Worldly Taste

Ding de Villa of GlobalCuisine and his take on the food business
By Cristine Antonette B. Catu

Exuding a classy vibe and offering the perfect ambience for any event, this distinctively named and designed restaurant at the Ground Level of Greenbelt 3, Makati City has a fascination all its own with its variety of Eastern and Western influences, exhibited in the interiors, flavors, and overall experience of the place.
Gourmet GlobalFoods, Inc. Chairman
Amado “Ding” de Villa [GS 1962, HS 1966, BSC-Accounting 1970], through his restaurant GlobalCuisine, offers a palatable gateway for people raring to get a glimpse – and a taste – of the world.
GlobalCuisine, which is the new face of what was previously known as Global Café, is an innovative restaurant concept that presents eclectic and sophisticated culinary offerings from around the world.
A glance at the menu would reveal a wide array of selections from countries like Thailand, Korea, India, Indonesia, China, Japan, Singapore, Greece, England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, the US, Mexico, and of course, the Philippines. Its extensive menu caters to a wide variety of preferences, as its gourmet cuisine would satisfy even the most discriminating food connoisseur.
If you ever find yourself in this restaurant one day, take time to feast your eyes on the descriptions on the menu, for that alone could make your mouths water: Spicy minced chicken with basil – minced chicken with garlic, ginger and chili seasoned with Thai fish sauce, oyster sauce and tamarind sauce, and served with steamed rice and cucumber vinaigrette.… The list goes on as your famished stomach grumbles on.
Animo sits down with Ding de Villa to discuss his experiences as a basketball star of La Salle, his career and growth, and the palate-friendly good ol’ comfort foods and services that GlobalCuisine offers its market.
Animo: I’m really amazed with your resume... You’ve been the head coach of the basketball team?
Ding: My love of sports and experience in the La Salle varsity led me to coach the team of Philippine Air Lines and score them a championship at FILCOMIN Basketball League in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1989, and a third place for the Coca-Cola team the following year.
Animo: And what made you think of entering the food business?
Ding: The way I look at it, I got into this kind of business because I really enjoy getting together with friends, while enjoying good food and oftentimes, music. It was just a matter of establishing a good venue for it, where we can, at the same time, make our living. When everybody gets together here, we just have fun. I believe in having fun while you are working because if you do not have fun in what you’re doing, it will not yield good results.
Animo: It’s not worth when you’re not having fun…
Ding: When you’re not having fun, it doesn’t keep you going. So for you not to get bored in whatever you do, you have to be an entrepreneur and try to get into the things that you enjoy most.
Animo: Why food?
Ding: Because it’s a basic necessity. I prefer to go into businesses that have to do with the basic items that you need in life – the food [which is the restaurant], shelter [real estate, which is another of his ventures], and even clothing. Clothing or fashion is something that we want to interrelate into our activities here at GlobalCuisine or its future franchises…as part of a whole standard of lifestyle that we would like to promote. In fact, we are coming up with our own Global Food+Lifestyle Newsletter where we will feature not only updates about our restaurant, but also the latest in fashion, music, health and wellness, etc.
Animo: What makes GlobalCuisine different from other restaurants?
Ding: I think as of now, it’s the only one that specializes in international cuisine in terms of presenting various specialties. If you want to eat Chinese food, you go to a Chinese restaurant. If you want to eat Filipino food, you go to Barrio Fiesta. In GlobalCuisine, we have specialties from the Philippines, China, Singapore, Japan, Italy, France, Spain, Australia, Korea, Germany, USA, and other parts of the world. We have it all here [for customers of different nationalities] so when they browse through our menu, they won’t think of going anywhere else. I guess that’s the difference.
Animo: So are you open for breakfast until late up night?
Ding: Yes. We are open at 7 am daily until 12 am on weekdays and 1 am on weekends.
Animo: Can we hold meetings here?
Ding: We’ve been hosting meetings, seminars, and other functions here ever since, using mostly our mezzanine area. In fact, we’ve recently renovated this mezzanine into a more equipped function room, enclosed with glass for privacy, and with a brand new sound system and LCD projector with screen to provide a more complete service to our clients. Most of the companies hold seminars in hotels which could be very expensive. So we’re trying to make that particular area our niche. With a capacity of 50 people, they can hold their functions or events here for less.
Animo: How long have you been running this business?
Ding: We actually took over this business at the start of the year. Maybe we got it at the right time, but there were also birth pains for us. We’re nearing the end of the transition period so hopefully, we could get everything leveled out soon.
Animo: What do you enjoy the most in your work?
Ding: Of course, the food. I’m very proud of our menu. We are continually improving it so as to present more global favorites to our customers. Aside from the food, I enjoy this as a place where I can meet people and socialize with my friends. Food and entertainment is in my heart.
Animo: How about your relationship with your co-workers?
Ding: If you belong to my organization, you are treated like family. Without this relationship, you’re never going to work properly.
Animo: How difficult is handling the business?
Ding: It should not be if you should have professional people working for you. It is also a matter of mixing and matching approaches—like the use of networking and outsourcing, alongside your own people’s expertise—that’s how we handle things here.
Animo: Are you on top of everything?
Ding: When I do business, I always believe in getting the best people. All the people that are in our management team had spent a lot of years in the food industry. Hopefully, things will be better as we improve to serve our market. Our objective, of course, is to make money and to eventually go into successful franchising. We also intend GlobalCuisine to become the retail distribution outlet of its related company AsianFresh Product Corporation.

