Everybody's Café: A brew-by-brew account

MANILA, Philippines - Tucked away in a not-so-secluded place in San Fernando, Pampanga is Everybody’s Café, that’s ever brewing delicious news for assorted food hounds. And everybody sure had an exhilarating food trip when InterContinental Manila brought Everybody’s Café to Makati for its Pampango food fest at Café Jeepney recently. There to personally welcome guests at the opening and introduce their taste buds to good old Pampango cooking was Pette Santos-Jorolan herself (yes, the PSJ in the restaurant’s name) with her children Namee and Poch Jorolan who inherited their mother’s cooking genes and share her burning passion for food, glorious food.

When he’s not helping his mom with catering, Poch holds culinary heritage tours in the country. He also has his own cafeteria.

For her part, Namee’s culinary credentials include a three-year stint at Chez Panisse Restaurant where California cuisine all began, the Spice Market Restaurant in New York City, and Aqua in San Francisco. But despite a sumptuous resume and glowing commendations from her superiors, Namee chose to come home to keep the family’s tradition alive and cooking!

Namee and Poch fondly remember working as cashiers for their grandmother when they were younger. When they were not selling, they were probably shelling buckets and buckets of onions or peeling camaro (mole crickets). O, what a peeling!

It was Pette’s parents Benito and Carmen Santos who planted the beans from where Everybody’s Cafe sprang. Shortly after World War II, they set up a humble two-table cafeteria in San Fernando, about one-and-a-half hour’s drive from Metro Manila.

“At the time, most restos were called cafes, maybe short for cafeteria,” Pette relates. “We were serving imported coffee back when the American bases were still here.”

Now 63 years old, Everybody’s Café has grown to a two-floor restaurant with a veranda and a seating capacity of 350.

But if there’s something that has not changed about Everybody’s Café, fast becoming everybody’s favorite food destination in San Fernando, Pampanga, it is the family’s time-cherished dishes.

No way will Namee and Poch — the third-generation members of the Jorolan family — dare touch their ancestors’ prized recipes because people like them just the way they are. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Think morcon (meat roll made of pork, chorizo, quezo de bola, egg yolk, garlic, and tomato); homemade longanisa (lean pork with a garlicky, sweet taste); sisig Capampangan (meat marinated in something sour); paksiw na bangus (milkfish stew); crispy hito (catfish) with buro (fermented shrimp paste) and mustasa (mustard leaves); palabok (rice noodles with kamias, chicharon, and a sauce thickened with galapong or ground rice); and tapang kalabaw  (dried carabeef), among other well-guarded secret family recipes.

Poch remembers just the way Grandma cooked morcon: with lots of ground pork, chorizo de bilbao, duck eggs, quezo de bola, and, not to forget, a dollop of love. “It was steamed for six hours,” he relishes to recall.

The Capampangans do have a sweet tooth, too, and their traditional sweet offerings include tibok-tibok (maja blanca made of fresh carabao milk) that’s so good it will make your heart go pit-a-pat; turrones de casoy; buko pandan  jello that’s so irresistible it can turn you into jelly; glazed camote with carabao milk; leche flan; halo-halo special; and San Nicolas biscuits.

Guaranteed to put a sugary smile on your lips is the pastillas de leche cheesecake. Now, you can have your cheesecake and eat your pastillas, too.

Sure to warm your heart and belly is the tsokolate batirol, made of cocoa beans and peanuts that are painstakingly and lovingly ground in an antique stone grinder. “This grinder comes from Palawan or Batangas, and is older than me,” says Pette with a chuckle.

But for the Intercon Pampango fest, the brother-and-sister team came up with something new, such as cooking native dishes with wine, as well as introduced a fresh take on salad like their pako (wild fiddlehead fern) salad with crispy tapang kalabaw. “The traditional way is to serve pako with onions, salted eggs, and vinaigrette,” says Namee.

So, what else is brewing at Everybody’s Café?

For sure, expect only the most stimulating news.

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For more of its hot offerings, visit PSJ Everybody’s Café at Del Pilar, MacArthur Highway, San Fernando, Pampanga with telephone numbers (045)860-1121 and (045)961-7121; and at 105-106 BPI Arcade, Nepo Mart, Angeles City with telephone number (045)887-0361.