SO NEAR, YET SO FARM
April 4, 2004 | 12:00am
First, they built a house to raise eight kids in. Then they bought the surrounding farms and planted these to mango trees. Then they built a retreat house to fulfill a promise. Next came the chapel. Then they built a refectory which doubles as a theater for community performances to help preserve Kapampangan culture. Then they started working on the farm and planted organic herbs, vegetables and fruits. Then they salvaged a turn-of-the-century train station from Pangasinan and rebuilt it. And this Holy Week, it’s going to be open to the public for the first time as a restaurant stop for those going to Subic.
Prado Arts Center, located on a farm in Lubao, Pampanga, looks like it’s been there for ages. That’s because when architect Reimon Gutierrez helped his parents turn a then empty piece of land into something worthwhile, he looked to the past to inspire him. It was, literally, building new with something old. With the exception of the modern chapel, the structures were all built from discarded materials.
Louie Gutierrez, co-owner of KKK Pinoy Food Revolution restaurant on West Avenue in QC, says Prado Farms "just kind of developed" from what it used to be – a home where the Gutierrez family could meet literally halfway – the kids were studying in Pampanga and their parents, Victor and Amada Gutierrez, had their businesses in Olongapo and Bataan.
Through the years, the family bought the neighboring lands. Lubao is known for its sugarcane haciendas. Farmers used to bring their harvest to the Pasudeco (Pampanga Sugar Development Co.) and you always knew they when they were operating full blast because the foul stench of the sugarcane mill drifted to the expressway. That was typical of the North Diversion back then – you knew what the towns were up to, you knew if there was a piggery right off the highway or if it was a paper mill because of the changing smells in the wind.
Yet when the Gutierrezes had settled down on Prado farm, which they named after the barrio, it was flat and without any trees. "All of the trees were planted by my dad," says Louie. Now the trees are 30 years old.
It was Louie’s mother who built the first structure. Sometime in the 1980s, she had an accident and broke her pelvic bone. The doctors told her she would never walk again because she was already in her sixties and the bone just wouldn’t heal. Bedridden for six months, she made a deal with God for a second chance: She would build a retreat house in Pampanga if He would let her walk again.
"Parang panata," Louie says.
Needless to say, Amada Gutierrez got her second chance.
His mom did better on her promise: She also built a chapel – a white modern one with a wooden cross crafted by Claude Tayag. Since then, retreats and marriage encounters have been held at Prado for groups from the surrounding areas as well as from Manila. Not only is the place conducive for such introspection, it is also convenient to go to and not as far as Baguio.
Last year, Prado also held several cooking workshops with people from Manila attending. Chefs included Claude Tayag, Al Purugganan of KKK for Thai cuisine, and Gilbert Pangilinan of Kai and Stix for Japanese cuisine.
When Reimon Gutierrez was building the theater, he searched for old materials to lend the place history, if only bits and pieces of it. He found narra floorboards, paneling and grillwork. Now the theater, painted in red, has doors that used to be part of a train station in Pangasinan. Reimon saw a station that had been demolished and bought the doors and a few remaining pieces.
Louie explains, "Since it had already been destroyed, he really didn’t know what the station looked like when it was being used. So he did research and went to old train stations that still existed. He created it based on what it must have looked like."
The rest of the structures share the same starting point. They were inspired by the old houses of Pampanga and a little bit of Vigan. "They were built on what other people considered junk materials. What Reimon saw and liked he put it there, so there are actually tiles that are very old, marble with cracks, balusters na napulot lang." He painstakingly cleaned them and installed them, careful not to make them look new. In a way, everything there has been somewhere else before – and it’s nice that people now are beginning to see the value of the past.
At the same time, Louie says it’s not all old, "it’s not just reconstructed. The outside looks old, but they have modern ceilings and interiors."
Currently studying in Switzerland, Reimon converted the second floor of the refectory into a reading room full of art books, architectural and Filipiniana books.
The goal for the five-hectare farm is to become an art center for Zambales and Pampanga as it sits right on the Gapan-Olongapo Highway. "A lot of crafts and traditions are dying especially since the best craftsmen are all going abroad to find better jobs. We want to preserve the culture of the region."
Remember those days when Holy Week meant you had no place to go to and all the restaurants were closed? My friend Ivy remembers the time she had to go to work on a Maundy Thursday and all the restaurants were closed in Manila and they had to get their lunch at a hospital – the Manila Sanitarium in Pasay – where they were sure the canteen was open and served food like tofu, fit for Holy Week abstinence.
While these days more restaurants are open in Manila, one can’t say the same for the roads between Manila and the provinces. Well, save for gas stations and fast foods, that is.
So, KKK decided to test the waters this Holy Week at Prado Arts Center in Lubao, Pampanga. They’re bringing the restaurant to the farm for people on their way to Subic to stop by, have great food and rest a while. Or for those who want to go out of town but not all the way to Baguio. After all, Pampanga during Holy Week is an interesting place to be – where else would you find men and women who think they are such sinners that they nail themselves to the cross?
Owned by Louie Gutierrez, John Villanueva, Analyn Arce, Al Purugganan and Dr. Raoul Henson, KKK specializes in Filipino food the way you haven’t tasted it before – with a dash of southeast Asian influences here and there.
