The lemons arrived at a most inopportune time – just a couple of weeks before Christmas last year. Thinking on their toes, the young team put their heads together and proceeded to Plan B – to go full-blast into their catering business. Thus, Connections Catering Company was born.
"We’re not your usual caterer," Eugenio opines. "We want to make a difference in our guests’ dining experience by committing the highest quality and the greatest value when it comes to food." Simply put, Eugenio and company are bent on giving their guests a worry-free dining experience filled with good food and efficient service. All a guest has to do is sit down with the chefs to discuss the menu and, once they’re done, just let the chefs do all the work. "We’ll take care of everything from the flowers to the setup and more. Our guest won’t even have to worry about the ice. We’ll take care of that as well, down to the tiniest detail," enthuses Eugenio, a UP Diliman HRA graduate and California Culinary Academy Associate in Occupational Studies in Culinary Arts graduate in San Francisco. At present, he is operating Katips Bar and Grillery and was once a part of Shangri-La Manila’s F&B department, as well as head of Cheval Blanc’s fine dining room and the Island Cafe.
There’s something very gracious about the way Eugenio refers to his clients as "guests." It’s actually quite refreshing to see young entrepreneurs like him approach their business in a very personalized manner that’s guaranteed to make you feel welcomed and valued.
Working alongside Eugenio is his wife Monica, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York who further honed her skills at Le Cirque and Restaurant Daniel, both in New York, as well as at Mandarin Oriental Manila’s Tivoli Grill. Friend and colleague chef Mel Resuma also had his training at the Tivoli and was a gold medal winner in the New Asian Cuisine category of the last Chefs on Parade.
These chefs, who have made it a point to always agree on the quality of food before serving it, are quite proud of their work, calling their creations "the food that chefs would like to eat." Lest they be misunderstood and accused of having bloated egos, Eugenio clarifies that they work hard to come up with the kind of food they’re serving their guests. That they don’t settle for the "OK na" mentality but rather give their all when it comes to creating high quality food. If need be, the team would take one step further and make pink lemonades.
Eugenio said he’d rather let the food "talk" and urged us to sit back and "listen." And listened we did to the tempting sample he laid out before us – golden brown crabcakes drizzled with a lightly spiced miso dressing with mesclun greens on the side; panfried baby lapulapu on parma ham mashed potato with sauteed mushrooms and spinach, tomato confit and enhanced with red capsicum beurre blanc (white wine butter sauce, in other words); creamy white chocolate mousse with slices of fresh and marinated strawberries. We listened alright and ended up nodding in agreement. Yes, this isn’t your usual catering company.
Their sample menu, in fact, is quite elegant in the sense that what you’ll find there are stuff fine-dining foods are made of. Their sit-down menu, for instance, offers a variety of choices: tower of mixed seafood ceviche with mesclun greens and a house vinaigrette, spinach canneloni with feta cheese in a roasted capsicum sauce, tequila-infused watermelon sorbet, prawns thermidor, curried pumpkin soup with ginger cream, chocolate tranche, to name just a few. A cocktail menu would have curried vegetable samosa, baby potatoes stuffed with crabmeat, herbed cheese spread with garlic croutons, chicken wings with a ginger-chili dip, among other appetizing treats. Guests also have a choice between a buffet menu only or a buffet menu with a carving, or a brunch buffet menu. The carvings, as always, are popular with roast of angus prime rib of beef, boneless Australian leg of lamb, US turkey, glazed leg of ham and herb-crusted roast porkloin.
Unlike other catering companies, says Eugenio, CCC guests "will never go hungry and won’t feel bitin after the meal." A cross between a private chef and a caterer, Eugenio states that guests need not be concerned about the quality of food served (a common problem among caterers who are swamped with the large bulk of orders) and can look forward to the sophisticated service of a private chef.
The smallest group they’ve handled was a dinner for eight to 12 people and the biggest – a brunch buffet of about 200 guests for a Philippine Stock Exchange elections, as well as boardroom lunches. They have also been tapped for intimate dinners like Enrique Zobel’s dinner for former Ayala executives.
Apart from corporate events, Christmas and graduation parties and deliveries, the culinary team has made their Makati, Alabang and Quezon City loyal guests happy and well-fed, with the commissary located in nearby Ft. Bonifacio. This means hot, newly cooked meals for their guests. Far from being a snooty lot that some chefs have been notoriously known for, the young chefs will go out of their way to please their guests. Case in point: a children’s party with prime rib, their bestseller, on the menu. It seems that the parents got wind of the team’s popular prime rib and wanted to enjoy the party themselves, so there.
One time, Eugenio tells us, they catered to a group of bankers and didn’t know there was a vegetarian in the group until the last minute when the food was about to be served. Making like chef Tyler Florence on Food 911, Eugenio’s team looked in the fridge and made a vegetarian dish out of the vegetables they were able to get their hands on.
Orders can be placed at least three days in advance. If it’s really urgent, they could whip up some amazing things in a day like one time when an order of salad, soup, pasta, fish and lamb was placed. "We will tell you if we can do it or not. We will try though to do the best to come up with your exact orders," says Eugenio, adding that they’ve already written off Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day from their personal calendar.
At the moment, they are the official outside caterer for the Sta. Elena Properties (its Banahaw Village Clubhouse in particular) in Sta. Rosa, Laguna. Next year, they’re going into weddings and have gotten several inquiries already the past months.
"We like to entertain new ideas and experiment with new ingredients. Our success will depend on the way we execute the food and how we present it to the guests. Anyone can say that they can do a particular dish but how they do it and how it tastes makes a whole lot of difference," he says.
The idealists that they are, these young entrepreneurs aren’t giving up just yet despite the country’s bleak economic scenario. "We want to give it a try and make it work," says Eugenio, adding that they are optimistic things will pick up next year. "We plan to be at every victory party in the next elections," he jokes.
With such commitment to their craft, coupled with optimism and lots of humor, Eugenio and company might just meet their goals sooner than they think. Lemon or no lemon.