Don’t expect fancy interiors and mood lights in Oriang.
While most contemporary restaurants will invest heavily in furniture created by a famous designer, or fill its space with a hodgepodge of vintage, “conversation” pieces, enough to pique a blogger’s or photographer’s fancy, Oriang will greet you with a plain, almost bare dining area.
Ensaladang Talong
What’s left to the diner who’s scanning the menu frame and dilly-dallying just outside the restaurant’s door is the intriguing name “Oriang” written on a woven pattern or what we call “habi.”
“Of course you know who Oriang is,” Vic Wenceslao, one of the owners of the restaurant, greeted me as we shook hands during Oriang’s VIP Night last January 21 at Fiesta Market, Market! Market!, Taguig City.
The woven pattern perfectly frames the name “Oriang,” referring to Gregoria de Jesus, the wife of the Katipunan Supremo and Philippine hero Andres Bonifacio. Not a lot of people know of Oriang’s role in the revolution.
When the Spaniards came looking for Andres Bonifacio, Oriang collected and hid the incriminating documents. It is said she quickly took these with her into a vehicle and drove it herself, all the while misleading the Spaniards by driving around in circles.
After her husband died, the “lakambini ng Katipunan” fled to the mountains with her fellow revolutionaries.
Naming a restaurant after Oriang is thus a tribute, and a fitting one at that, since the new place tries to define Filipino cuisine and revolutionize it at the same time.
Bicol Express
Brave move
It is perhaps a brave move, but the owners, brothers Vic and Alfredo Wenceslao, were former activists and revolutionaries themselves.
During the Martial Law years, the brothers fought hand in hand with their fellow newspaper editors and members of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines against the iron hand-dictator.
Oriang by Café de Bonifacio is a follow-up to their first restaurant Café de Bonifacio at The Podium.
With Oriang serving Filipino food, it can be quite a challenge to rise above the clutter of the bustling food scene in Manila. And much more because most diners will splurge their hard-earned money on French nouvelle cuisine, their fare of diner grub and gastro pub, a romantic fill of authentic Italian, and lately, the confusing fusion cuisine.
However, like most Filipinos I know, most diners will jump from one foreign cuisine to the next, and yet after a long day at work, or after an extended trip abroad, they will hanker for adobo or a bowl of sinigang to sooth their tired souls. Ask any OFW.
Oriang goes straight to the point. It lets go of the frills and welcomes you in a very homey dining setup. The long tables and chairs invite Filipino extended families and longtime barkadas for rounds of good old Filipino comfort food. It is the Filipino “hapag-kainan” where the dishes are laid out all at the same time, prompting loved ones to a loving tug-of-war and uninhibited conversations.
Oriang drinks
The menu is straightforward as well. Drinks are tropical fruits abundant in the country. For appetizers, there’s tawilis, kinilaw, ensaladang talong, and lumpiang hubad.
The ensaladang talong jump-started our dining experience well. It was, well, sliced eggplants, which is pretty bland, but complement it with fresh bananas and itlog na maalat, lathered with vinaigrette dressing and you’re well on your way.
I might have finished the entire plate, except that beside it was a tempting dish of lumpiang hubad in pastry cups. I have always enjoyed my lumpiang sariwa with peanuts and ubod, usually sold in stalls in every mall in Manila, but I can assure you this lumpiang hubad in pastry cups will give them a run for their money. The pastry cups gave the dish a nice crunch, which is what we love in every appetizer.
Sawsawan fiesta
Without the fancy schmanzy, diners will feel free to let their hair down as well as their hands. Waiters will present an array of sauces and even a plate of buro – pickled manga, singkamas and sibuyas—as soon as diners take their seats.
As for the sauces, diners are encouraged to “concoct” their sauce from chili squash, onion garlic, ginger garlic for the condiments and sweet soy sauce, spicy vinegar and chili garlic for the liquid seasonings.
So when the main entrees arrived, my sauce plate was ready: a combination of sweet soy sauce, ginger garlic and lots and lots of chili.
I dribbled the sauce in everything I ate—from the bowl of hot sour soup sinigang na tadyang to the spring chicken honey (which I put a lot of, because it was too sweet for my taste), to the butterflied tilapia in tamarind (which was so crunchy, I heard my seatmate’s chewing as if it was my own), and even the Bicol express, which I loved for its green beans, but I found was not spicy enough. I wanted it to be a fiery Bicol express, which a Bicolano friend cooked for me years ago, when I had to chug five glasses of water and gobble two bananas to keep my tongue from burning.
And to cap the night, a sweet dessert was in order. The turon de Gregorian is a play on the peanut brittle with vanilla ice cream that Vic Wenceslao sources from a small Filipino ice cream place in Quezon City Circle. It lacked color, but in my mouth, it was a rainbow of sweetness, with the bananas giving it a right balance.
The last dessert is the mango roti latik, which is exactly what it is named. I told Vic that I felt the roti was out of place since it is more popularly Indian and in general considered South-Asian bread.
Vic explained Filipino cuisine is rooted to our history – we are a Malay race, conquered by three different peoples—Spanish, American, and Japanese. The Filipino cuisine identity is a healthy mix of all these, a product of our history. So the Filipino cuisine is naturally multicultural.
And to think most people believe our cuisine lacks identity. Perhaps, it’s just a matter of changing perspectives.
Now, if only we can fight for our food as well.
I finished off my dessert, digesting his words and my thoughts. Ah, satisfaction! —KG, GMA News
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