By Rick Patriarca

Back in 2016, we lived in a semi-private subdivision in Antipolo called Tierra Verde that was owned by a senator infamous for stealing lands from farmers. All of the houses there had two or more floors. Luxury vehicles of various makes and models sped past our streets now and then. People who wore branded articles of clothing, fancy shoes, and extravagant accessories often jogged at the crack of dawn or late in the afternoon with their iPods strapped to their arms, or holding the leash of their dogs with expensive breeds that elicited smiles and gasp from onlookers. Some streets even had gorgeous fire trees lining their pavements that made the area worthy of being photographed for brochures.

The houses in our subdivision were set far apart, and every unit came with a spacious front lawn, which most families transformed into a pool area or a parking garage, or used to expand their houses. My family, on the other hand, was one of the few who used the space to put up a business. While the other residences in our quiet street had a beautiful façade that people would stop by and appreciate, ours had a small eatery that tricycle drivers, street sweepers, and security guards frequented to get their breakfast, lunch, and dinners.

It was technically my father's eatery. Mang Rolly's Karinderya, it said on a tarpaulin that hang on a window grill in front of our balcony. It started as a covered garage, but since we never had a car, it was eventually opened up. A huge table was set up in it that displayed the pans containing foods that my father cooked. Five small square tables with two chairs each were made available for customers who wanted to dine in. A stand fan at a corner provided ventilation, while a small TV stationed near the main door of our house provided entertainment, mostly for my father who manned the eatery from five in the morning to seven in the evening.

My father was Kapampangan, and to say that he had a passion for cooking was to make an understatement. He would stay up late doing the dishes, peeling and dicing vegetables, and marinating meats in our small kitchen, and he would wake up early the following day to go to the market to buy the rest of the ingredients for his dishes. My mother helped him out sometimes, but the eatery was my father's responsibility; my mother had her work priorities as a promoter for a huge supermarket chain. Sometimes, my father complained about an aching back and requested to have a massage from my mother, or whenever cooking oil splattered on the back of his hand or a knife slipped and he cut a finger. But other than those, he was mostly happy and satisfied that his life revolved around the eatery.

He was most proud when some of our affluent neighbours bought food from us. Sometimes, they would visit our eatery themselves instead of sending their maids. They would arrive in cars or under the shade of their umbrellas no matter the weather and would chat with my father as he wrapped their meals in transparent plastic bags. He would tell me: "These people are used to fine dining, but look how they enjoy my cooking!" or "I guess my afritada and giniling na baboy were as good as their favourite five-star meals." This was the time when ordering food via mobile apps was quickly becoming a thing too, and my father took great pride in being able to run a food business like ours amidst the growing trend.

Dinuguan was my favourite dish from him. I would always tell him back then that it was the best in the world, even though I wouldn't have a way of knowing; I only ate dinuguan that was prepared by him. I was always afraid of the quality and cleanliness of the dish if it came elsewhere. With my father, I was sure the dinuguan was prepared the right away. I had seen him countless times cook the blood in a huge pot for more than 15 minutes, stirring it every minute to break up any blood clots. He always made sure to clean the pork intestines under running water, which he would chop and sauté with the pork heart and liver on a pan that sizzled with a bit of vegetable oil. Even though I knew the steps to cook the dish, I never dared to do it myself. I didn't get my father's passion for making food.

I was working as a proofreader for a publishing company in Quezon City back then. I was renting a room in a boarding house in Eastwood, and I only came home to Antipolo one weekend per month. I would always arrive at our house on a Saturday morning, exhausted from my long commute from Manila. One of the things that my father would say as soon as he saw was that he had set aside several servings of dinuguan, because he knew it was my favourite. That should mean a lot, he'd say, and he'd explain that his dinuguan was a hit among our neighbours and that the pot he would display in the morning usually got emptied out before midday.

I believed him. His dinuguan was rich, savoury, and tangy, with a slightly earthy taste from the pork blood. Years later, when my visits back home had become much less frequent because of other adulting matters, I would develop the courage to try dinuguan from various places – at first, from known establishments and popular chains like Goldilocks and Barrio Fiesta, and eventually, from local eateries where the price was extremely cheap – but they never quite compared with my father's cooking. The sauce in other places was always either too watery or too dry, and the ratio of meat, entrails, and papaya was never quite right. Only he could make the perfect dinuguan.