"Like Prado, KKK wants to preserve our culture through food," says Louie.
John Villanueva adds, "Also like Prado, we built KKK using old materials. Very environment friendly, walang wastage."
KKK will offer a combination of buffet and set menu. For P398, diners can choose from a buffet of salad, soups, and desserts plus one main course and drinks. There are also kiddie buffet sets for P150, and yaya and driver’s sets for P100.
For the appetizer, there’s the crunchy tilapia skin with mango tomato salsa. Soups include suam na mais, a Pampanga specialty, and cream of patola soup. The salad buffet has ensaladang inihaw na talong, green papaya salad, green mango salad, and assorted salad greens with cherry tomatoes, wild cucumber, tilapia flakes, corn and eggs. For these, you have quesong puti dressing and the KKK house dressing. All the greens are organic and plucked right out of the farm. Hell, even the farm animals eat organic feeds – the pigs routinely consume excess produce such as arugula and lettuce for their salads!
Desserts include tibok-tibok, banana fritters a la mode, and fresh fruits. For the main course, you can choose from crispy hito with buro and mustasa (no trip to or through Pampanga is worth it without buro – eaten with the hands, of course!), roasted chicken curry or grilled liempo. They also offer side orders of longganisang Guagua and pindang damulag (the Kapampangan tapa of carabao meat).
John says that diners can explore the farm or relax under the nipa huts that Reimon reconstructed from old Ifugao huts. Or if they want to escape the heat totally, choose to sit in the air-conditioned restaurant.
"We’re also setting up halo-halo and ice cream stations with coffee, too," says John. The ice cream is going to be Arce with its wonderful, hard-to-find flavors (how about an atis ice cream or avocado perhaps?) since Analyn’s family owns the company. Their new halo-halo is sure to become a KKK trademark: it’s halo-halo Arayat style – with pastillas instead of ube. All that creamy, carabao-milk pastillas in your halo-halo is simply heavenly.
"This is going to be a trial for KKK. We want to know if we can do it on a weekend basis, something like Sonya’s Garden, but this time in the north and not too far from Manila. Have you noticed that so many unique restaurants and other venues are opening up in the south, Tagaytay and Batangas, but there are no such places in the north? Prado is the only one of its kind in these parts."
It’s understandable why KKK wants to open up the possibilities in Pampanga – four of them are Kapampangans. Louie is from Lubao, John is from Angeles City, Al is from San Fernando, Raoul is from San Fernando.
It’s true, you can take the boys out of the province, but you can’t take the province out of the boys. Thank God for that. Or as we like to say in Kapampangan: Kapnamu!
For inquiries, call 371-9099 or 0917-4507585. Reservations recommended. Open this Holy Week on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Prado Farm is located at Kilometer 94, along the Olongapo-Gapan Highway. It’s about five minutes before the Dinalupihan-Layac intersection, where the road forks to Olongapo or Bataan. It’s about 25 minutes from the San Fernando exit.
Prado Arts Center, located on a farm in Lubao, Pampanga, looks like it’s been there for ages. That’s because when architect Reimon Gutierrez helped his parents turn a then empty piece of land into something worthwhile, he looked to the past to inspire him. It was, literally, building new with something old. With the exception of the modern chapel, the structures were all built from discarded materials.
Louie Gutierrez, co-owner of KKK Pinoy Food Revolution restaurant on West Avenue in QC, says Prado Farms "just kind of developed" from what it used to be – a home where the Gutierrez family could meet literally halfway – the kids were studying in Pampanga and their parents, Victor and Amada Gutierrez, had their businesses in Olongapo and Bataan.
Through the years, the family bought the neighboring lands. Lubao is known for its sugarcane haciendas. Farmers used to bring their harvest to the Pasudeco (Pampanga Sugar Development Co.) and you always knew they when they were operating full blast because the foul stench of the sugarcane mill drifted to the expressway. That was typical of the North Diversion back then – you knew what the towns were up to, you knew if there was a piggery right off the highway or if it was a paper mill because of the changing smells in the wind.
Yet when the Gutierrezes had settled down on Prado farm, which they named after the barrio, it was flat and without any trees. "All of the trees were planted by my dad," says Louie. Now the trees are 30 years old.
It was Louie’s mother who built the first structure. Sometime in the 1980s, she had an accident and broke her pelvic bone. The doctors told her she would never walk again because she was already in her sixties and the bone just wouldn’t heal. Bedridden for six months, she made a deal with God for a second chance: She would build a retreat house in Pampanga if He would let her walk again.
"Parang panata," Louie says.
Needless to say, Amada Gutierrez got her second chance.
His mom did better on her promise: She also built a chapel – a white modern one with a wooden cross crafted by Claude Tayag. Since then, retreats and marriage encounters have been held at Prado for groups from the surrounding areas as well as from Manila. Not only is the place conducive for such introspection, it is also convenient to go to and not as far as Baguio.
Last year, Prado also held several cooking workshops with people from Manila attending. Chefs included Claude Tayag, Al Purugganan of KKK for Thai cuisine, and Gilbert Pangilinan of Kai and Stix for Japanese cuisine.
