Eating Out in Makati

I had a long leisurely lunch with friends in Makati the other day.

Lunch was hosted by my friend Sarita and she invited Fides, Mama June, Jojo and myself. We ate at Haiku at the second level of Greenbelt 3. It's something we do from time to time especially if we've been too busy with our own personal lives for long stretches. This was one of those times.

The last tiime we all got together was in December of 2009. Since then we've been in touch either through text messages or phone calls. Makati always seems to be the venue most of the time since it's convenient for everybody. It has everything for everybody. The nice restaurants are situated there as well as the pricey stores that cater to every whim you could ever think of.

Far cry from what it used to be before the Ayalas decided to move there from Intramuros and decided to call Makati "home". Originally, Makati was a marshy land area where the Pasig river passed through in the early Spanish colonial days. There are two versions to Makati's monicker: 1) Makati was all marsh and there was a grim concentration of mosquitoes in the area and anyone who went there would inadvertently be the vicitm of many mosquito bites. As a result, they would start itching and scratch. 2) Makati is culled from two words "may" and "kati" meaning there is a tide. Between the two stories the second is the more probable reason.

So, as we Filipinos are wont to do, we started developing Makati into Manila's Financial district of choice. The Nielsen Tower was the very first edifice built in the area. Designed as a flight control tower, the building now stands as the Filipinas Heritage Library under the Ayala Foundation. Ayala Avenue, now the main thoroughfare was once the runway for airplanes that landed in Manila. McKinley was an army reservation for US Armed forces which eventually gave way to the enclaves of the rich and famous: Forbes Park and Dasmarinas Village. The American Memorial Cemetery, once a hilly and rough terrain was ceded to the Americans to bury the dead that gave up their lives for the liberation of Manila and the rest of Asia from the Japanese forces.

Now if you wanna live it up, it's Makati people go to. The planning that went into it has been phenomenal. The area where we ate was a parking lot where the Love Busses were parked while waiting for their trips. There was even an aviary at some point before the old Ayala Museum was torn down. Incidentally, the old Ayala Museum was designed by national artist for architecture Leandro Locsin. The new museum is designed by his son Andy. The pre-hispanic gold collection of the Ayala Muesum is something we can all be proud to show off to foreign guests. All that gold wasn't smelted for nothing...

The price of real estate in Makati back then was P 9.00/ square meter. Now a studio unit for one of the condos costs up to P4.5 M. What's strange is that even if Makati has become a showcase of modernity and avant garde architecture, Binondo's real estate prices far outshine that of Ayala Land's. That's an entirely different story that needs further research...