TRAVELERS in the 19th-century Philippines who had the time to venture outside the walls of Intramuros or Spanish Manila were brought south to see Taal volcano and the majestic falls near Majayjay, Laguna. There were no hotels in those days, so travelers camped out either in the municipio, or the house of prominent citizens, or even the church. It is said that churches and towns were often built one day’s walk from each other, thus hospitality for travelers was a necessity not a virtue.

VIPs who explored the towns north of Manila were often feted in Sulipan, now a forgotten Pampanga town that was the venue for glittering parties at the height of Filipino hospitality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the relics of that vanished age is a monogrammed table service “china, crystal, and silver flatware” part of which was a gift from Russian Grand Duke Alexis who had enjoyed the hospitality of the Arnedos of Sulipan.

The last time I saw this table service in use was in the home of the late Brother Andrew Gonzales, FSC who served as president of De La Salle University and later secretary of education during the Estrada administration. Brother Andrew had inherited part of the set and slowly bought the rest from assorted relatives to complete a table service on which to serve food from recipes passed down from the past. Dinners at Bro Andrew’s family mansion in Quezon City were memorable for the food, the company, and his wicked wit.

Both Sulipan and Brother Andrew may be history, but the heirloom recipes have been preserved and kitchen-tested by Gene R. Gonzalez in his book “Cocina Sulipena: Culinary Gems from old Pampanga” (Bookmark, 1993).

Sulipan is not even on the map today but it was located somewhere around the Rio Grande de Pampanga, in the vicinity of present-day Calumpit, Bulacan, and Apalit, Pampanga. If you take the North Luzon Expressway or NLEx, the joke is that the viaduct there is the longest in the Philippines because at one point in Tagalog-speaking Bulacan you start with an “itlog” (egg) but by the time you reach the other end in Pampanga the same egg will then be an “ebun.” Ebun is egg in Kapampangan but ibon is bird in Tagalog.

The Sulipan table service came to mind after I read about President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s recent trip to Russia because in Frederick Sawyer’s “The Inhabitants of the Philippines” (1900) he recounted:

“A ball at a big Pampanga house is a sight that will be remembered. Capitan Joaquin Arnedo Cruz of Sulipan, on the Rio Grande, a wealthy native sugar planter, used to assemble in his fine house the principal people of the neighborhood to meet royal and distinguished guests. Capitan Joaquin possessed a magnificent porcelain service of two hundred pieces specially made and marked with his monogram, sent him by a prince who had enjoyed his hospitality. He gave a ball for the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, who afterwards declared that the room presented one of the most brilliant he had ever seen. This from the son of an emperor might seem an exaggeration, but ‘brilliant’ is the only word that can describe the effect produced on the spectator by the bright costumes and sparkling jewelry of the women.”

While re-reading the accounts of the balls and parties thrown in the Arnedo home in Sulipan, I remembered the great ball in Malolos in September 1898, when the founding father’s ratified the June 12, 1898 Declaration of Independence from Spain.

To celebrate, they seem to have had a special breakfast, lunch and dinner menu prepared, of which we have copies of the lunch and dinner in French! Arnedo probably lent his personal cook to help out in that great Malolos banquet that Nick Joaquin says we should remember alongside the Malolos Constitution because these two documents represent the Philippines’ coming of age between two empires, Spain and the United States. Arnedo also must have lent this now legendary table service for use during the Malolos banquet of 1898.

Another relic awaiting validation is a long mahogany table now in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas that is said to have been used in Barasoain when the Malolos Congress was in session.

One can only imagine what it would be to re-create the Malolos banquet based on the menu and serve it on this historic Bangko Sentral table using the Sulipan table service. Now that would truly be a historic experience.

What made the Sulipan hospitality legendary was the oral lore, recorded in the memoirs of Victor Buencamino, that says that Arnedo’s ultimate gesture of hospitality was not to allow other guests to use china, flatware, crystal, and linen that had already been used by a distinguished guest. Each VIP required a new set, or so we are told, because Capitan Joaquin after a dinner hosted for visiting Japanese royalty had all these things thrown out the window into the nearby river!

Now that is real panache, except that the VIP guest did not realize that the household staff were conveniently “fishing” and “washing” by the river. Perhaps fish nets were installed under the water to catch these items, to be fished out semi-clean when the impressed guest had left. If there is one thing that one can conclude about the Sulipan hospitality it is that they had real style then.

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