Engracia Cruz-Reyes

Engracia Cruz-Reyes (April 16, 1892 — July 6, 1975) was a Filipino chef and entrepreneur. She was an active promoter of Filipino cuisine, especially through the restaurant chain she founded, The Aristocrat Restaurant.

She was born Engracia Cruz to a poor family in Navotas in 1892. Her mother was a street peddler who sold food sauces and fruits, and who later managed a small neighborhood eatery popularly known in the Philippines as carinderias . She 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. She was able to complete only four years of primary education.

In 1912, she married a young lawyer from her hometown, Alexander Reyes, who in 1948 would be appointed as an Associate Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court.

To augment her family's income as her husband struggled to establish his legal practice, Cruz-Reyes set up in 1928 a small carinderia at Calle de Marques de Comillas in Ermita, Manila. She named her eatery Lapu-Lapu (after the famed Mactan chieftain who defeated Ferdinand Magellan in battle), adopted a native motif as interior decor, and served primarily Filipino fare. These nationalistic manifestations especially stood out considering that the Philippines was then under American colonial rule.

By the 1930s, Cruz-Reyes was selling adobo sandwiches at the Luneta out of a car loaned to her by a future son-in-law. 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.

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