Sinfully delicious!

By: Jareliese Mauro

Moans of satisfaction will escape your lips as you lick from your fingers the creaminess of the Giandiya dark chocolate Bavarian nestled in a chocolate cone, rooted in a plate of banana sauce with sesame chips and vanilla ice cream. Otherwise known as Café Miró’s “Hemisphere,” it remains a huge hit from the consumers along with the café’s other dessert celebrities: “Opera in the Park,” a chocolate meringue and chili chocolate sorbet fashioned into a bench-in-a-garden tableau, “Classic Crème Brulee,” a smooth concoction of banana fritters, Linzer biscuits, and banana sorbet, and the “Mango Panacotta,” a festive taste of honey tuille and mango sorbet.

One whiff of the “Turkey and Brie” makes a patron whets his appetite for smoked turkey, Brie cheese, Tarragon Aioli and lettuce while a blindfolded panel of judges will attest to the great flavor the “Panini California ” with its smoked turkey breast, avocado, Roma tomatoes, Swiss cheese, and roasted garlic aioli assembly. In its truest form, “Pasta Puttanesca” lives up to its name as it makes a little festive aftertaste in the mouth of lean ground beef, chopped tomato, tomato sauce, and Swiss cheese. Get your fill in the “Pasta Marinara” with its blend of white cream fish, asparagus, cherry tomato and white sauce. Once you try the “Beef Stroganoff,” you would understand how beef strips, garlic, button mushroom can all be mixed together and create one hearty meal.

In the lower ground of the MIT building, Gorodo, Lahug, a taciturn dwelling of pastries, hot meals and sandwiches flashes a marquee-like sign bearing the last name of a Spanish artist who is known for his abstract paintings, Miró. In this 70 sq m. designed in Moroccan tiles and hanging glass lamps, an art gallery flaunting the works of Anthony Fermin invokes an intellectually artistic feel from a keen observer. Adding homey touches are the gray tiles on the floor, black marble tables and wooden chairs, simple yet provocative elements that beguile the consumers to spill the beans of their lives to their date. With the soft yellow lights, the space looks dramatically different.

Responsible for this dollop of inspiration is Marleen Ong-Torres, a UP graduate of Fine Arts, who cooks up guilty pleasures in the form of art cakes and devoured-in-a-flash meals. Through her intuition, she bakes and cooks with irreverence and abandon without compromising the taste of her masterpieces. “My painting is in the cooking,” she coos as she batters up a pudding to its creamiest texture. She sweetens the deal and wins loyal consumers from any age range with gourmet ingredients. Having taken a culinary course in California and practiced in NY, she lives by a mantra borrowed from her chef-friend, Richard Leaf: “It was the way we did things, we stacked, leaned or shaped---whatever you can do or get away with on a plate.” Delivering the heat and making all dishes come true is how this artist does business with her clientele. She ultimately provides a casting call of heavenly goodies, at such an affordable price, which would rival to any specialty in a five-star hotel-restaurant. “It challenges me to come up with a dish using components which are exactly measured and could only come from imported brands. I can’t cheat on my customers by providing them substitute ingredients,” explains the self-confessed bookworm. Other restaurants for example use a lot of flour and sugar on a chocolate cake to maximize the taste and lessen the expenses in creating a dessert. In Café Miró, plated desserts are made of imported ingredients used in most, if not all, dishes from aesthetic details down to the filling. Waitresses have all tasted the product so an honest-to-goodness testimonial from them is the real deal and not some scripted response. Updating her menu at least once in a month, Marleen often experiments and when she is satisfied with the taste, she puts it in the menu. “I always knew I’d end up doing something artistic in my life. Though I rarely paint now, my creative juices flow the moment I step inside my kitchen,” Marleen happily reports after having entertained guests who have doubled from the beginning of this interview. In her little café made popular by word-of-mouth advertising, she has found a resourceful way to silence her customers: through her delicious and edible ‘works of art.’