Among the highlights of the just-concluded Tagaytay Food and Wine Festival was dinner at Fatted Calf Tagaytay, a farm-to-table restaurant down a steep slope of hill across the ridge. It is, after all, along with her co-chef and husband Jayjay Sycip, run by pastry chef Rhea Sycip, who chaired the group of chefs who came up with the idea of holding the two-week-long festival, the first ever, to highlight Tagaytay’s growing reputation as a gastronomic hotspot and not just for the famed, always comforting bulalo.
I was very honored to have been one of the few names on Senator Loren Legarda’s guest list to this hotticket weekend event called “Harvest Dinner,” a list of a few people she called “an intimate bunch.”
Senator Legarda calls the Fatted Calf her “second home.” The restaurant, with a big lanai that juts out over the garden, sits on what used to be a lush forested plot of land, which belonged to her grandmother. She offered the land to house the restaurant of Jayjay and Rhea when she discovered that they shared with her the same passion for uplifting the conditions of farmers and other food producers by cultivating and nurturing fair trade with them and making something wonderful out of their produce. “My only condition,” said the senator, “was for Jay and Rhea to make room for my paintings.” She did these paintings when she was young, as young as 15, and now, through the Fatted Calf, they have pride of place, accessible to the dining public.
The Harvest Dinner was a superb product of this partnership between the senator and the chefs in behalf of the Filipino farmer, whom the three of them champion. The Fatted Calf collaborated as well with Davao chef Jeramie Go of Pilgrim Davao, who flew his son and sous chef Noah Go in with him for the Tagaytay Food and Wine Festival.
The menu was a “Harvest Dinner” exclusive, each item on which, beginning with the buffalo paneer in coconut curry broth with Bahay Kubo vegetables, including kale chips, was a celebration of the handiwork, whether dairy, livestock, crop, fruit, or vegetable, of farmers across the Philippines, from General Trias in Cavite and the Cordilleras to BuDa on the border between Davao and Bukidnon.
Served after the paneer, which was paired with sauvignon blanc from Vina Casablanca Cefiro from Casablanca Valley in Chile, was a dish of Benguet cherry tomatoes, donburi caramelized onions, pan de sal croutons, and Kaluga Queen caviar with kesong puti foam and tomato powder. It came with a Pinot Noir-ish sparkling wine from the Taltarni T Series from South Australia.
Next, along with a dry, fruity, and spicy white wine from Almansa, Spain, the Piqueras White Label 2022, was stuffed rabbit with spinach, white beech mushrooms, onions, potato fondant dressed in Dijon cream and flavored with sakurab or sibujing, derived from a relative of scallion or a variant of wild leek and used extensively and traditionally as seasoning in Mindanao and the Visayas. What followed was a Ranger Valley Black Tyde ribeye, along with Arroz Meloso, featuring Chong-Ak rice, the “Cordillera paella,” a slow-growing rice variety from Kalinga, with sorrel and Bu-o mushroom, an Earthball type of mushroom abundant, especially after a lightning storm, in the Cordilleras, where it is often dubiously and inaccurately, if not even opportunistically, called the “Cordilleran truffle.” A temperanillo accompanied this meat dish, Bodegas Faustino Crianza from Rioja.
A peach melba on almond butter cake, lush with wild raspberries and white chocolate, capped off the Harvest Dinner, along with 66 percent sikwate hummus and tableya chocolate cake with pistachios, orange blossom, and extra virgin olive oil. A Californian merlot from The Path helped wash it all down.
Senator Legarda, happy with the results of the first Tagaytay Food and Wine Festival, committed to make it an annual event on the foodie calendar. Addressing the chefs, she suggested that a similar festival be held in other regions across the Philippines so as to expand the movement championing the integral role of farmers in building a nation such as ours.
Just like our chefs, who are becoming bolder and bolder in their pursuit of the possibilities of Philippine cuisine, Senator Legarda is a true inspiration. Singlehandly, she has pushed the envelope of national development, taking care of perhaps the most important yet most overlooked and neglected aspect of building a great nation—culture.
From art to literature, from agriculture to infrastructure, from our languages to education, even climate change and foreign relations, Senator Legarda sees to it that the Filipino—our way of life, our heritage, our distinct identity, our general welfare—isn’t pushed down the priority list, even if often, especially before her efforts bear fruit, she feels like a lone voice crying in the wilderness.