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    Makati's Sulô: Where Taste Was Style
    Makati's Sulô: Where Taste Was Style
    Makati's Sulô: Where Taste Was Style
    Ebook209 pages2 hours

    Makati's Sulô: Where Taste Was Style

    By Erlinda Panlilio

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    About this ebook

    “Sulô was a landmark when Ayala first began developing Makati’s commercial center. Its concept of several restaurants, each with a different food theme, all under one roof was pioneering. I remember enjoying Philippine folk dances and showing off native foods there as a teenager when we had guests from overseas. Sulô’s recipe for success is important in the history of Philippine restaurants.”

    — Felice Pruduente Sta. Maria, Author and Food Historian

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnvil Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateOct 26, 2017
    ISBN9789712732034
    Makati's Sulô: Where Taste Was Style

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      Book preview

      Makati's Sulô - Erlinda Panlilio

      Introduction:

      Where people of good taste meet

      We felt small and nervous as we sat outside the posh office of retired Col. Jaime Velasquez in the old Insular Life building.

      As we waited to be called in, we stared at the rich wood panels lined with large photographs of distinguished-looking Spanish gentlemen and two ladies. All were unsmiling. They were those of the members of the Zobel de Ayala family. One was of Col. Joseph McMicking, the visionary who planned Makati to be a modern city of multi-storied buildings lining a wide boulevard called Ayala Avenue. His wife was Mercedes Zobel de Ayala, sister to Alfonso and Col. Jacobo Zobel. Alfonso was the father of Jaime, and Jacobo was the father of Enrique. They all looked intimidating, and this added to our nervousness.

      My parents and I had not been to Makati. It was terra incognita to us. We lived in Quezon City, and we had a restaurant there, the D&E, at the corner of Quezon Boulevard Extension (now called Quezon Avenue) and A. Roces Avenue.

      My parents had been schoolteachers who had turned entrepreneurs after the War. They had set up a small coffee shop in Plaza Goiti that became the popular D&E Coffee Shop on the Escolta and, in the 1950s, a full-service restaurant with function rooms in Quezon City. It became The Restaurant then, patronized for its delicious Filipino food and venue of choice for weddings, debuts, and conferences. It was the home of the Rotary Club of Quezon City, Kiwanis, and other civic organizations. Its fame probably caught the attention of one of the big bosses of Makati Development Corporation (a wholly owned subsidiary then of Ayala y Cia.), retired Colonel Jaime Velasquez, who assisted Colonel McMicking in planning the development of the Ayala-Zobel family’s vast landholdings in what was once the Hacienda San Pedro de Makati. The hacienda encompassed most of what is now the city of Makati.

      Colonel Velazquez was Spanish-speaking like the Zobels, as were other top executives like Vicente Ayllon, and Miguel Ortigas of the Makati Development Corporation, precursor of today’s Ayala Land, Inc.

      I had just returned from my studies at the famed Hotel School of Cornell University and was newly married. I was with my parents as we drove along the lonely stretch of Highway 54, renamed by an act of Congress in 1959 after the national hero Epifanio de los Santos.¹ Because the name was too long, people would still call it Highway 54, until someone shortened it to EDSA. At the time there were only a few buildings lining both sides of the highway, with talahib fields in between them. I think they were pharmaceutical companies like Abbott, Parke-Davis, Winthrop Stearns, and a few office buildings like EverReady, Dutch Boy Paints, and Union Carbide, all of which were low-rise.

      There was hardly any traffic along EDSA. It was, I believe, a four-lane highway then. It took us only 20 minutes to get to Makati from Quezon City.

      Finally we met the man who had called us to his office. Colonel Velasquez was balding and had the mien of a military man, authoritative and direct. He was pleased to learn that my father, Modesto Enriquez, was a Bulakenyo like himself. (My mother, the former Trinidad Diaz, confided to me later that she had met him in the past because he once courted her sister Milagros, who was the prettiest of the seven Diaz women.)

      Colonel Velasquez explained that he and Mr. Miguel Ortigas were in charge of developing the commercial and residential areas of the large tracts of land owned by the Zobel de Ayala family through the Ayala y Cia. On the stretch of Ayala Avenue between Makati Avenue and EDSA, there was a lone building near where the Urdaneta Apartments would soon be built. It was called the Monterrey Apartments. The Gilarmi Apartments (now the sixty-eight-story Primea), was not yet in existence. At the corner of Makati Avenue and Ayala Avenue, there stood an old prewar, two-story airport terminal building called Nielson Tower. A Philippine Airlines flight took off on its first flight for Baguio in 1941. Today the Nielson Tower, formerly occupied by Via Mare Restaurant, followed by the Filipinas Heritage Library, is leased to a restaurant called Blackbird Grill.

