Café by the Ruins

I wish to share with you excerpts from an email sent to my sister Alice, from Benjie A(Class 62), commenting on an article in the Midland by Madame Cecile Afable on the Café by the Ruins. I am sure you will agree with me that it is too good to be kept in the email files!

Benjie wrote: “ Manang Alice, thanks for sharing this. I always loved Cafe by the Ruins for its ambience and food offerings (especially the tilapia soup). I came across a description of that location by Maud Jenkins (I hope I got her name correct) in her 1905 book on her adventures in the Cordillera (her husband was the then newly appointed governor for Bontoc). Cafe by the Ruins is what remains of the home of the American Whitmarsh who played host to Maud and her husband before they travelled from Baguio to Bontoc. Maud described the beauty of the rose garden in the center of the home (I suppose that garden was an inner atrium, such as what ancestral Vigan homes have). I saw photos of the Whitmarsh home when I visited the Field Museum in Chicago in summer 2007, but all photos were of the outside, none of the rose garden inside. I wondered why Maud never mentioned the other foreigner in Baguio, the German Otto Scheerer, who lived by the marsh which is now Burnham Lake. As I read later in another book, Whitmarsh and Scheerer hated each other's guts! So I suppose Whitmarsh never mentioned Scheerer to the Jenkins couple.”

And this is the article:

IN AND OUT OF BAGUIO(Baguio Midland Courier 15 Feb 09)by Cecile C. Afable.

The Café by the Ruins

The place is called because those who started it have the most fertile imagination as a group of individuals. Like a few of us, they dreamt a dream and they are lucky to have money in their pockets to make it a reality.

To start with, the place was really almost a ruin. It was one of the most elegant places that belonged to an elegant family, the Arvisus. When Miguela Arvisu entertains, Baguio’s “one hundred” were invited, both American and Pinoy. The setting was one of the most lovely gardens of dahlias in Baguio.. A tragedy almost turned the place into a ruin. That is why it is called “The Café by the Ruins.”

A group of intellectuals, artists, business people, and adventurers got together to put the ruins in shape and all of them gave the Café its present make up and character. They put some Cordillera character, plenty of money, good taste, some cooking and baking, and cogon grass roofing.

Their new master brew is the Café tapoi brew of mountain, unpolished rice with their exclusive yeasts. It is sold and served in rattan fiber wrapped bottles to give it glamour and exclusiveness. The Café is an exclusive part of Baguio. A policeman can easily point the place out to anybody especially to those who want to be seen in it.