[av_one_full first min_height=” vertical_alignment=” space=” custom_margin=” margin=’0px’ padding=’0px’ border=” border_color=” radius=’0px’ background_color=” src=” background_position=’top left’ background_repeat=’no-repeat’ animation=”]
[av_heading heading=’This Filipino chef isn’t cheap in the USA’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
[/av_heading]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
February 1, 2018
[/av_textblock]
[av_textblock size=” font_color=” color=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
HAVE you heard of Dale Talde?
If you have, you are probably a chef or a gourmet who has eaten in any of his seven restaurants in Brooklyn and other cities of New York. He could have been a Filipino citizen had he not been born in Chicago, Illinois.
I have never seen Dale in person, but I have read his hard-bound book, Asian-American: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from the Philippines to Brooklyn.
Dale is one of three children born to Chicago-based Filipino parents who are now on vacation here in Iloilo City. Dale’s dad, Salvador Talde of Poladian, Negros Occidental, is a retired marine engineer; his mom, the former Eva dela Cruz of Arevalo, Iloilo City, is still an active nurse in Chicago.
Dale’s book is no ordinary recipe book. The introduction and the first chapter trace his transition from being a curious cooking on-looker to a chef and restaurant owner. Way back to his childhood days, his mom would come home from the market with a fish head which she would stew with vegetables for dinner.
It was also his mom who tricked him into eating “chocolate meat” – a concoction of pork blood, liver, heart, intestines and lungs. Yes, that’s dinuguan.
Since it was normal for children born of Asian parents to flock together, Dale would occasionally eat at their houses and find peculiarities in their eating habits.
“When I visited my friend Robert who’s Korean,” he cited, “his house always smelled like kimchi.”
This was pleasing to his mom, who had warned him and the rest of the family against eating cholesterol-rich meals.
But his dad Sal would often take him to a burger joint. Anything but Filipino food.
“I grew up infatuated with burgers, pizza, fried chicken and tacos,” he revealed, “because they had the thrill of the forbidden.
“Now that it’s up to us, we chose a second life: the American one.”
However, he preferred his steaks served the Filipino way – alongside steamed rice.
As a child, he had the opportunity to visit Iloilo City with his parents. It made him happy that, as in the USA, he had fun “playing video games at the mall and eating quarter pounders at McDonald’s.”
To his surprise, at 18 he finished high school with no interest in college education. Knowing that his heart was in cooking, his supportive parents enrolled him at the famous Culinary Institute of America.
It was good enough to qualify him for a cook’s job at the Outback Steakhouse. He described himself though as a “lazy one” in the late 1990s until he needed much money to pay house and car rentals. He had to excel to thrive.
One day, he dropped by the set of Top Chef, a cooking competition on TV. He auditioned and qualified. He won the knife-skills challenge.
“People suddenly knew who I was,” Dale reminisced, recalling how a restaurateur named Dave, invited him to be chef of his restaurant, Thistle Hill Tavern, in Brooklyn New York. That break opened for him a whole new world, flying around the world to prepare gourmet meals for the rich and famous.
To make the long story short, Dale eventually became co-owner of Dave’s restaurant and put up his own Talde Restaurant.
“Every man should be able to at least cook a proper steak for his wife, mother, or girlfriend,” Dale told a food columnist of a New York newspaper.
He confessed having learned his favorite Filipino food, adobo, from his mother.
For some pictures of Dale Talde, they are accessible on Facebook. (hvego31@yahoo.com/PN)
[/av_textblock]
[/av_one_full]
