I was living in Malaysia when The New York Times published a full-page tribute to the late Doreen G. Fernandez, recognizing her as one of the forces of nature who helped bring Philippine cuisine to global attention. Once relegated to the back kitchen as food for the help, local cuisine has since entered grand dining rooms here and abroad, thanks to pioneers like Doreen.
Doreen Gamboa Fernandez taught that food writing can be a scholarly pursuit, eating an erudite experience, and the celebration of Filipino cooking an affirmation of national identity. (Photo by Stella Kalaw, via Facebook.com/doreen.gamboa.fernandez)
I first read Doreen Gamboa Fernandez in a review she wrote of Nick Joaquin’s An Almanac for Manileños, published in Philippine Panorama in the late ’70s. I liked the style — light, but never lightweight — and the sensibility, rooted in Philippine history and culture.
Our friendship deepened through teacher-training workshops, Manila Critics Circle meetings, and many meals shared. Once, we went to Central Luzon State University in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, for a workshop organized by the Ateneo Center for English Language Teaching. Her driver, Arsenio, took Doreen, the poet Rofel G. Brion and me all the way to San Jose.
“Now we know the way to San Ho-say,” I sang, and Rofel and Doreen giggled. I remember her laughter well — low and rolling, her lips wide with a smile, her eyes full of light.
The teachers recognized her from her columns. In addition to writing a food column for a newspaper, she had a monthly column on teaching for the Philippine Journal of Education, which had a wide readership. My mother, a teacher, was a regular subscriber. The teachers in Nueva Ecija were charmed by Doreen’s humility and practical wisdom.
“When we teach composition,” she said, “we shouldn’t ask our students to write about Greece or Rome. We should ask them to write about things close to home—their family, their friends, why, even the market.”
The next morning, after a breakfast of Tagalog beef steak, garlic rice and a glass of Ovaltine — “This reminds me of my childhood,” Doreen said — we went to the market. She was an enthusiastic observer, asking about the name of a fish she didn’t recognize. We listened to a vendor singing sweetly to entice buyers to her stall of freshly caught fish. By the next week, that vignette had already appeared in Doreen’s column.
She also drove to Manila Critics Circle meetings, often picking me up at the English department. We would head to Café Ysabel, the University of Santo Tomas or wherever the group was gathering. We read dozens of books each year and selected the best for the National Book Awards. On the way, Doreen and I would catch up on life and literature.
She was always reading — John le Carré, Gabriel García Márquez — voraciously and practically. Newsprint editions were her preference: cheaper, lighter to carry. There was always one novel in her car, another on her desk, and a third by her bed.
The late Shayne Lumbera once told me how Doreen visited Bien Lumbera at the Bicutan Detention Center during the early years of martial law. Only nuns and priests were allowed in at the time, so she dressed as a nun to see her friends.
She brought drinks, food — of course, food, Doreen being synonymous with it in our collective memory — and cigarettes for Bien and company. When the writer Ricky Lee collapsed from a lung condition, Doreen brought her own doctor — the best pulmonologist in the Philippines — to treat him at Bicutan.
Of course, Doreen was not a saint. Or rather, is not — it’s still hard to speak of her in the past tense. Oh, the stories she told me — about writers and artists, matrons and politicians, pretenders to the throne and mistresses of illusion. They were wickedly witty. I’m saving them for my memoirs.
She told me these stories over meals at restaurants we were reviewing. She needed a male companion to check out the men’s restroom, an essential part of any review. Like my father, she knew how to eat a fish’s head, savoring the gelatinous part, even nibbling the eyes.
Indeed, she knew the pleasures of both the table and the text — our much-loved, much-missed DGF.
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Danton Remoto is the author of Riverrun, A Novel and The Heart of Summer: Stories and Tales, published by Penguin SEA. Available at Fully Booked Online and www.acrephils.com.
