I EAT A LOT AND CRY A LITTLE AT CARUSO

There are restaurants that make you feel good, not just because they serve excellent cuisine. They also stir your emotions because of certain memories.

- MILLET M. MANANQUIL

Spaghetti aglio olio vongole

Caruso is one such place for me. This restaurant serves really delicious Italian comfort food. Caruso’s bestsellers are truffle pasta, bistecca Florentino, vongole spaghetti, carbonara, pizza, panna cotta and tiramisu. So good that Caruso, located at LRI Design Plaza on Nicanor Garcia street, has been rated one of the best Italian restaurants in the Philippines. Enough reason for the likes of Andrea Bocelli, the late Danding Cojuangco, Imelda Marcos, Fernando Zobel, Lance Gokongwei, George Yang, Miguel Zubiri and Jose Mari Chan to patronize it.

But this one stormy night, on the table are Caesar’s salad, steak, fish fillet and chiacchiere, a crispy favorite of our host, Emilio Mina. The rains are pouring outside, and both Emilio and I are crying a bit on the inside.

We talk about Evelyn Lopez, his wife who passed away last year at age 74. I was among the editors and writers that Emilio and Evelyn brought to Italy in 1995. We went to Rome, Venice and Florence, but our focus was on Treviso, the city where Stefanel was founded in 1959. A hit among the young fashionable set, Stefanel was a brand that the couple brought to Manila.

Emilio—now 91 but still a handsomely tall and charming presence — enjoys recalling how he and Evelyn met.

“I was attending a trade fair in Florence in 1989, when the elevator opened one morning and behold — I saw a doe-eyed lady so beautiful that I exclaimed, ‘Good morning, bellissima,’” recalls Emilio.

In the evening, he saw the same beautiful lady as the elevator opened again, and again the next day. Emilio decided this was destiny.