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ENGRACIA CRUZ-REYES
16 April 1892 to 6 July 1975
Engracia Cruz-Reyes was a Filipino chef and entrepreneur. She was an active promoter of Filipino cuisine, especially through the restaurant chain she founded, The Aristocrat Restaurant.
Engracia Cruz developed her cooking skills at a young age, having to prepare the meals for her five younger siblings while her parents were out working for a living. In 1912, she married a young lawyer from her hometown, Alexander Reyes.
Cruz-Reyes in 1928 set up a small carinderia at Calle de Marques de Comillas in Ermita, Manila, naming her eatery Lapu-Lapu, primarily serving Filipino fare.
Her reputation as a cook had also grown due to the home dinners she had cooked for many of the leading political figures of the day, friends of her now-prominent husband. By 1936, Cruz-Reyes operated a mobile restaurant featuring a menu stacked with traditional Filipino dishes, which she named "The Aristocrat". Within two years, Cruz-Reyes opened a permanent restaurant at Dewey Boulevard in Manila. It remains one of the oldest restaurants in Manila.
The choice of name was ironic and pointed, for during that period, Filipino cuisine was not considered as appropriate fare in the homes of the Filipino elite. The popularity of Aristocrat helped usher a renewed popularity of Filipino cuisine, a reputation Cruz-Reyes enhanced by her insistence of serving such dishes in the dinners she was often called to cater at Malacanang Palace.
Great Filipinos #2151d, 1 Jun 1992
part of a se-tenant strip of 5
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