      The Ayala master plan included a 26-hectare area called Makati Commercial Center or MCC (today’s Ayala Center), which would have smart shops, to be anchored by five-star international hotels, the first of which would be the Ayala-Zobels’ Hotel InterContinental that would open in 1969. In a conspiratorial tone, Colonel Velasquez told us that it would be good to have a Filipino enterprise at the MCC for a change, because the Chinese were beginning to monopolize the businesses there. He meant Henry Sy of SM, which was called Shoemart then, Henry Ng of Makati Supermart and, in around two or three years, the Makati Automat, and Mariano Que of Mercury Drug. He said he expected us to do our best to come up with a classy restaurant, not the D&E-type that catered more to the B market. He added that our clientele would be the residents of the exclusive gated villages of Forbes Park, San Lorenzo, Urdaneta, and Bel Air that was fast expanding. Dasmariñas Village, next to Forbes Park, was still a sakatihan, a wasteland of tall useless grass good for horse feed. Moreover, the colonel said, we could count on the executives and staff of the Insular Life, FGU and Filipinas Life Insurance companies, and the Elizalde building farther down Ayala Avenue. He said other big buildings would soon be built. These were the Sarmiento and San Miguel buildings at the corner of Paseo de Roxas and Ayala Avenue, Prudential Bank, Oledan, and Madrigal buildings. He assured us that there would be enough clientele to make our restaurant viable.

      While he was saying this, my parents and I felt excited and looked at one another.

      Colonel Velasquez asked my father what the name of our restaurant at the MCC would be. He paused … then said that he did not want it to be D&E at all. If he thought that my parents would be insulted, they were not, for they were humble folk who had been almost penniless at the end of World War II.

      My father thought for a while, then said, Sulô! He explained that the sulô, meaning torch, symbolized Philippine hospitality. During fiestas, a sulô outside a house symbolized welcome.

      Colonel Velasquez broke into a broad smile. He liked the name. Then he repeated his admonition that the restaurant must be high class, but should serve the good food that the D&E had come to be known for. He said that to incentivize us, he would not allow other restaurants serving the same food that we did to be established at the MCC. (Later, as we were planning the building, my mother and I remembered this and asked our architects, the Mañosa brothers—Manuel, Francisco, and Jose—to incorporate several specialty restaurants under one roof. These would be a coffee shop, a grill room, a Filipino-food room, a Chinese restaurant, a cocktail lounge, and a banquet hall.)

      We were offered a 1,000-square-meter piece of land on a twenty-five-year lease behind the small Makati Supermart. (In about three years’ time, the Makati Supermart would be converted into the Makati Automat, and the Makati Supermart relocated and expanded into a big supermarket in front of the Sulô.) Rent was established at 3 percent of gross sales for the first year of operation, 4 percent the following year, peaking at 5 percent from the third year onwards. There was no floor rent.

      At the time, there were large patches of talahib grass fronting the land offered to us, looking toward San Lorenzo Village. There was a row of shops alongside the site where the Sulô was to rise. The small building was called Ayala Arcade, with the Commercial Bank & Trust at the corner. Other shops were Castle, a boutique for clothing, buttons, and lace; Happy Feet, a casual sandal shop; Metro Drug; Bookmark; Pierre Beauty Salon that became my regular hairdresser; and maybe two more shops.

      The Rizal Theatre was the only four-story-high (in my estimation) structure with modern lines at the Ayala Avenue entrance to the Makati Commercial Center. It was designed by Architect Julio Nakpil (later proclaimed a National Artist), and served as a movie house and occasional performing-arts theater. Before the Cultural Center of the Philippines came to be, Dame Margot Fonteyn would perform in Swan Lake here. This was also where Iginuhit ng Tadhana, the film on the life of Ferdinand Marcos starring Luis Gonzales as Marcos and Gloria Romero as Imelda, was premiered. In attendance was a perfumed and bejeweled crowd in long gowns, the men in Barong Tagalog.

      Leila’s was a coffee shop adjacent to the lobby of Rizal Theatre. It was named after its owner, Leila Benitez, the one-time host of the noontime Darigold Jamboree TV show, and former cohost of Student Canteen with Eddie Ilarde and Bobby Ledesma.

      Meanwhile, a cluster of two-story apartment buildings was quickly rising in a community called Palm Village at the end of Bel Air 1, along EDSA. My husband Beck and I thought that we should move from our apartment in Quezon City and rent a unit here because we needed to focus on the construction and opening of the Sulô. We became one of the first occupants of a three-bedroom apartment owned by Enrique Zobel. Its address was 221 Amapola, Palm Village. Rent was PhP500 a month.

      In 1967, four years after living in Palm Village, we learned that Ayala was opening a new subdivision called Dasmariñas Village near Forbes Park. Beck and I went to see Colonel Velasquez, who then asked Miguel (Long) Ortigas to show us the subdivision plan. We chose a 1,000-square-meter lot right beside that of Beck’s co-Rotarian and friend, Jose-Luis (Pocholo) Romero-Salas who was married to Remy Moraza of the Aboitiz family.

      Colonel Velasquez made his pitch: The land costs PhP95 per square meter. But if you build your house in two years’ time, you will get back PhP12.50 per square meter, he

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