Muses of Cookery: Giney Villar

Giney tells the tale behind the 200-year-old empanada and then some.

                                                                       “Mercy Antonio and Tess Luriaga are keepers of tradition.”
                                                —Giney Villar, chef of Adarna Food & Culture restaurant

Being the chef behind Filipino restaurant Adarna Food and Culture (Kalayaan Ave., QC), Giney Villar has long had an affinity for regional and heirloom family recipes. Prior to getting her culinary degree and setting up Adarna, she worked in community health development, which took her to many provinces in the Philippines and introduced her to many of the regions’ different cuisines. “Every time I go to a new place—Agusan, Misamis, Sulu—I ask where the local food is. It gives me a sense of where I am, it gives me a sense of the place.”

Little did she know then that discovering many of the country’s diverse dishes would eventually lead to opening a restaurant of her own with a traditional Filipino menu. A few years later, she was once again put in the path of another culinary discovery—meeting the family behind the original Empanada de Kaliskis of Malolos, Bulacan, that dates back to the Spanish colonial times. Mercy Antonio, 74, and Tess Luriaga, 60, serve as inspiration to this chef who’s a staunch advocate of traditional Filipino food.


The elusive empanada
“Tita Mercy’s grandniece and I have common friends and when we were introduced, she invited us over to their town in Malolos, Bulacan, for merienda. She said she had a tita who bakes these awesome empanadas de kaliskis. I’ve been looking for those empanadas for years. I’d heard about it. I’d seen pictures of it. I was literally jumping up and down when I found out we were actually going to this place where those empanadas are made!”

A secret family recipe
“The recipe for those empanadas has been with their family since 1820. Their family has been making them for almost 200 years—and that’s my thing! It’s a small business, but their clients include past Philippine presidents Quirino, Garcia, Marcos, Aquino, and Estrada. “Tuwang-tuwa ako when I got to know them. Tita Mercy and Tita Tess are the keepers of the recipe and the dying request of her grandmother is that they keep it within the family. I told her I wasn’t going to ask for the recipe, but as part of my advocacy I want more people to know about these empanadas. Sayang naman kasi if it will get lost at some point. We also serve it in the restaurant so that people don’t have to go all the way to Bulacan. I just finish the cooking in the restaurant—they taught me how—so you get them freshly cooked, but they’re still the ones who make them.”

True inspiration
“I admire them because they are keepers of tradition. And the quality, the premium on freshness, have not changed. I asked them before, ‘Gaano po kayo kadalas magluto ng empanada?’ They were surprised I was even asking. They answered, ‘Araw-araw. Pag may sobra [at the end of the day], tapon.’ Every day, they wake up at dawn to start making the empanadas. They get their chicken from only one place, they’re very particular with their ingredients, and they don’t take shortcuts. That’s something I really like about them—they are uncompromising in their standards.”

Click here to see Pancit 1913, and here for more: Giney Villar's recipes


Photography by At Maculangan | Hair, Makeup, and Grooming by Cherry Pacheco and Benjie Angeles | Specialty Aprons by Kitchen Couture

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