Say, Jay ... by Jay Treadwell
March 2008 vol 7 #3
Quimson, and Then Some
[Editor Note: On an occasional basis Foodservice Monthly "Ask Jay" columnist Jay Treadwell brings us an international travel and culinary feature.]
The first thing you have to understand about cooking in the Philippines is that everything has at least a dash of the spirit in it. Some food has a lot more than a dash. This is true of an unusual chef we met first on the island of Boracay, then at a hospital in Manila and then at Tagatay on Luzon on a golf course south of Manila. If this hasn’t intrigued you already, skip to the end.
Eduardo Quimson, at the age of seven, noticed someone in whites at a restaurant and decided at that youthful stage in his life, he wanted to “be like that man”- the chef.
Ed never got far from the kitchen his mother let him fiddle around in – by eleven he was preparing dinner every evening for the family. His father died when he was thirteen, and his mother decided they needed to return to the Philippines. His grandmother, not happy with his decision to quit school for cooking took him to Spain, a trip from which he never recovered. He went to the famous Colegio de Hoteleria de Campo in Madrid but left before completing his studies and headed next to Paris. He ended up working for a mom and pop restaurant, learning French and how to cook exquisitely. At twenty years of age he was a sous chef on a luxury liner.
Along the way he lived the high life, which he later regretted. He did some things he wasn’t proud of, and then, ultimately came back to earth in 1992 when his grandmother died. He says that he had “wasted God’s gift of life”, and, miraculously, had been given a second chance at life. He gives credit to four women who steered him properly: Rosario Wolf, “who tantalized me to be all I could be”; Betty Quimson, his mother, who “gave me style and taught me technique”; Consuelo Tuason, his grandmother, who “showed me the world” and Doreen Fernandes,, a close friend, who “gave me inspiration and friendship”.
We met him at the Asia/Pacific Meeting of the Cornell Hotel Society on the island of Boracay, at the sublimely beautiful beach resort Discovery Shores, owned by Annabel and Tom Wisniewski. They had arranged a chef cook-off and invited chefs from Manila to prepare food for the conference attendees. Chef Ed, as he came to be known, cooked Manila Paella, a rare dish, usually made over an open fire, with local fish, rice and Bocaronas, a Philippine anchovy oil.
My wife, Peggy suffered a ruptured appendix on Boracay and was rushed from our island paradise to Manila, where she was operated on at the Makati Medical Center for peritonitis. Several days into her recuperation there was a commotion across the hall from her; the door swung open and in walked Chef Ed, from his room across the hall – this time in hospital whites, smiling as he recounted the story of how he wound up there: a diabetes attack when he became furious at a staff member who had forgotten his special knives. Ed has high blood pressure, is, by his own admission, seriously overweight and is a “ticking time bomb”. His smile, though, is as wide as his girth.
Peggy couldn’t eat any solid food and Ed told her that when he was released the next day, he would send food to her every day. He would first send two or three soups of increasing consistency; then more solid food as the days progressed. His friendship was as contagious as his food. The soups he sent were some of the best either of us had ever tasted. Peggy asked him, “When is this going to stop?” and he replied, “When you leave Manila!’. The daily soups turned in to mushroom risotto, special handmade sausages and on an on until we left almost two weeks later.
He is the executive chef for the Jaka Group and had a kitchen close by in the Makati business district of Manila. He told us that he wanted to do something special before we left, so arranged a special party, under a tent at a golf club in Tagatay, about an hour and a half south of Manila, where he was also the chef. He invited all the same chefs who had been on Boracay and replicated his now-famous Paella for Peggy and the other honored guests.
Eduardo Quimson is a man with a remarkable heart and spirit who gave us the gift of more than food. All these chefs exhibit incredible kindness toward all visitors, the living essence of true customer service, and appear willing to go to almost any lengths to learn more about foods and how to prepare specialties, using local products. Philippine cooking recently has fused much of this local tradition with a western sense of food and plate design. It is a nice marriage. We’ll never forget you, Chef Ed.
Jay Treadwell is a principal of Optimum Hospitality Services, consulting to restaurants, foodservice companies, business and industry sites and convention centers. He has recently been named the President of the International Cornell Hotel Society, a worldwide organization of graduates of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. You may contact him at 301-656-8335 or at (c)301-602-9477. www.optimumservices.net
