Confessions of a Margarita Forés fangirl
After having lunch at Lusso in Greenbelt, I posted on Instagram, “Can you ever go to Lusso without eating the luxe fries? No.”
Margarita Forés replied, “When did you go????!!!!! Naku, I should invite you again!”
A few weeks ago, I was back in Lusso, the new one she just opened at The Podium, and she was there, the Margarita so many people knew and loved: warm, generous, full of kwento.
I told her how excited I was for the new resto she’s opening. “This is going to be a great year,” I said.
I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d see her.
We were closing this week’s Food section when news broke that Margarita had died suddenly in Hong Kong.
I had just finished writing about Lusso that day. In the article, she said, “This year is an exciting time for the Margarita brand. I’ll be opening my signature restaurant soon—a project that has been a longtime dream of mine … I’m looking forward to creating more innovative and nostalgic dining experiences for Manila.”
That night, I had to write another article about her—an obituary for the news section. I kept stopping because I couldn’t believe what I was doing. An obituary? About Margarita? How is this possible?
Many, many meals at Cibo
I started writing for this paper soon after Margarita opened the first Cibo in Glorietta in 1997. Working earned me both money and freedom—both of which I splurged on many, many meals at Cibo. I found every excuse to enjoy her food.
Like so many Cibo fans, the spinach dip was my favorite. I was obsessed, so obsessed I used to journal about it, telling friends that they should bring me some if I was ever imprisoned, even saying that I wanted it served at my funeral.
I remember texting Margarita with an old Nokia phone (this was 2001, 2002) to thank her for helping me survive because during the year I became vegetarian, a huge chunk of my diet had been her spinach dip and Cibo’s potato chips.
Even after I started eating meat again, the spinach dip and potato chips continued to be ubiquitous in my life, along with my other Cibo favorites.
I was also obsessed with Café Bola, going to both the Greenbelt and Araneta Coliseum branches for the adobo flakes with kesong puti, the bangus belly with crab fat rice, caramelized Spam, and the meatballs with different sauces, of course. I loved it and missed that place so much that every time I saw Margarita, I had to resist the urge to take her hands and plead, “Please, please, please bring it back.”
Some of her Café Bola specials are on her catering menu and, I’m not kidding, I just stopped writing this article to place an order.
Oh gosh, her catering. Every time it was Margarita catering—whether it was weddings or media events—we knew we were in for a treat. Her food is so good that at the opening of the first H&M store in the country in 2014, instead of being engrossed with the clothes, we were laser-focused on the waiters passing around the hors d’oeuvres. I shared this memory with Margarita the last time I saw her and she laughed.
In 2022, I went to her son Amado’s resto A Mano to cover their pizza party with Bangkok’s Pizza Massilia. A Mano had just made it to the 50 Top Pizza Asia-Pacific list (it now sits at no. 12).
Pizza Massilia founder Luca Appino was there, shaving generous amounts of black truffles onto hot calzones, making diners gasp in delight. “This was a special request of Margarita,” he said. “Because Margarita loves to take care of the customer, she said, ‘I want to see a mountain of truffle.’”
In 2024, the Inquirer awarded her as one of our Women of Power. During a Zoom call, she looked back on her journey, sharing her story, her treasure trove of pepper mills in the background—the ones that had been on display at Pepato, another great Margarita restaurant.
“This year is really quite an important year for me. I’m turning 65, and have been in the business for 37 years,” she said, talking about her plans to open the restaurant that would finally bear her name—Margarita.
Amado
She’s done so much, and was named Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2016, but what was she proudest of? Three things, she said—changing the landscape for Italian cuisine in the Philippines, and pushing Filipino cuisine. “But the most important one is really seeing what Amado has done with himself … For him to decide to eventually go into the same field and seeing him soar, I think that is probably my biggest achievement. In all honesty, his restaurants do better than mine. It makes me think that maybe I can almost retire and let him just take the helm so that he can continue to grow what I’ve started to build.”
When the article came out, she messaged, “Thank you dearest Pam for a glowing story and all the support always!”
It was easy to support Margarita because she wasn’t just brilliant; she also used her brilliance for good—to help other chefs, to expand our palates and elevate our cuisine, to put the Philippines on the map, to make special occasions even more special, to make diners happy and our world a more delicious place.
She touched so many lives and she was so many things to so many people. It was like she was everywhere, so how could she just be gone?
But she isn’t. Not really. She lives on, in the restaurants she lovingly built, in the dishes she created, in her son Amado who will, undoubtedly, with the rest of their family, continue her legacy, just as she had hoped.
When I interviewed Margarita in 2024, it was weeks before her mom Maria Lourdes “Baby” Araneta Fores’ first death anniversary. “We’re still very, very much sad and melancholy about her passing,” she said. “There’s so much of her influence in everything that I do. She was such a big presence in our lives. For my siblings and myself, we feel that she really was one of a kind.”
You were one of a kind, too, Margarita. Truly one of a kind.
