IN Lucena City a new kid on the block is beginning to draw crowds of urban food enthusiasts.
The restaurant is simply, but quaintly called Maria del Carmen (House of Baked Mac), named after its chief hands-on operator Maria del Carmen Ingles-Guevarra. Mac, of course, is the good old macaroni which the restaurant bakes just right tasty and the raison d’être for macaroni lovers.
If you are on a food hunt in the city and happen to pass by Enverga Street in Barangay 1 near Libra Bakery and Manny Flowershop and just across Danix Suarez Beauty Salon, the smell from this new little restaurant will draw you in to sniff around what’s cooking or brewing. The lady of the house, Madel, is on hand, with her ready charm and smile to put you at ease.
Once you are comfortably seated, you will be readily provided a menu of the house’s select offering and baked mac, the house’s apparent best seller, is on the menu and easily stares at you and seduces you to try for your first bite. Your first bite certainly decides for you the next time around you are on a food hunt in the city.
Maria del Carmen (House of Baked Mac) has just had its soft opening on February 8, which happens to be Madel’s birthday.
“Right now, we are already luring quietly and building on our clientele composed of office employees, students, walk-ins, various young urban professionals. They mostly come in through word of mouth from those who have tasted our food offering,” Madel said.
Madel does not go for the hard-sell as her way of doing business. She relies in the goodwill and satisfaction her customers get to enjoy in their dining experience at Maria del Carmen. She does not even depend on her “connection” with well-known personalities. (Madel once dabbled in media work.)
“Since day one of the opening, I have not invited any politician to come in and dine. I don’t even advertise in print or radio. I just rely on the word of mouth of my friends and satisfied customers to tell about my place and the kind of food and service I offer,” she said.
Maria del Carmen began as a home-delivery service. Madel said her simple baked mac is just an original ingenious home-based concoction of macaroni with various ingredients and simply baked at home and sold and delivered house to house or to various offices.
“But it all really originated from my mom who set up an eatery called Fiesta Palabok ni Tita Armi. It was located along Granja Street in an old garage of former Lucena City Mayor Ruben Palileo and lasted from 1990 to 1993. My mom’s passion for cooking various dishes and her perseverance and industry in running that eatery is branded in my memory,” Madel said. Her mother died two years ago, on January 22, 2015, without knowing two of her children will be following her footsteps.
Madel said her younger sister Riza Mari Ingles had once delivered her home-baked mac to the fish sellers at the public market. “She could not locate the man who ordered the macaroni so she decided to sell it to the various fish stall holders and went home with the baked mac all sold out.”
Now Riza Mari has her own family and runs her own successful food business in Pampanga named Hello Café (Sea Story Restaurant).
“One day, it came to me that I have to make it on my own. I decided to cook up my own kind of baked mac and started on a home-delivery business. It caught on and several of my suki started to order on various occasions, like baptisms, birthdays, graduations or Christmas parties. I decided to put up my own puwesto near the Lucena City Hall, just across Maryhill College. I named it Hut Le Rapsa and it catered mainly to passers-by, to students of the nearby Maryhill College, to employees at the city hall and to my friends and acquaintances from Lucena and Tayabas. It was there that then Police Supt. Dionido Carlos, an old friend during my years in the media industry, passed by and sampled my baked mac. The quiet but no-nonsense police officer who later became Quezon police director and now PNP spokesman, immediately liked it and on the weekends he came home to Lucena from his various police assignments in Manila or elsewhere, he would head to my small Hut Le Rapsa eatery and order his favorite? What else, but baked mac,” Madel said.
One day the police officer made a business proposal. He wanted to open a food business and wanted Madel’s baked mac on the menu. At first, she did not seriously consider Mr. Carlos’s proposal. He kept asking and finally, last November, she finally decided to give it a good try. They agreed on a simple set-up for their business partnership venture: Carlos would provide the startup financial muscle and Madel would actually run the business, starting with building the place.
Since its soft opening, Maria del Carmen has been attracting a steady stream of satisfied customers. Aside from the favorite baked mac, other tasty favorites include french toast, waffle, potato fries, longsilog, Korean ramyun, chocoo, buko pandan shake, strawberry milk shake and others. All are priced fairly.
On February 14 Maria del Carmen was the surprise scene of an actual romantic proposal from Marvin Marasigan, an engineer, to his fiancée.