remember, unfortunately). Did you think it was a warrior, like I did? If you want to see more of his finished sculptures, visit this album. I have to say: I love his work.

Fine work

Two weeks after my husband and I spent a weekend in San Pablo City in Laguna, I went back again for a day trip with my college friends. We had lunch at Patis Tito Garden Café, and it was our good fortune that Patis Tesoro, the owner of the café, was in for the weekend.

Patis is better known in the country as the doyenne of Filipino fashion for her creative and elegant designs using indigenous fabrics. Her special passion is handwoven fabrics, like t'nalak (made of abaca fibers) and piña (made from pineapple leaf fibers), many of which are endangered because the number of weavers is dwindling.


The stunning mantel (tablecloth) she showed us is made of hand-loomed piña. Piña already has a loose weave, but to create the lacy pattern, individual threads were pulled out carefully then meticulously knotted with cream, black and gold threads—all by hand.


It took the women of Patis Tesoro's atelier three months to finish the cloth, and it can be yours for Php85,000 (US$1,990).

Southern Tagalog cuisine

As I promised yesterday, here are photos of the meal that my husband and I enjoyed at Patis Tito Garden Café.
 


Ensaladang Pako (Fiddlehead Fern Salad). Pako, or fiddlehead fern, is the curly top of young, edible ferns. I do not know what this variety of edible fern is, but I do know that it grows in the wild in Southern Luzon. The simplest and most common way of eating it is with tomatoes and a soy-flavored vinaigrette. Patis Tito Garden Café serves it with grated cheese, crunchy garlic bits, scallions, and a mild and creamy mustard dressing.



Petite Lumpiang Gulay (Fried Vegetable Spring Roll). Vegetables rolled in a rice flour wrapper and deep fried is a common dish in the Philippines. However, most of Manila's fried lumpia uses togue, or mung bean sprouts. Patis Tito Garden Café's location in the heart of the Philippines' coconut-producing region gives it easy access to the best and freshest ubod, or heart of palm, and that is what they use in their lumpiang gulay. Served with a vinegar dipping sauce, it was the tenderest, creamiest lumpiang ubod I have ever had.



Bulalo (Beef Shank and Marrow Stew). Good bulalo requires two boilings, the first to get rid of impurities and the second, at a very slow, very long simmer, to extract the full flavor of the beef and marrow. Patis Tito's bulalo is enhanced with onions, lemongrass, garlic, and Visayan fermented fish paste—all very mild, resulting in a delightful play of flavors—and served with green beans, young corn and Chinese cabbage. Needless to say, it is the beef marrow that gives bulalo its wonderfully sinful taste.

Unfortunately, I was not able to take a photo of our dessert, which was Turon con Latik—saba (plantain banana) and jackfruit rolled in a rice flour wrapper and deep fried, and served with latik (a native coconut caramel) and toasted sesame seeds. I took a short walk while waiting for it and by the time I got back to our table, my husband had eaten half of it already. Men.

Meandering

Patis Tito Garden Café is located in the City of San Pablo in the province of Laguna, about 85 kilometers away from Manila.
 


Featuring Filipino cuisine in an al fresco garden setting, the main dining room is one large covered patio with coconut tree trunk pillars supporting a high ceiling. Many of the wood cutout details are made by local artisans, and the room is full of a wonderfully eclectic mixture of Filipino and Asian furniture, crafts and art.
 


The café is owned by Patis and Tito Tesoro, whose portraits adorn one wall of the dining room. Patis is a well-known fashion designer who specializes in Filipino formal wear using fabrics from natural and handwoven fiber. She was in the café when we had lunch there on Saturday, and she came up to us to introduce herself and chat a bit, but I was too shy to ask for a picture. The rest of the time, she spent puttering around her garden.
 


Just off the main dining area is an intimate patio with garden furniture and a stone sculpture of an Asian goddess.
 


At the foot of the statue is a whimsical pond-themed fountain. I'm glad the water wasn't running, else we might not have seen the koi and lotus.
 


How can one resist a stroll through the garden when the entrance beckons so beguilingly from the dining area?
 


The meandering paths are an invitation to lose oneself in the gardens of Patis Tito Garden Café.
 


