MEDIUM RARE

As eating clubs go, there’s one at every corner where at least three friends gather. The pandemic broke up some of them for reasons as varied as permanent departures and change of address, but the eating and the clubbing go on.

Nor does it matter what time they meet to eat, though lunch appears to be a more convenient time. Everyone has to eat, they also have to work, or they won’t have anything to eat unless they return to the office. Meeting to eat at night can be risky, at least to those with an inclination for alcohol.

Our long-lasting Thursday club with Myther the Tailor – his favorite title for himself being the “Duke of Adriatico” – was held every week without fail in his shop in Malate. (A series on Netflix about a Turkish tailor brought an avalanche of memories, which was my reason to stop watching it.) As a son of Pampanga Myther was proud to feed us his mother’s best dishes. At other times his regular customers, including VIPs like mayors and governors, would send him food fresh from the sea rather than the market.

Myther was used to the company of high-profile customers, having once been associated with a more famous tailor based in Makati. Makati, then as now, was where the rich and famous lived and moved about, so Myther was favorably suited for starting his own business in the second-best district of Malate. As Myther was friends with several of my contemporaries in journalism, mostly editors and publishers, I eventually “joined” the club.  

The end of the club came, naturally, with the end of Myther’s colorful life, when he passed away on a Good Friday.

The next eating club that found me happened without a plan or schedule, when Butch Valdes, a CPA, found himself commenting with alacrity on public affairs instead of merely pushing numbers with his pencil. Like Myther, Butch had a house big enough to accommodate the voices and noises of his regular visitors, who eventually named their club after Butch’s street, as in Paterno mafia or Paterno cabal. The club died with Butch.

Only people with similar interests get into a club, but they must trust one another first: Rule No. 1.