Manila Club Kitchen – for the Front Liners
The Manila Club kitchen has always been famously known for it’s superb catering and wonderful curries. With special recipes from Chef Ace and under close administrative supervision of Cora, the kitchen has catered at countless Sunday Roasts and created specialty chicken, beef and lamb curries with all the trimmings for club meetings, special events and other grand occasions.
What is a kitchen in Merville to do, however, when the country and the rest of the world, is gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic? Certain food items were now in short supply, stringent travel restrictions now in place and even Chef Ace was locked down in his barangay for two weeks straight!
What more to do, then, than to become a kitchen for the Front Liners, the workers in hospital emergency rooms and COVID-19 isolation units, working 24 hour days to help those stricken with the virus. Starting on Friday the 3rd of April, 50 meals were delivered to Makati Medical and every week day after that. Monday’s deliveries to Cardinal Santos, San Juan, Tuesdays deliveries to Manila Doctors in Manila, Wednesdays deliveries to Research Institute for Tropical Diseases, (RITM) Mantinlupa, and Thursdays deliveries to Sta. Ana Hospital in Manila. A cross section of hospitals, both public and private, around the NCR.
Many messages of thanks and comments about how Chef Ace’s adobo was the best they had the entire ECQ (note: there is a special ingredient!!) came in from Front Liners in all the hospitals. Some said the meal deliveries were a godsend because it gave them all one less thing to think about that day. Some said they were thrilled to get deliveries on the Easter holidays Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and on Labour Day. But, above all, they were all very, very grateful for the gesture of appreciation and so very thankful.
The Front Liners Kitchen project will continue, even while we move to MECQ and will carry on until the Manila Club kitchen comes to a close towards the end of June.