More Asian stone statues can be discovered in the garden. I especially love this moss-covered one.
 


When walking around Patis Tito Garden Café, it is important to look down too. The fine feather details of this rooster mosaic is just amazing.
 


Tito and Patis Tesoro are bird lovers too, and the garden has plenty of large cages with a variety of tropical birds. They had several kinds of pheasant, which I'd never seen before, and I found the bold, graphic coloring of this silver pheasant particularly striking.
 


There are several buildings at the back of the garden which are off-limits to guests. Some are obviously storage and work rooms, but this lovely house with woodcut details is probably the apartment of some of the Tesoro's live-in staff.
 


Tito and Patis Tesoro also have their own apartment within the compound, in a house built in a traditional Filipino architectural style. The main living quarters are on the second floor, and the first floor serves as a storage area and provides much-needed air circulation in this tropical country. The first floor is now a store which sells Asian and Filipino jewelry, fabrics and one-of-a-kind treasures.

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the food—it's the reason why we went to Patis Tito Garden Café, after all. Come back tomorrow for a vision (wish I could say "taste" instead!) of our delectable meal.

Not for Valentine

Last year, my office spent its annual R&R at Casa San Pablo, and because the place is so soothing, my husband and I decided to stay there this past weekend. It still abounds with the lovely and charming details I discovered last year, but the new sculpture which I noticed on the veranda is not quite what I would call charming. Sometimes, the taste of Boots Alcantara—the owner, manager and innkeeper—when it comes to art is just a little too strange for me. Thank goodness he usually doesn't put them on display at the Casa.

Loyal to Loyola

Working as I do at the Ateneo de Manila University, this was one photo opportunity that I couldn't pass up. The Jesuits in the Philippines used to have an elementary and high school in San Pablo City named Ateneo de San Pablo. They closed it in 1978, turned it over to the Diocese of San Pablo, and the new diocesan school was named Liceo de San Pablo. The now homeless Ateneo de San Pablo alumni set up a foundation which, in 2006, opened the doors of a new private school named Academia de San Ignacio de Loyola. If I'm not mistaken, the animal on their shield is one of the wolves of the Loyola coat-of-arms.

The lake caused by selfishness

While most of our officemates slept off our delicious lunch back at Casa San Pablo, four of us decided to go on a drive around Lake Sampaloc (Tamarind). Though it is only one square kilometer, it is the largest of the seven interconnected freshwater crater lakes of San Pablo and is located right in the heart of the city.




Mount Banahaw looms over one side of the lake and there are many smaller hills all around it.




With overcrowded fish pens studding the lake, the overuse of commercial fish feed, and numerous makeshift huts without proper waste disposal systems on stilts along its shores, Lake Sampaloc is considered threatened and needs rehabilitation. The Friends of the Seven Lakes Foundation is working towards that and educating the communities around the lake, but I think that the city government of San Pablo also has to be stricter in implementing environmental and building laws in the areas around the lakes.




In case you're wondering about my title, it is based on the Legend of Lake Sampaloc.

Charm

Aside from Mrs. Vinya Gomez Alcantara, what I found most charming about Casa San Pablo were the sculptures and antique furniture and knick-knacks found in, out and about the guest rooms and cottages.




Charcoal clothes irons used as banisters.




A serenely smiling sun greets visitors near the entrance.




A fish on a balcony facing the path to the swimming pool.




A young boy starting to fall asleep on a bench. Whoever the artist was, I think he captured well our experience of Casa San Pablo.

R&R

Welcome to Casa San Pablo, a garden resort in San Pablo City in the province of Laguna, where our office had its annual R&R last Friday.




Before WWII, it was a 7-hectare coconut plantation owned by the Azores-Gomez family. After it was divided among the six siblings, one daughter cut down all the coconut trees in her land and planted fruit and pine trees in their stead. Now, her son runs a small but lovely resort and artists' haven on the same land.




Vinya Gomez Alcantara, now in her 70s—and the funniest, most charming and life-loving widow I have ever met—still lives in the same compound where she grew up, in a gorgeous house just across the lawn from the guest cottages.