One Saturday, a rather ordinary morning, I was hanging out with my father at our eatery – me, reading a hardbound detective novel, and he, watching Joey de Leon throwing unfunny and offensive jokes on a noontime TV show – when a black, stylish BMW convertible suddenly stopped in the street. A fair-skinned, middle-aged man who was vaguely familiar stepped out of the vehicle. His eyes were covered in dark sunglasses, and even though he was only clad in a basic white sando and jersey shorts, I could tell that he was rich – well, aside from the fact that he drove an expensive vehicle. He looked like he spent hours in the gym every day. His skin had no visible blemish. He waved and smiled upon seeing my father, and his teeth were straight and appropriately white.

"Hi, manong. May dinuguan pa?" he said. His voice was smooth but deep.

"Meron!" my father replied. He got up right away and smirked at my direction before going to the table of dishes.

"I'll get two orders," the man said.

My father did the order. It was the first I saw him serve one of our neighbours, and he reminded me of a child who was excited to tell his parents about a magic trick he had just learned. A big smile was plastered on his face as he scooped up dinuguan from a pot and put them into sheer transparent plastic bags. The scene was the proof of what he had been telling me about for so long; that even our wealthy neighbours couldn't get enough of his dish. "I could tell them I used to be a professional chef and they would believe," he had told me ages ago. He was, in fact, a retired accountant who just happened to have inherited formidable cooking skills.

"Didn't you just buy two servings of this yesterday?" my father suddenly asked the man as he scraped the contents of the pot into a plastic.

"Yeah," the man said, smiling shyly.

"Why do you keep buying dinuguan when there are plenty of other choices?" my father asked. "They're just as good, I promise."

"We have already tried your other dishes," the man replied. He scratched the back of his head. "But dinuguan is the only food from here that our dogs eat."

That was when I remembered him. I had seen him a couple of Sunday mornings walking his two dogs around the subdivision circle. His pets were Siberian huskies. One was as white as snow and the other was a hazy mix of black, white, and grey. Both were half his size, and they were absolutely gorgeous, with thick, healthy-looking fur and piercing, sharp eyes.

 "Oh, is that the case?" my father said. He faked a smile.      

It could have worked on the man, who remained clueless, but I could clearly see the pain that my father felt and attempted to hide as he quickly bowed his head and pursed his lips. A dark shadow seemed to have covered my father's face. His hands moved faster; within a few seconds, the man's order of two servings of dinuguan was already being handed to him in a plastic bag. He gave my father a five hundred peso bill, and I could see the slight trembling of his fingers as he handed the man his change.

"Thank you, manong," the man said.

My father gave him a short nod

I watched the man saunter back to the street, enter his BMW, and drive away. There was a few seconds of silence as my father put the ladle back to its container under the table, and as he took the now empty pot of dinuguan and rearranged the remaining pots on the table. A frown was now showing on his face. We probably came to a similar conclusion: Perhaps, most of our rich neighbours were only feeding our food to their animals. That my father's dishes weren't good enough for their own consumption after all.

"I'll just take this to the kitchen," my father said, holding the pot as he left.

I could have done something. I could have gone over the table, right then and there, and punched the man in the face. What prevented me was the fact that the man only answered the question truthfully. He bought food from my father, which he fed his dogs. His transactions had been fair and honest; what he did with his purchases shouldn't be our concern. At the end of the day, what should matter, more than anything, was that he was my father's loyal customer. It was because of customers like him that my father managed to maintain his business. It was not the man's intention to hurt my father's feelings, but the damage was there. It showed on my father's face, and on the silence that remained after he left.

Every time I remember that Saturday morning in 2016, I am overcome by an unexplainable anger directed not at the man, but for the circumstances that put us there. Our family in that neighbourhood. Why did we need to put up an eatery in the middle of a posh neighbourhood? My father should have put his business in a far less wealthy area, maybe on a wet market in a public subdivision, where for some people, dining in an eatery was already a luxury. There, surely, humans would be eating his food, not dogs. I couldn't help but think that in a better world, all of my parents' decisions led to my father becoming a renowned chef. He would have already been working for a high-end restaurant, earning three or five times higher than what he was earning as an owner of a small eatery. He would have been famous as someone who put heart into his cooking, and most especially, for his incomparable, signature dinuguan.

But we did not live in that better world.

That was the last time my father bragged about his dinuguan. He still set aside a serving for me whenever I got home, but he never told me how good his dish was ever again. My father kept the eatery for two more years until he retired from cooking. He set up a small sari-sari store instead, which also lasted for several years until he got his monthly pension as a senior citizen and just settled into being a homebody who cooked from time to time.

_____