By Mona Sabalones Gonzalez
PAUME’S Café, at 29 President’s Avenue, BF Homes, Parañaque, has much in common with the Filipino palate. Filipinos like the romance that is associated with France. But, we aren’t as engaged with authentic French food, which Carol Paume, owner of Paume’s Café, describes as bland. She should know. She is half-Filipino and half-French.
And this mix guides the food selection in Paume’s Café, which provides an array of pasta dishes, with the rich Italian flavor that weaves and meshes so well with the Pinoy palate. Even her French dishes are flavorful and rich, and roll pleasantly around the tongue. Her desserts, however, are authentic French, made from scratch.
We went to Paume’s three times before we decided to write about it. First, we tried the Croque Madame, a French ham-and-cheese sandwich, topped with an egg and tinged with béchamel sauce, which provided the perfect base for this gratifying sandwich. Plus, it came with a hefty side serving of French fries.
But I’m no feminist. The second time I visited Paume’s I tried the Croque Monsieur, which went down equally well. Usually, this sandwich uses Brioche bread, but at Paume’s it is served in wheat bread, which is much healthier, plus a delicious cheesy topping well tinged with salt and pepper, and French fries and greens on the side.
The reason Paume’s uses wheat bread is because Carol is well aware of the growing shift of consumers to healthier eating habits. Additionally, monosodium glutamate is not used in any of its dishes. Instead, Paume’s prefers to use fresh ingredients flavored with herbs. It is careful touches like these that contribute to the making of Paume’s singular reputation.
The third dish I tried at Paume’s was its lasagna Formo. It was a delectable experience, wrapping your taste buds with a rich, cheesy, creamy plate of lasagna, an undeniably engaging tomato splash covering each patch of your tongue, and the subtle flavor of béchamel sauce—plus bites of garlic French bread (served on the side) intermittently.
My husband adored its Spanish Sardine with Pesto sandwich, which I photographed before having it packed for takeaway (for his dinner). Unfortunately, my husband is laconic. If he likes it, he’ll say, “It’s good,” and that’s saying a lot for him. But, hey, I’ve got dogs. I’ve learned to observe small details in what my dogs do to know what they are saying. In the same way, I’ve learned how to read my husband by observing how he eats. If he really, really likes it, he’ll eat it nonstop, with no conversation. If it’s just okay, he’ll bite more slowly and have lapses between swallows. If he hates it, he will complain; something you don’t have to read, because he will complain loudly with a sad face and melancholy eyes. So, when he ate the Spanish Sardine with Pesto sandwich, I knew he liked it to the max.
The pastries at Paume’s are all made from scratch using the finest ingredients. First of all, I was grateful that it has regular-sized éclairs. I hate the trend among some restaurants to make pinky-sized eclairs that resemble turds. I tried the éclair for that French flair, as I gazed at its huge poster of the Eiffel Tower’s inner bottom. I liked the fact that it was not your traditional Eiffel photo. It made the experience resemble a surrealistic bean bag. I absolutely loved its chocolate-chip cookies, which are soft, crumbly, and evenly flavored with choco bits. Its top-selling desserts are its cheesecake, moist chocolate cake and snickers cake, Carol said.
Paume’s also has a nifty selection of drinks. I’ve had its strawberry smoothie, and heard that it has added a blueberry smoothie, so I’ll probably be going back for that pretty soon. I also love its Mocha Frappe (others have said the chocolate-chip frappe is good, too).
The Café Americano has the perfect caffeine punch you need to level up from drowsy. But the caffeine doesn’t hit you like a fist (though I can live with that, too). Instead, it has an artisanal quality, similar to third-wave coffee, which it happens to be. Other coffee options are salted caramel, hazelnut, vanilla, caramel and mocha. The French Kiss Latte, its signature drink, is, for Carol, its reminder of her lola in Beauchalot, France, whom she lived with for three months when she was 15 years old.
Rice meals include Kielbasa and Bacon, while pasta selections include Vongoli Olio, Classic Carbonara, Wild Mushroom Ragout and Penne à la Vodka. A top-seller is its Garden Salad with Grilled Chicken Pesto and Honey Mustard Dressing.
Carol grew up in the Philippines with a degree in Marketing from Assumption College. She held several jobs after she graduated, and even worked in Paris for a year. She describes French food as “cooked without sauce, but flavored with herbs and gravy.” She adds that the French like steamed dishes and follow healthy diets.
Her fondest memory in Paris was spending time with her sister during the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) games, which were being held there at the time. They went to the Eiffel tower and ordered red wine, which they drank slowly while watching the Fifa games from a giant screen.
At Paume’s you get a little bit of everything—delicious and flavorful rice meals, pastas, sandwiches, drinks inspired by Italy and the US, and French desserts with that country’s ambiance, with subtle twists. It all works very well together, maybe it’s because it reflects the personality of its owner. Carol opened Paume’s when she discovered that she had a passion for baking.
She took a baking course in Enderun, a branch of colleges under multiaward-winning Chef Alain Ducasse, a Lifetime Achievement awardee of The World’s Best 50 Restaurants. However, it may well be that the passion for food is in her blood, as her father used to manage a restaurant. She is thankful that he’s there when she feels confused and in a bind. In fact, the restaurant has “family” subliminally written all over it. The windows and doors are from her grandmother, and the interiors blend old with new. The old portion is reminiscent of her grandmother, but the modern touches are her own. Modern bricks, wooden floors, white walls a textured accent wall and dangling bulbs at the food counter.
The ambiance is great, and the food is better. Paume’s is at 29 President’s Avenue, BF Homes Parañaque (right across Puregold).