An amazing culinary journey

BIRMINGHAM-BASED corporate executive chef Mary Grace Viado-Howard: “I just love what I do. For me, it’s not work ... It’s all about building relationships.” NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

Mary Grace Viado-Howard doesn’t quite agree with George Orwell that a kitchen is something akin to Dante’s inferno.

For her, it’s more like nirvana, a place to conjure magical flavors that will put a palate on cloud nine.

Since she learned concocting pastas and pastries from her mom at age 6, the second of two daughters of Corazon and Roberto Viado, a retired accountant, hasn’t stopped cooking. She also hasn’t stopped traveling.

Those sessions at the upper middle class Philam Homes village in Quezon City led Grace to Italiannis, the first local branch of a global trattoria at Greenbelt in Makati City in 1995 upon graduation, cum laude, from the University of the Philippines-Diliman in Hotel and Restaurant Management.

Then 20 years old, she joined the affiliate of the US-based Bistro Group of Restaurants, as assistant kitchen manager. She basically ran the “back house”—cooking, managing people, taking charge of quality control, and seeing to it that what was served was what was ordered.

William Stelton, Bistro’s president, recalls that Grace was his “biggest risk and biggest reward.”

The svelte Filipina proved herself worthy of the trust, a passport to the top in any restaurant as in any endeavor, and got promoted after two years to kitchen manager. A year later, she became corporate chef after brief training in Miami.

But the travel bug, carried by her peripatetic parents, hit her. She quit in 2000 and went to the United States. “I just wanted to explore, learn more,” she says.

Learning with the masters

Grace enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), whose campus in Hyde Park, two hours from New York City, is a foodie’s delight. There, thanks to half a dozen scholarship grants, including the prestigious James Beard Foundation grant, she earned an associate degree in Culinary Arts, graduating on top of her class after two years.

During weekends, she worked for free in some of New York’s finest restaurants, including Restaurant Daniel, Aquavit, Aureole, Payard Patisserie, Café des Artistes, Le Bernadin and Le Cirque, which hit the Manila newspapers several years back for hosting a fabulous dinner for then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her entourage.

Eyes twinkling, she recalls working with such chef icons as Daniel Boulud and Eric Ripert.

Training included chopping, blanching, sauteeing, grilling, making sauces—all preliminary stages in preparing a meal worthy of a king by a work force whose hierarchical structure resembled that of the military’s.

It took Grace months to wield a knife so a potato could be sliced perfectly according to specifications, or be consigned to the trash can.

“I had to buy sacks of potatoes and practice chopping at home,” she says. “Mostly it’s observing, then assisting, until you gain the trust of the chef, especially in handling steak. It’s expensive. It took a while before I was able to cook fillet. When you start cooking in these restaurants, it’s as if you’ve hit a gold mine.”

In 2001, she graduated at the top of her class at the CIA, whose renown measures up to the standards of Le Cordon Bleu, the guardian of French gustatory delights.

On the road to the top

Grace then moved on to dining salons in top hotels in the United States—the Savoy in San Francisco, the Four Seasons in New York and Atlanta—before joining Village Tavern in Birmingham, Alabama.

Today, the 38-year-old Grace, who is married to American microbiologist Ron Howard, is corporate executive chef of Village Tavern, third on the totem pole, with responsibility over the operation of its chain of 10 restaurants in the United States.

She travels often to each of those facilities to see to it that the quality of cuisine they serve conforms to the highest standards set by the corporation based in Birmingham, which she calls home.

Two months ago, Grace opened a Village Tavern branch in the Philippines, at the second level of Bonifacio High Street Central in Global City. It is the first overseas operation of her company that also belongs to the Bistro Group of Restaurants, which includes Italiannis, her alma mater that put her on the road to culinary discovery.

Over the past 40 days, she brought to the local branch the same passion, devotion and relentless pursuit of excellence that had placed her in a responsible position in her company.

Just like a successful Global Pinoy, whose attributes she exhibits, Grace is out to break ground in her homeland.

“It’s a new market. The Filipino palate has developed so much through the years. There’s so much competition. We have a lot of choices of places to dine,” she says.

Educating people

The job, just like in the States, is to make sure that guests have a great experience in her restaurant.

“The challenge is how to translate classic American cuisine into the Philippine market. It’s educating people about who we are, what we offer and of course the things that distinguish us,” she says.

The adrenaline rush over the new adventure kept her awake 22 hours every single day she was here. She slept only two hours each night, staying late on the job and returning before the crack of dawn. It had been like this 24/7. It’s no different from what she does in Birmingham, except that in an enterprise where quality control is essential to please the corporate gods, she had to improvise and adapt.

“You try to copy as much as you can the flavor profile of what you serve with the original in the States,” she says.

For example, she says, here sugar purchased in the local market is coarser, screwing up mixing time for desserts. Importing ingredients could be expensive, although cheaper substitutes could be purchased from Australia, France or Italy. “We try to always look locally,” she says, but the US executives have to approve the final recipes.

There’s also the stiff operating criteria.

“We still adopt the same standards as we do in the States. For instance, our crab meat is from Cebu. The owners came with what we ordered, but it was not in a chiller. I didn’t accept it. I said this has to be chilled at the source. I even taught them how to pack the stuff. By the same token, I am trying to educate people, our staff, to make sure the standards of Village Tavern are upheld here in Manila.”

An affair to remember

On a recent Friday, Grace’s father took friends to sample her dishes: scintillating mixed salad laced with bacon, apples, cranberries, spiced pecans, egg slices and blue cheese crumble; succulent Maryland-style crab cakes that melt in the mouth; grilled chicken spinach; banana crepes with towering thin dough filled with layers of chocolate hazelnut and caramel.

It definitely was an affair to remember, all agreed.

Guests, including many foreigners, crammed the restaurant, some of them sipping beer and watching American football on a huge TV screen on a wall at the bar.

Even as a child growing up, Grace knew she would be a cook, the best in the business, although she confesses the thought entered her mind that she would follow her father’s footsteps and be an accountant. There’s no money in being a kusinera, her dad had told her. But her mother, a home economics major, was a more powerful influence. “She’s a very good cook,” Grace says.

Grace followed her heart and never regretted it.

In the US she has become a celebrity. She hosted a show, called Cooking with Grace, on Alabama TV for one season in 2004. She appears once a month on similar programs in the local Fox and NBC channels.

“I just love what I do,” she says. “For me, it’s not work … It’s all about building relationships.”