How did the late Larry J Cruz change Manila's dining landscape?

2008 

I fully understand now why Larry persisted in sitting us down to dinner a few days before the New Year and brainstorming on a book he wanted to be written. Barely a week after that, he left for Washington, DC. A month later, this week, he was gone.

“I don’t like it to be like a hack job. That, I’m sure of,” he said, leaving untouched the sumptuous spread of fried pla-pla, Bicol Express and Rellenong Mais. “Not vanity. Just want to tell the younger ones what all this is about.” 

As he said that, his hand made a wide sweep of the bustling Abe, the restaurant at Serendra he opened in 2006.

We assured him, no need to elaborate. The book will narrate the interesting and enriching story of how a journalist and publisher became a successful restaurateur and changed the dining scene in the country, indeed a good deal of urban lifestyle. Yet no matter the fame and fortune the restaurant business had brought him, he would always return to his well-loved medium: print. 

Larry wanted to communicate a story, his own story, being the journalist/publisher that he was. After all, he had just published the story of his father, the noted journalist, essayist, painter, diplomat and bon vivant E Aguilar Cruz. The book, Abe, was written by Nick Joaquin.

But his book, Larry said, shouldn’t be about his private life; that’s why he didn’t want an autobiography. It should be about what he had gone through and learnt in life, from publishing to the restaurant business. 

So, we agreed that it should be “LJC”, as he was known to the industry, talking to this and the next generations about how he did it. It should be useful to the young who want to make it like he had, imparting skills and values.

“Its title should be Larry Can’t Cook,” he said to stress that he wasn’t a chef.

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Dinner talk about one’s legacy is always a reminder of one’s mortality. But we didn’t heed that that night. 

Larry didn’t look bad although he had lost a bit of weight, which was not that obvious in his signature chic linen shirt. (He’d always been a natty dresser.) He had just had stomach surgery where the doctors cut off some suspicious growth. Otherwise, he felt fine, he said. (Up to the time of his death, people didn’t even know Larry was sick. Perhaps not even he or his close kin suspected how fast cancer had spread.)

He was more than fine; he was in an expansive mood. Abe, the Kapampangan-cuisine resto he opened at Serendra in 2006 as a tribute to his dad, was expected to be a success, but not the big hit it has become. You can’t get a seat unless you book way ahead. 

He pointed at the sepia photo mural on the wall showing a newborn being cradled by a woman. That’s me, he said with child-like glee—a demeanour a suave and sophisticated Larry wasn’t usually given to. The woman, he said, was his mum Fely, after whom another recent success, Fely J at Greenbelt 5, was named.

Larry introduced ambience as a critical part of a restaurant’s success formula; the food and restaurant industry, the café and lifestyle circles acknowledge as much. 

But honestly, more than food and ambience, what Larry brought into his restaurant was his distinct sense of heritage—a writer’s appreciation of history, culture and the arts.

Café Adriatico, which he opened in 1980, has furniture, paintings, and décor that echo the ilustrado of old. Displayed at Abe are blown-up photos from his dad’s journalism career, with other memorabilia of a learned man. For the architecture and décor of his early restos such as Adriatico or Bistro Remedios, he collaborated with leading artist Agustin Goy.

Indeed, while other restaurants import the cookie-cutter design, Larry brought his sense of pride as a Filipino into his restaurant. He combined this with a Pampango’s love of good food, a journalist’s nose for what people are curious about, and a bon vivant’s pursuit of the good life. 

Larry was a renaissance man who turned into an astute businessman—by accident.

“You know that I don’t really like numbers,” he told me as we moved from inside Abe to the al fresco plaza of Serendra. “What I like is creating. Concepts. The numbers, leave that to the real businessmen.”

What he wanted to talk about were magazines. Now he was being nostalgic. 

With a hearty chuckle, he said, “I must have been the only publishing partner Geny [Lopez] ever had.” For a second there I didn’t know what he was talking about until I recalled our early days in Metro magazine.

In the late Eighties, Larry and his circle of journalists loved to talk about having a “beautiful” magazine. To brainstorm, Larry asked me over to his Morada office, the house-turned-into-office with its Fifties architecture, beside Bistro Remedios in Malate. The result was a city guide/political/lifestyle magazine he decided to call Metro because then, he loved New York and Vanity Fair magazines.

Since I was then a newspaper editor, I couldn’t be hands-on in the magazine, but I loved helping Larry assemble its staff. I love to recall that early afternoon when he asked me to sit before him, that look of fright on his face.

“But they’re all gay!” he gasped in genuine fear. This man, as macho as they come, had never worked with gays. Obviously.

That was after a whole morning of interviewing potential editors and writers I had referred to him. Hilarious his paranoia may have seemed then, that day signalled the end of this macho icon’s homophobia­­—and the beginning of Larry’s creative collaborations with the city’s top artists, writers, editors and photographers. In Metro magazine also began his lifelong mutual admiration club with some of these creative souls who love him to this day—if not in love with him.

His first Metro cover was upcoming tycoon Fernando Zobel, a story Larry wrote himself. 

After a few years, as Larry embarked on restaurant expansion, he decided to sell Metro. That was when I put him in touch with Eugenio “Geny” Lopez, Jr. The two hit it off right away—Larry also got along with Geny’s youngest brother, Roby. Geny decided to buy Metro and let us run it.

Larry loved his years in publishing. On what would be our last dinner that night at Abe, as if from out of the blue, he said I should start a magazine that people like him, who love to read, could read. “Not just beautiful pictures,” he said. “You can have only so much glamour and pictures.”

Uncanny how on his last days, even as his restaurants became big hits one after another, Larry remained enamoured of writing and journalism. “Do it. Do a Vanity Fair,” he kept repeating as I glanced back at him as we said goodbye, our final goodbye, unbeknown to me. 

People like us loved working with Larry because he had a genuine passion for the craft. He didn’t fake it, unlike some who are in magazine publishing today only for the glamour and the glitz. He valued his stint in journalism and publishing and the people who try to excel in it. As his long-time associate Glenna Aquino put it, “When he introduced me, he never said, she ‘works for me’. He always said, ‘We work together’.”

Since the day he died, people have been gathering at Café Adriatico at night, packing the place—old friends of Larry such as Maan Hontiveros, Bonjin Bolinao, Mandy Marquez, Tonton Naval, Dr Diony Cruz, Ado Ortiz, Phil Valdez and violinist Jeffrey Solares. For many of them, Café Adriatico was home through the years, a place to unwind after a hard day. Larry had given them their home.

Larry and the restaurants he conceived were good not only for your gustatory pleasure; they were good for your psyche as well. They fed you and made you feel at home.

Someone who believed in our career, Larry made us feel good and proud every time. More than his restaurants, Larry has earned a place in our hearts. And our heart aches somewhat now.

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