Seniors bloom at Happy Garden Cafe

Even on a dour, dull, cloudy day, there’s enough warmth to go around at Happy Garden Cafe that’s located at a senior hub aptly called Sunshine Place. Tucked away on Jupiter Street, amid Makati’s concrete jungle is this oasis of a happy place that nourishes the body and nurtures the soul.  Enter the cafe and you’re at once greeted by assorted freshly picked flowers to brighten up your day. Red roses for a blue lady? You pick a cozy corner with a view —lots of it! The vertical garden, peering through the glass doors, is a refreshing sight on a sweltering day.

Flowers are abloom everywhere ... on your salad bowl that’s filled with edible vari-colored flowers ... and on top of the most delicious and gorgeous cupcakes I’ve ever tasted.

Fact is, Happy Garden Cafe, which opened just last year, offers some really fresh and healthy fare for both the young and the young once. You will probably see Annabel Tanco, the indefatigable owner of Bizu, flitting from table to table, making sure guests go home with only happy memories. “Happy Garden Cafe is another concept for Bizu,” says Annabel. “Because when Tessie Sy Coson of SM told me about helping her out in the senior hub, I thought of the Happy Garden Cafe. Before, you would think about your husband, your kids, everybody else except yourself. Now, when you come to Happy Garden Cafe, you think more about yourself. So, at the senior hub, we have lots of activities/events for seniors. Like we have painting lessons so suddenly, you find out you can paint. You find out you can sing, you can write, you can dance. I think this center is more about yourself, making yourself happy, fulfilling yourself even at a later age.”

Thus, at Happy Garden Cafe, Annabel makes food that’s healthy, that’s good especially for seniors. “It’s time to think of yourself so we have healthy juices so you can take care of your body,” Annabel describes her well-thought-out and thoughtful menu. “We have salads that are mostly organic and, as much as possible, we don’t put sugar in our dressings. The dressing we use is apple cider vinegar and we use olive oil for cooking.”

Annabel concocted the fresh juices herself. “These juices came from my research. We have a lot of chakras or energy centers in our body, so I came up with different chakra juices.”

The red juice is a mix of sugar beet, turnip, carrot, ginger, fiber, sweetened with stevia. The orange juice is made of orange, carrot, lemon, celery, ginger, fiber with stevia. The yellow juice is a blend of pineapple, Fuji apple, lemon, celery, ginger, fiber with stevia. The green juice consists of kale, green apple, lemon, celery, ginger, and fiber with stevia. Each color is good for a different part of the body — like, red is for the heart, green for the stomach, orange for the eyes.

For starters, we’re having, yes, Flower Salad with Carrot Dressing (mixed fruits and nuts on mixed greens served with carrot dressing and topped with edible flowers. Yes, you can eat the daisies, the geraniums, and many other flowers that are freshly picked from the Tanco organic farm in Tanauan, Batangas. Some of these flowers may be alien to you, but trust Annabel who’s done a lot of research on edible flowers and taste-tested them, too.

Healthy doesn’t have to be bland and boring, as you’ll find out with the prawn-tastic cake and soft shell crab fried in tempura butter. But as the menu will tell you, dig deep and find your way to your soul.

To add some egg-citement to your meal, order the Chorizo and Egg pizza (cream cheese, pureed tomatoes, topped with Spanish chorizo, organic egg, oregano, basil, and mozzarella cheese).

What goes best with pizza? Pasta, of course! A perfect match for the meaty Chorizo and Egg is the cheesy Conchiglie and Shrimps in Tarragon Butter (Conchiglie pasta with shrimps tossed in tarragon butter and Parmesan cheese).

For a pancit palabok with a healthy twist, try Happy Garden Cafe’s  palabok topped with smoked fish, prawns, crackling pork, crisp garlic, shallots, tofu, and organic egg.

Don’t wrap it up just yet, not until you’ve tried the Buffalo Chicken Wrap (free-range chicken in high-fiber olive oil tortilla with romaine lettuce, cheddar cheese, low-fat mayo, and Buffalo sauce).

Open as early as 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Sunday, Happy Garden Cafe serves breakfast. Its hearty breakfast sets can give your day a rousing start. What can be grander than a grand Filipino breakfast that consists of garlic rice, tomato with white cheese and pesto, and your choice of beef tapa, pork tocino, pork longganisa, or fried bangus.

For a sweet ending to a happy meal, try the gluten-free and dairy-free flower pot cupcakes in the following variants: carrot walnut, banana, and chocolate. With all the desserts gluten-free and dairy-free, this is certainly a happy place for those who have gluten allergy.

