For three decades, my husband and I hosted dinners for friends, news sources and PR clients at our flat in Malate. Invited to these gatherings were personalities who were hogging headlines at the time. Those social events still get mentioned once in a while in nostalgic posts on social media.

Those parties were not eat-and-run events; they were planned to be memorable, either by cuisine themes, memorable guest lists, visual entertainment or news “leaks.”

An Egyptian-themed dinner in 1979, years before shawarma entered the local scene, featured homemade flatbread, grilled meats and vegetables, tahini, baba ganoush, garlic yogurt, and olives. The wives of Arab envoys praised the menu for being very close to what they had back home.

By mid-1985, opposition against the Marcos administration mounted, with rising demand for snap elections. The issues used against the Marcos couple were corruption involving billions of dollars in hidden wealth and violations of human rights, with hundreds detained, missing or killed.

Requests for interviews were turned down by the palace press office. Only one foreign correspondent succeeded: ABC News investigative reporter Geraldo Rivera. He was my dinner guest of honor the week he had just wrapped up shooting a documentary, Slave Ships of the Sulu Sea, which subsequently won an Emmy. It was the first news report on the Muro-Ami fishing method, which shocked the world and pushed the government to amend the Family Code.

That night, he was beaming; he had just ambushed First Lady Imelda Marcos in the Malacañang Music Room and President Ferdinand Marcos in the Study Room, confronting them with questions on hidden wealth and human rights, which made the president visibly angry and left the first lady in tears.

In late October 1985, under pressure from the United States, Marcos announced the holding of snap elections for February 1986. The community of foreign journalists in Manila ballooned. All major news organizations set up bureaus at the Manila Hotel, pulling out personnel and equipment from other Asian cities. Manila became the center of world attention.

My dinners had to move; our North Syquia flat could no longer accommodate guests, which had swollen to more than the landlord and other tenants could tolerate. There were also the problems of what food to serve and how much.

That’s when my Weber barbecue kettles saved the situation. One kettle smoked two whole 8-kilo hams; the other roasted 10 oversized chickens. Pans of lasagna and several cheese trays added variety, along with baskets of sourdough bread and fresh fruits for dessert.

Guests brought dozens of bottles of wine. Cold beer flowed until dawn, and we all had fun during what was to be the last of our legendary dinners. February 1986 was just around the corner, and all our lives would not be the same again.