Things I Miss

I was initially thinking of writing a business column for today since it is already a work day and the business community is mostly back from that long, two-week holiday we just had.

- Marianne Go

However, since it is also a Friday and we are headed for the regular weekend, most may still not really be in the mood to read about business stuff going into the weekend.

Some may still have a holiday hangover and, thus, may appreciate a more "nostalgic" piece about things we miss about the past. Since this will partially be about food, it may prove to be a better read than writing a straight business story, and may spur us to rethink our own values about local production.

I assure you that this column will make sense when I get back to business mode on Monday.

My husband and I were having a roast prime rib dinner in Quezon City, as we could not think of a good steak restaurant in the area that serves a nice and juicy local tenderloin. To be quite honest, or at least in my own opinion, most of the steak restaurants in the city now serve badly cooked tenderloin that are mostly frozen and thawed, resulting in dry steaks. I could be more specific and name restaurants, but taste is subjective and I am not a qualified food critic. I simply express my own preference.

I look for value for my money and am not one to patronize a pricey steak restaurant because they are part of an internationally renowned chain that calls the loin cut a fillet (which of course it is). Calling a loin cut a fillet somehow elevates the meat, but not necessarily its quality.

A good piece of meat may also be totally destroyed by a bad cook, and oftentimes that is more reason why a restaurant ends up serving a bad steak. Unfortunately, the quality of our local line cooks are below par, without the proper education and passion to understand and appreciate the need for good quality ingredients to create really good food.

Even the steak restaurants in some of our five-star hotels do not properly teach or monitor how their line cooks handle what may be good meat, thus serving badly cooked and seasoned steaks.