‘I recreate a beautiful time in my life’

‘I feel it is a blessed home that is full of inspiration’

Margarita Araneta Fores, 50, is chef and owner of several Italian-inspired restaurants in Manila. She also runs a catering business, high-end floral and houseware design shops and, in 2007, was named Ernst & Young Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. She lives in a 1950s bungalow in a village just outside the central business district of Makati with her 19-year-old son, Amado, and two cats.

Tell me about your home.
My four-room house in Urdaneta Village is still unchanged from its original state. I feel it is a blessed home that is full of inspiration because it was the residence of Arturo Luz, Philippine National Artist for Visual Arts, for 33 years. The house used to showcase his pieces, as well as works of other young, up-and-coming artists. Luz left some of his works in the house and I have since used them to enhance the place: I have stone sculptures that I mounted on marble cubes; an unsigned abstract painting brightening the lanai (veranda); and three steel and stone sculptures that now stand tall at the house entrance.

What is inside?
The home is filled with refreshed mid-century pieces – a period that I love very much. My dining set is the cornerstone of the living and dining area. It is an original R Baluyut & Sons set from my grandparents’ home, where our family used to visit on Sundays for lunch. The other pieces of furniture are from my mother’s old Park Avenue apartment in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My brass-and-steel coffee table is a creative collaboration with my friend Mark Gonzalez, who is one of the city’s best style purveyors. He brought premiere British brands such as Liberty and Fred Perry to our Philippine shores.

What about your collections?
A wide assortment of vintage tableware, some inherited from my family and other items collected from many years of flea market and segunda mano (second-hand) store shopping, fill the cabinets in my kitchen and library. My cookbook and design book collection fills the shelves of what was once Luz’s workroom and library. Some of his art books that he left here are still on the shelves. My collection of linens for very special catering jobs also fills the cabinets. My collection of all-cotton or all-linen sheets and blanket covers, as well as Italian damask hand towels, are also stored here.

Why is this house special to you?
It is the first home in Manila that I could truly call my own. My family has always been very close-knit so the move from the home where I was born had been extremely heart-wrenching and emotionally traumatic. But the move was a good way of building a new chapter for my own small family unit.

Where was your first home?
I grew up in Bahay na Puti. It is a big white house in Cubao, Quezon City. My grandfather, J Amado Araneta, built it in 1956. Bahay na Puti’s haven of mid-century architecture and the period’s idyllic lifestyle are so ingrained in me that I tend to recreate that beautiful time in my life in all the places I have lived thereafter. The house still stands the same way, amid the ever-changing landscape of the area. Our ancestral home was a three-minute walk from the military camps where all the action was during the Edsa revolution in 1986. I feel lucky to have been there to witness it and even be in the middle of it.

Where else have you lived?
I stayed in Italy, Hong Kong and several places in New York – all for different reasons. All in all, living abroad allowed me to have the ability to continue to offer first-world products and be viable without being out-of-touch with my own environment’s sensibilities. One can still do luxury, great flavour and avant garde with a conscience, precisely because of the richness of what you’ve seen or experienced outside the world you are in.

Tell me about your New York homes.
My family relocated to New York City in 1972 for political reasons. My grandfather’s anti-Marcos sentiments caused him to stay there indefinitely when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. Because we were raised to stick together, the rest of my family moved there eventually. We stayed in Manhattan for 15 years. We established a number of apartments within the Upper East Side area. My mother, my two siblings and I first lived in an old-fashioned high-rise with old French furniture and a Degas in the living room. We moved to Park Avenue, where my mother decorated the flat in typical 1970s style. It had mirrored coffee tables, a bamboo-patterned velvet sofa, a mirrored screen, palm trees, a red-print, fabric-lined dining room and a black smoked mirror-lined guest comfort room. The den had a black shag carpet and a mirrored wall. I eventually moved out of my mother’s flat. After a sheltered upbringing in Manila, a sense of adventure made a sort of rebel out of me. I moved into a walk-up apartment on East 60th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues.

You also lived in Italy.
More than anything else, New York for me was about modern Italian restaurants, interesting European boutiques and Italian-style cafés that got under my skin. I went to Italy to learn more about its culture, cuisine and its heart. I learned more about cooking and increased my fondness for everything Italian. I shared an old apartment with a local lady and cooked many meals at what felt like a small loft with old beams on the ceiling. I could almost imagine what life was like there many centuries ago. My first stay in Italy was just a little over four months but it felt like a lifetime because of its intensity. It changed me forever.