When Reimon Gutierrez was building the theater, he searched for old materials to lend the place history, if only bits and pieces of it. He found narra floorboards, paneling and grillwork. Now the theater, painted in red, has doors that used to be part of a train station in Pangasinan. Reimon saw a station that had been demolished and bought the doors and a few remaining pieces.
Louie explains, "Since it had already been destroyed, he really didn’t know what the station looked like when it was being used. So he did research and went to old train stations that still existed. He created it based on what it must have looked like."
The rest of the structures share the same starting point. They were inspired by the old houses of Pampanga and a little bit of Vigan. "They were built on what other people considered junk materials. What Reimon saw and liked he put it there, so there are actually tiles that are very old, marble with cracks, balusters na napulot lang." He painstakingly cleaned them and installed them, careful not to make them look new. In a way, everything there has been somewhere else before – and it’s nice that people now are beginning to see the value of the past.
At the same time, Louie says it’s not all old, "it’s not just reconstructed. The outside looks old, but they have modern ceilings and interiors."
Currently studying in Switzerland, Reimon converted the second floor of the refectory into a reading room full of art books, architectural and Filipiniana books.
The goal for the five-hectare farm is to become an art center for Zambales and Pampanga as it sits right on the Gapan-Olongapo Highway. "A lot of crafts and traditions are dying especially since the best craftsmen are all going abroad to find better jobs. We want to preserve the culture of the region."
Remember those days when Holy Week meant you had no place to go to and all the restaurants were closed? My friend Ivy remembers the time she had to go to work on a Maundy Thursday and all the restaurants were closed in Manila and they had to get their lunch at a hospital – the Manila Sanitarium in Pasay – where they were sure the canteen was open and served food like tofu, fit for Holy Week abstinence.
While these days more restaurants are open in Manila, one can’t say the same for the roads between Manila and the provinces. Well, save for gas stations and fast foods, that is.
So, KKK decided to test the waters this Holy Week at Prado Arts Center in Lubao, Pampanga. They’re bringing the restaurant to the farm for people on their way to Subic to stop by, have great food and rest a while. Or for those who want to go out of town but not all the way to Baguio. After all, Pampanga during Holy Week is an interesting place to be – where else would you find men and women who think they are such sinners that they nail themselves to the cross?
Owned by Louie Gutierrez, John Villanueva, Analyn Arce, Al Purugganan and Dr. Raoul Henson, KKK specializes in Filipino food the way you haven’t tasted it before – with a dash of southeast Asian influences here and there.
"Like Prado, KKK wants to preserve our culture through food," says Louie.
John Villanueva adds, "Also like Prado, we built KKK using old materials. Very environment friendly, walang wastage."
KKK will offer a combination of buffet and set menu. For P398, diners can choose from a buffet of salad, soups, and desserts plus one main course and drinks. There are also kiddie buffet sets for P150, and yaya and driver’s sets for P100.
For the appetizer, there’s the crunchy tilapia skin with mango tomato salsa. Soups include suam na mais, a Pampanga specialty, and cream of patola soup. The salad buffet has ensaladang inihaw na talong, green papaya salad, green mango salad, and assorted salad greens with cherry tomatoes, wild cucumber, tilapia flakes, corn and eggs. For these, you have quesong puti dressing and the KKK house dressing. All the greens are organic and plucked right out of the farm. Hell, even the farm animals eat organic feeds – the pigs routinely consume excess produce such as arugula and lettuce for their salads!
Desserts include tibok-tibok, banana fritters a la mode, and fresh fruits. For the main course, you can choose from crispy hito with buro and mustasa (no trip to or through Pampanga is worth it without buro – eaten with the hands, of course!), roasted chicken curry or grilled liempo. They also offer side orders of longganisang Guagua and pindang damulag (the Kapampangan tapa of carabao meat).
John says that diners can explore the farm or relax under the nipa huts that Reimon reconstructed from old Ifugao huts. Or if they want to escape the heat totally, choose to sit in the air-conditioned restaurant.
"We’re also setting up halo-halo and ice cream stations with coffee, too," says John. The ice cream is going to be Arce with its wonderful, hard-to-find flavors (how about an atis ice cream or avocado perhaps?) since Analyn’s family owns the company. Their new halo-halo is sure to become a KKK trademark: it’s halo-halo Arayat style – with pastillas instead of ube. All that creamy, carabao-milk pastillas in your halo-halo is simply heavenly.
"This is going to be a trial for KKK. We want to know if we can do it on a weekend basis, something like Sonya’s Garden, but this time in the north and not too far from Manila. Have you noticed that so many unique restaurants and other venues are opening up in the south, Tagaytay and Batangas, but there are no such places in the north? Prado is the only one of its kind in these parts."
It’s understandable why KKK wants to open up the possibilities in Pampanga – four of them are Kapampangans. Louie is from Lubao, John is from Angeles City, Al is from San Fernando, Raoul is from San Fernando.
It’s true, you can take the boys out of the province, but you can’t take the province out of the boys. Thank God for that. Or as we like to say in Kapampangan: Kapnamu!
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