“Why’d you wait this long to make Margarita happen,” I asked Margarita Forés, as we sat down for after-dinner drinks at Lusso where, over the iconic dishes of her 37-year-long career, she announced her latest move—Margarita, her signature restaurant that’s to be launched later this year.
More than another restaurant or even another restaurant concept, both of which she has had so many in the span of her career, Margarita is designed to be her personal brand showcased in a space worthy of her and her achievements at The Shops at Ayala Triangle Garden, the motivation for which, according to Victoria Tang-Owen, creative director of Thirty30 Creative, is “to streamline all of Margarita’s many business interests and creative outlets into one coherent identity that truly represents her.”
Victoria and Thrty30 Creative managing editor Chris Owen, whose distinguished clientele includes hotels like Rosewood, Dorsette, and New World, fashion houses like Dior and Tod’s, and retailers Joyce and Lane Crawford, were enlisted to encapsulate what Margarita the chef has represented since she began her career in the kitchen, first focused on catering under her company Cibo di Marghi and later coming up with respected names in the Philippine food scene, including Cibo, Café Bola, Pepato, Grace Park Dining, The Loggia, and Lusso, which led to her being recognized as Asia’s Best Female Chef as part of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2016.
Margarita has always favored Italian, which she began to master when, armed with no formal culinary training whatsoever, she went to Italy in 1986 to undertake a fourmonth intensive training in Italian cooking as well as the Italian language. Her resolve to learn to cook Italian brought her up close and personal and even under the wing of three of the most distingushed names in Italian cooker—Milan’s Ada Parasiliti, Rome’s Jo Betoja, and Florence’s Masha Innoscenti.
Although she immersed herself in the ins and outs of Italian cooking, mastering their traditions, techniques, even approaches and attitudes to food and eating, she did so as a Filipino, our own traditions, techniques, approaches and attitudes to food and eating, especially our vast arsenal of ingredients, never far from her mind. Armed with what she called “eureka,” the joyful discovery that the gems of both Filipino and Italian cuisine could be combined that she sought to make her mark as a chef, building an empire out of it.
It was with these joyful combinations that she decided to announce— on her birthday in March at that— the establishment of her eponymous restaurant to cement her culinary legacy, a five-course menu featuring such exquisite combinations as a salad of palm heart shavings, button mushrooms, and 30-month Vacche Rosso Parmigiano Reggiano, chico sorbetto with oak Barrique-aged proscuitto, crab ravioli with calamansi crema, lamb adobo, and a millefoglie of guava.
It’s about time Margarita celebrated her name in the food scene, although she’s had her distinct, unmistakable signature in every phase of her journey as a chef, restaurateur, caterer to the most fabulous parties, and champion of eating well from the very beginning, inextricable from every food venture of hers, from Cibo to Lusso, and from every distinction, whether Asia’s Best Female Chef or Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d’Italia (Honorary Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy).
Margarita, her upcoming dining establishment, will be heralded by her personal signature and I mean literally, as in the logo is designed after the way she would write her name.
Chris Owen explains: “We had this beautiful lightbulb moment when Victoria noticed Margarita’s penmanship. It’s beyond handwriting… This handwritten logotype would perfectly showcase Margarita’s attention to detail, creativity, education, and appreciation for aesthetics.”
The handwritten logo, rendered in classic black-and-white, is also a guiding light for Sean Dix, the architect and interior designer behind many luxury boutiques, the spaces of Michelin-starred chefs and restaurateurs, and other iconic establishments around the world, whom Margarita has tapped to design her titular restaurant. Sean sees the restaurant, which Margarita envisions as her legacy that should transcend even her, as “a plush sala, a jewel box showcasing Margarita’s culinary finesse.”
More than celebratory, more than a legacy, the launch of Margarita is a strong statement that Margarita Forés has so much more to give to an industry, the Philippine food and beverage industry, to which she has devoted her life and her skills for 37 years and counting.