AsianFresh is our import-export company that currently carries Philippine products such as St. Peter’s fish [tilapia], fresh frozen and pureed mangoes, different kinds of nuts, especially pili and cashew, for export in target markets like Australia, Japan and Germany, and other parts of Asia and Europe. We are at the same time, bringing in and promoting certain Australian products to the Philippine market through GlobalCuisine and the new joint-venture effort, Global Mocha Blends, as “showrooms,” where Australian coffee, Australian rice bran oil [Best Field brand] and Australian meat [rib-eye and Billabong steaks] are feature ingredients of the cuisine. We are also looking for other foreign products, primarily Australian, for introduction into the Philippines and its target countries.
Animo: How did you structure GlobalCuisine?
Ding: We are structuring it with the distribution objectives of AsianFresh in mind but using a full-service fine dining restaurant set-up. In that, aside from being a restaurant, it also serves as showroom-type distribution outlet of our products for import and export. We have broken it down into five essential business units, basically: the main hall for regular dining and food service; the mezzanine that mainly serves as function room for different events; our veranda where we will have our garden lounge, or the Global Mocha Blends “Sydney Lounge,” serving coffee by Mocha Blends; our ordering station, which will be like a store within the store, where customers can buy products exclusively carried by GlobalCuisine and AsianFresh; plus the kitchen, which will be developed into a “revenue center” in itself by doubling as a culinary arts institute to train students in an actual commercial kitchen set-up. In line with all this, our goal is to widen our distribution by opening GlobalCuisine and Global Mocha Blends franchises in the same countries targeted by AsianFresh. Following the same model, the international outlets will market the products for export by featuring them in the cuisine, as well as making them available at the ordering station component of the stores.
Animo: What’s your specialty for the Filipino dish?
Ding: Tilapia. When you talk of tilapia, our problem is yung lasa ng lumot, right? We get our tilapia from a fish farm not like any other fish pond wherein they just put a net. Our fish are farmed in fish cages. Also, the food that they eat are feeds. Another thing, which not too many people know about, is the quality of water. This farm is in Talim Island [in Laguna]. It’s pretty far, yet, it’s not polluted.
Anyway, with our export-quality tilapia or St. Peter’s fish, we have developed a whole line of dishes, all made using a fusion of Filipino taste with influences from other countries. For example, we have pandan-wrapped St. Peter’s fish, St. Peter’s fish maki and sashimi, St. Peter’s fish burger, salad, St. Peter’s fish wrapped in taco bread with wasabi, and even barbecue.
Animo: So where do you get all these ideas?
Ding: I don’t know. I think I’ve been given a lot of opportunities in my career because I think out of the box. I’ve never been a traditional thinker. Somebody up there must really love me. I just think out loud and pick out what I think is going to work. Unfortunately, in our country, there are lots of good ideas that cannot be implemented. We have libraries of businesses. Other Asian countries are laughing at us because they have studied in IRRI and AIM, and most of them have managed to implement their feasibility studies. Filipinos seldom do. The Philippines is a rice-producing country and yet we import rice. We can’t even produce rice bran cooking oil. But if we’ll be able to produce it, we could earn from its distribution. Rice bran oil is one of the healthiest oils out there, which is an advantage.
Animo: Simple ideas?
Ding: You have to be different. You have to have a story to tell, otherwise, it will not work. An example would be hot pandesal, halos lahat ng kanto meron; but if you offer it, you have to make it different. For every problem, there’s an opportunity so if you don’t run the risk in competing globally, you will not know how to be truly competitive. I always believe in innovation. You have to create a product that could be considered a specialty to be able to benefit.
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GlobalCuisine is at the ground floor of Greenbelt 3, Ayala Center, Makati City. Call 757-4906 and 728-1317 for inquiries and reservations.