One day in the life of Chef Luke

Marco Polo Plaza Executive Chef Luke began his professional career in the hotel industry in Ontario, Canada in June 1983. In the last two decades, he has been involved in prestigious establishments like the Four Seasons Hotel, Sutton Palace Hotel, Westin Harbour Castle Hotel, Excelsior Hotel and Shangri-La Hotel.

Chef Luke Gagnon gave a hands-on cooking demonstration last July 19, 2006. It was a one-day culinary adventure called "Luke Who's Cooking" and I could not miss an opportunity like that to provide a culinary account of what an Executive Chef does!

The program consisted of three parts: Part 1 was a trip to source ingredients and supplies from the various establishments in Cebu City. Assistant F&B Manager Christian Purisima, a graduate of the Swiss Hotel Association, Hotel Management School "Les Roches" joined Chef Luke to search for the appropriate wines and beverages for this dinner.

Then back to Marco Polo Plaza for Part II, which was the hands-on food preparation with cooking demonstration. After the hectic schedule of food shopping, your favorite food columnist (ahem!) needed to replenish all that lost energy and the best place to reinvigorate would be a power lunch at the Café Marco.

Unfortunately, certain appointments were scheduled that afternoon and I missed a golden opportunity to work with an executive Chef in the kitchen. Certainly, these things do not happen every day.

However, I did participate in Part III, which was the dinner and wine presentation (the best part!) by Chef Christian Purisima.

Definitely, tasting and digesting all those dishes required liquid accompaniments and the morning exercises of shopping began to show its success. The wines that were matched with the respective dishes were as follows: the salmon with the Domane Wachau, the duck with Saint Clair 2002 Pinot Noir: Soup with Cock Fighter's Ghost Semillon 2002, Red Snapper with Saki and the dessert with Porto Messias, a sweet wine from Portugal.

With a second glass (was it the third glass?) of Porto Messias, I pondered on the contribution this hotel could do to the future of Cebu's tourism industry. We had a great dinner that night with interesting wines and other beverages to match the dishes: good food, friendly staff, excellent accommodations and genuine Cebuano hospitality. This hotel will certainly attract more tourists to our beloved Cebu.

And what mattered was that at the end of the day (Chef Luke's favorite quote), we had done our jobs and we done it well!