A chef, restaurateur, author, educator, consultant, and endorser–among other many things–Gene Gonzalez lives and breathes cuisine. "I've always loved food," he shares to me years ago when I visited his restaurant, Café Ysabel. Over lunch, he animatedly shared stories of his childhood, growing up with a grandmother who always had a busy kitchen. As a child, Gonzalez was fascinated with the busyness of grandmother's kitchen, where she was always preparing things and creating home grown dishes. At the age of 23, Chef Gene opened and operated the San Juan restaurant, his very first business venture. "It started as a little neighborhood cafe where everybody knew everybody, and served a lot of specialty food," he recalls. "It was very specialized, food was exquisitely prepared, and it was a little secret that started growing, and eventually people started going."
Polly's Pasta: a constant best seller at Café Ysabel, with grilled white cheese, Calumpit sausage, kalamata olives, and basil
Currently, running his cafe and own culinary school keeps Chef Gene busy, as well as penning works for a major newspaper and collaborating with a brand for a culinary knife collection he himself designed and endorses. It seems as this Filipino culinary icon has a lot on his plate, yet his passion for culinary extends, as he lends his expertise to many food ventures in the country with Supreme Food and Beverage Consultancy (SFBC).
The highly acclaimed chef is now at the helm of the development of the menu of The Perfect Pint, owned by three brothers passionate with their aim to change the beer landscape and bar experience in the metro. As a home brewer himself, Gonzalez crafts the menu and the beer and food pairings with mouthwatering matches like Truffle Fries with Czech Weizen, Smoked Fish Spring Rolls with Classic Pilsner, Lengua with Crispy Garlic with Czech Weizen, Pale Ale or Dark Pilsner.
Inside The Perfect Pint, I sit with Chef Gene as he shares his stories, love for beer, and many more food things. Learn more about this modern day Renaissance man and his latest food project in this interview.
Chef Gene Gonzalez at The Perfect PintQuestion: Can you share how you got involved with the food here at The Perfect Pint?
Chef Gene Gonzalez: Since last year I've already been doing a lot of work on flavors, basically, biochemical pairings, and going heavy on research on taste. So it was very timely. I've done work with Noel [Tempongko, Jr., one of the restaurant's owners], and he's a beer enthusiast. I like wine, I like beer, and I used to brew beer. So I got excited when his brother said he wanted to open this restaurant, we immediately clicked because I told him some concepts that I have, I also told him that I knew how to brew beer and I told him what we could do with certain things. Like cooking with beer, using beer flavors, enhancing the flavors of food by either drinking or cooking with beer.
Why do you think it is only recently that people are now appreciating the art of beer pairing, or appreciating craft beer, when we're such a beer drinking country to begin with?
It's very difficult to get into. First, the process is very secretive, in making beer. It was so easy pala, to make beer, when I started making beer. But it's also difficult to get the materials, specially the specialized material. They're not indigenous to the Philippines. My quest is to create a Filipino brew, which is all Filipino. I've been working on that this past month. It's only now that there's the information highway, there's a lot of technology now for importing little stuff, a lot of small craft brewers can get online.
What are your favorite pairings here at The Perfect Pint?
My personal picks would be, for dessert, the smores (Freshly Baked Caramel Brownie Smores with Rhum Raisin Ice Cream, P290), with a coffee brew (Fat Pauly's Sultana Cafe Latte Stout). Then, the Wild Ride (G-Point Wild Ride IPA, P200/pint) with seafood. Creamy seafood, Wild Ride. Fabulous. The Red Ale (Irish Red Ale, P280/pint), I'll pair with anything with anchovies, or anything with squid. For anything with bacon, with smoked bacon with brown gravy or meats, I'll have the Weizen (Pivo Praha Weizen, P220/pint). That would be wow!
You have so much on your plate right now, chef–you're an instructor, you also run a restaurant, you do consultancy, among many other things. How do you manage to balance everything?
Don't sleep. [laughs] No, it's just time management. Get a good assistant to manage your time. You have to be a pawn sometimes, like you move around in a chessboard sometimes. Just balance your time. Like this consultancy thing, this is supposed to be just on the side, but it's a growing already. You've been to Vikings? We set that up also.
Yes! Also food in Two Seasons, right?
Yeah, Two Seasons.
Do you have other projects in the pipeline, aside from the consultancies?
The new site in Davao, we'll be expanding the culinary school. And I'm back to Filipino food. I've gone full circle already. I've been cooking all the countries, all the food of the different countries. I realized I've not been doing anything for my country. The past years I've been doing Filipino food. I'm coming up with four books on Filipino food. Filipino breads, traditional, and modern Filipino confections. You know, we're so rooted on pastillas and yema and all these pasalubong stuff. There are so many other things that we can explore, so I'm coming up with modern Filipino confections, and we'll see.
Through the years you've seen the culinary scene change, especially in terms of education and training available right now [Gonzalez is founder/president of Center for Asian Culinary Studies, established in 2000 in Manila]. How do you see it evolving in the next few years?
Our school is still very boutique, in the sense that we have only four classrooms in San Juan. We have only one classroom per branch. It's still very boutique. And it's going to probably stay that way because the instructors that we've trained for our school are very specialized in teaching, and we have to teach them how to teach. So we're not expanding that fast, we're just going at our pace.
How about local food trends? Pinoys now seem to really be into trendy food. What are your thoughts on this?
It's great. It's all about Instagram, it's all about Facebook. It's all about fast communications, it's great. You know what a person's having in real time, galing eh! The infrastructure of communication and transportation is changing. Cheaper travel. But you know, Pinoys should eat more Filipino food. Now that they're traveling, they should explore it more. The people in different towns, they shouldn't be ashamed of their food. Sometimes kasi, they have this specialty, but they're ashamed to show it. They think it's so ordinary. Biglang may kinakain ako, tapos "Gusto mo 'yan? Dapat kainin mo yung pagkain na hinahanda namin sa fiesta!" Nahihiya sila.
What do you think is an underrated dish or ingredient indigenous to us, that most Filipinos don't use or take for granted?
Our fermented fish products. Different types of bagoong. We have a lot eh. If you go to the Bankerohan market in Davao, because it's a melting pot of different provinces, you'll see about 16 types of bagoong. From fish to shellfish to anchovies to shrimp. Ang dami! Intestines ng isda…ang dami, iba ibang klase. Interesting.
The food industry is very competitive right now. Any tips for those aspiring to become chefs or restaurateurs?
Perseverance. A lot of people watch TV and say, 'wow!' parang it's all this glamor. Then they get disappointed when they get low wages. You can go two ways: you can be an artist and take the artist's way, or you can take the corporate way. It all depends on what you want. Eventually it all meets up anyway. Just be persevering.
—
Have your food and beer pairings at The Perfect Pint located at the 2nd Level of CrossRoads, 37th St. corner 7th Ave., BGC. Visit Café Ysabel at 455 P. Guevarra Street, San Juan. For more information about The Center for Asian Culinary Studies, visit http://cacschef.com. Follow Chef Gene's culinary adventures on Instagram: @chefgenegonzalez.
