CONFESSIONS OF A BAR GIRL

I thought I knew what tired meant - and then I started working in a bar.

- inked PAM PASTOR

The El Gato team: Marigold Juliano, France Gonzales, Ron Cruz, Fifi Cruz and the author

I've been exhausted before. I've pulled all-nighters, I've climbed mountains, I've walked the streets of Tokyo and New York until my feet felt like they were going to fall off. But I have never been as tired as I have been at the end of a busy shift.

And guess what? I love it.

I never thought I'd end up in the bar scene. Credit or blame-belongs entirely to my cousin Fifi and her husband Ron Cruz.

In 2023, they opened Fat Cat in Makati Central Square (formerly known as Makati Cinema Square), a mighty little bar built on their passion for hospitality and Ron's great craft cocktails. Tatler Best Philippines named it Bar of the Year in 2025 and it's on the Tatler Best 100 Bars in Asia-Pacific list one of only three bars from the Philippines to make it.

Sometime in 2024, Fifi sat a bunch of us down her sister, some friends and I to tell us that she wanted to open another bar with us: a live music venue that would, of course, have Ron's signature cocktails.

When we were younger, the only time we headed out to bars was when our band would have gigs. Those places Route 196, especially became like a second home for us. She wanted it to be our turn to give musicians and artists a second home.

Soon, we dove into building Cattery. I started picturing what it would be like to juggle life as both a newspaper editor and a bar owner.

Our new bar was already under construction at Makati Central Square (just feet away from Fat Cat!) when I heard that the newspaper company I had worked for over 20 years was closing. Two days later, Ron and Fifi offered me a job working front of house at El Gato, the other bar they were about to open just above Cattery. "I think you'll enjoy it," Fifi said.