Whereas Bizu is all about indulgence (think cakes, pastries, pastas, chocolates, and all that rich stuff), Happy Garden Cafe is about natural, quality food using only the best and freshest ingredients. For instance, Happy Garden Cafe doesn’t use commercial flour; Annabel made her own flour, which is a mixture of bean flour and a lot of other flours like almond flour.

Don’t order white rice in this resto because it only serves brown and cauliflower rice. The champorado here is also a real champ as it uses Italian arborio rice, not the regular sticky rice. You won’t find burgers on the 70 plus-item menu, but Annabel discloses that she’s coming out with real beef burgers and lamb burgers. Happy Garden Cafe makes its own tocino with no food coloring. You’ll be happy to know that Happy Garden Cafe doesn’t use MSG or preservatives in its food.

“Soon, we’re going to sell organic eggs from Abra,” Annabel reveals. “What I’m doing now is I’m contacting a lot of farms so we can get better produce — herbs, greens — which we will sell here.”

A certified health buff, Annabel came up with her own kombucha tea (fermented tea that’s said to be good for liver detoxification, immunity, and weight loss). “We ferment it here. Fermented food is good for you because it has a lot of probiotics in it.”

She excitedly adds, “I have this group of women who is always coming up with a lot of healthy things.”

We ask Annabel: When did this passion start? She gingerly explains, “As you kinda age a bit, you start thinking of how you can eat better. They say food is medicine; whatever you eat, that’s what your body will be. For example, if you take drugs, your body will be poisoned and you’ll look really bad.”

A beaming Annabel reveals the secret to looking good: “Be happy. Be in a happy place. Be with people that you love, with friends who mean a lot, who are true friends. Do things that you like.”

She talks about putting up a little picnic place at Happy Garden Cafe. “I’ll put grass, and then the kids can come. We’ll have little tables and you can order food, play with the kids, and have a picnic. We’ll probably have brunch every Sunday. Some nights we can have people singing or playing the guitar.”

With a beer-y big smile, Annabel adds, “We’re also serving a lot of local beer brews for young people. Happy Garden Cafe is not only for old people but also for the young.”

So, what else is brewing at Sunshine Place?

This hub is a hive of activity, as we find out for ourselves on a humdrum Tuesday, as marketing manager Cris Moreno-Cruz walks as through the place and as I sit down with Gilda Reyes, center head, Senior Members Social Club, Inc. for a tete-a-tete.

Sunshine Place, located at 56 Jupiter St., Bel-Air, Makati, is under the Felicidad Tan Sy Foundation. It was conceived by Tessie Sy Coson who’s put up a dream of a happy place where seniors can congregate, socialize, be active, and have fun. Membership fee is P3,000 monthly consummable, which can be used to pay for the activities and facilities at Sunshine Place.

The place is all of five floors: Happy Garden Cafe on the first floor; the hub on the second; Foot Zone on the third; salon, dance studio, gym on the fourth; roof deck function room and chapel on the fifth. A priest holds Mass every Friday.

“This used to be called a senior hub, but some seniors could not accept the name so we changed it to Sunshine Place,” Gilda relates.

“They didn’t like they’re being old to be rubbed in,” says Cris.

Certainly, in this place, age does not matter as long as matter doesn’t age. There are enough activities to keep seniors literally on their feet. There are art classes under Fidel Sarmiento, president of the Art Association of the Philippines, who teaches hands-on techniques in mixing paint, holding a brush, and even framing an artwork. “You don’t have to have any background in art at all,” says Cris. “It’s mostly for seniors to be able to exercise their minds and their hands. Like Mrs. Guerrero who’s a stroke patient.”

With members ranging in age from 50 to 94 (the eldest member to date), classes include Yeba!, the Filipino dance version of Zumba, created by Danny Vinculado and taught by Nikki Camasura; Chair Dancing, especially for those in wheels and walkers; Zumba Gold, low-impact dance steps to the ’60s and ’70s dance beat; Retro Dance Gold, nonstop disco; Le Bran Elite (social ballroom with partners); and flamenco, with Cecile de Joya, founder of Fundacion Centro Flamenco, teaching the basics to members.

There’s martial arts/meditation, too, like tai chi and yoga. But for more sedentary activities, members can go for the special tutorials, like learning how to use an iPad, Ikebana flower arrangement, a bead workshop, or a writing workshop conducted by Barbara “Tweetums” Gonzalez.

Surely, in this place, there’s plenty of sunshine for those in the twilight of their years.

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Sunshine Place is located at 56 Jupiter St., Bel-Air, Makati City with telephone numbers 856-4144/8564162, mobile 09175155656; email seniorhubjupiter@gmail.com. Happy Garden Cafe is at the ground floor of Sunshine Place with telephone number 261-0115. It is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Sunday.