Miss Universe beauties get a cool taste of local flavors at Baguio Country Club

MILLIE: Whenever Karla and I need to work on a project together or do our annual planning and review activities for the business, we find ourselves wanting to go up to Baguio. The cool air relaxes and inspires us both and we are away from the hustle and bustle of city life and the office. Sometimes, we prefer to go to the beach but lately, Karla has found a new world under the sea and prefers to go scuba diving, while I am left to do the work by my lonely self. Since she got back from her seven-month stint at the International Culinary Center or ICC in New York, we haven’t had a chance to buckle down to review our business plan, among other things. So, after a busy Christmas season, we decided it was time for a “work-cation” in Baguio.

Arriving at the Baguio Country Club, we were quite contented to just sit on the veranda to enjoy the fresh, cold air. Before buckling down to do some work, we decided to have a late lunch and checked out the new a la carte menu. We learned from the wait staff that there was a new executive chef and were quite impressed with the new menu, which was balanced and well planned out, leaving the favorite comfort foods as mainstays.

We settled for our all-time favorites of pinakbet, an Ilocano vegetable stew with eggplant, okra, bitter melon and squash cooked with shrimp, pork, fish, and bagoong; lechon kawali, or deep-fried pork belly served with KBL sauce (kamatis, bagoong at lasona); bistek Tagalog smothered with onions and for dessert, our favorite banana bread! The hearty meal fueled and fired us up to get some work done, inspired by the view of the fairway and the fresh mountain air.

By dinnertime we were still working on the veranda amid the chatter and the live band playing. We zeroed in on our favorite traditional Caesar salad served with Romaine lettuce, bacon bits, grated parmesan and croutons paired with Schublig sausage and it was perfect. We carried on working and didn’t realize we stayed on the veranda until almost midnight!

KARLA:  As always, I couldn’t wait for breakfast! There’s something about Baguio Country Club’s breakfast buffet that makes me want to get up in the morning. I’m not sure if it’s actually the food or the cool air that gets me so excited. Maybe it’s the combination of both. But then, I guess I grew up looking forward to breakfast, as my Lolo Joe would always get up early and expected us to join him for breakfast.

The Baguio Country Club breakfast buffet has the usual selection: longganisa, sautéed corned beef with garlic, onions, tomatoes and potatoes, a mountain of bacon, salad station, egg station, fresh fruits and some other dishes that are on rotation like tapa, tocino, bangus, etc.

On this trip we had breakfast with the general manger of the club, Anthony de Leon, who has been with the club for 28 years, starting as a maitre d’hotel and becoming the food and beverage manager until he was eventually promoted as the general manager.

He took us on a tour of the new Cordillera Convention Hall. It is now where the tennis court used to stand. I used to play tennis there with my cousins during the rare times I would actually have cousins to play with. The newly constructed venue has a seating capacity of 910 pax for dining, 1,063 pax classroom-style and 1,527 pax theater-style. It also has a mezzanine with a 160 dining seating capacity and 186 theater-style. This might just be the most exciting project Baguio Country Club has undertaken in my generation. With the current trend of destination weddings, conventions, shows, etc., the club now has a more flexible venue and is better equipped to accommodate bigger and more luxurious events. After all, I wouldn’t expect anything less from the Philippine’s first and only five-star mountain resort.

After touring the convention center, we got an extra surprise tour to the back of the house, including all the kitchens! Yes, I geeked out about it. We toured the convention hall kitchen, banquet kitchen, the main kitchen — where we met the new executive chef, Pedro Canlas — and the bakeshop, where we saw our old friend, pastry chef Art Nucaza, whom we’ve featured before. I almost locked myself in the chocolate room because, well… who has never dreamed of that? But then chef Art wanted to show me his newest oven, a rotating one for the raisin bread. Trays of the raisin bread dough are inserted into a cooling rack and the whole cooling rack is put into the oven, which twirls it around to ensure even baking for all those raisin breads.

After the tour, I cornered chef Pedro and chef Art so they could spill some details about the Miss Universe gala dinner held last night. They prepared over 170-plus plated meals and the rest was buffet. They really wanted to highlight local produce and so most of the vegetables and fruits they used were from this region. For starters, pan-seared foie gras with strawberry and mango coulis and taro chips. Their soup was consommé Orientale with enoki mushroom, celery and carrot juliennes and beansprouts. For the salad, they served sautéed mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, shallots, mesclun, and crumbled goat cheese with a balsamic dressing. The entree was a gratinated Chilean seabass with steamed bok choy, cherry tomato confit, Kalamata olives and chorizo relish. A strawberry Grand Marnier sorbet was served as a palate cleanser, followed by the main dish, a pepper-crusted Grade 9 Wagyu beef medallion from Snake River Farms with garlic creamed potato puree, maple-glazed and butter-glazed carrots, beans and a white peppercorn sauce. As for dessert — so simple yet one of my favorites — mango jubilee was followed by assorted pralines and petit fours.

We also got to visit the Hamada kitchen and nosy little me saw them making some tonkotsu broth. Apparently they already serve ramen regularly. Great idea since it goes perfectly with the weather.

MILLIE: That evening, we decided to dine at the newly renovated Hamada restaurant and delighted in sushi-sashimi creations, shrimp tempura and each enjoyed a huge bowl of sukiyaki, which was cooked tableside.

We were quite impressed with the great improvements in the food and beverage department, food-wise and service-wise, that we decided to extend our stay for another day. To our great delight, we discovered a new dish similar to pizza called the Highland Tarte Flambe, which consists of a rectangular flatbread topped with crème fraiche and caramelized onions that was flambéed with brandy, bacon bits, arugula and alfalfa sprouts.

We had a chance to meet briefly with executive chef Pedro Canlas, who joined BCC in September 2016. Chef Pedro has an amazing and extensive culinary background, having worked in the industry for 26 years in various cruise lines and hotels abroad such as the InterContinental in Bahrain. He was the first Filipino sous chef with the Norwegian cruise lines in the 1980s. It’s very timely for chef Pedro to have joined the Baguio Country Club team as they launch the convention hall. With his culinary experience here and abroad, he surely is an asset to the club and to the events that the club will host.

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For information and reservations, call Baguio Country Club at 074-6192050.

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