Margarita Forés

Margarita Forés is a Filipino chef, who runs a variety of restaurants which serve varieties of Italian cuisine. In 2016, she was named Asia's Best Female Chef. Forés initially worked in catering, before launching the chain Cibo, as well as several individual restaurants.

Margarita Forés is a granddaughter of J. Amado Araneta, a prominent member of the wealthy Araneta family. She grew up in Manila until she was a freshman attending Assumption College San Lorenzo, when the family moved to New York City. The culture in her new city would eventually serve as inspiration for her culinary career, with Sunday visits to the same midtown American-Italian restaurant led to her interest in learning about the Italian food that was not so well known outside of the local areas in the country.

Once in America, she attended the Marymount School of New York on the Upper East Side of the city. She attended Mount Holyoke College for two years, by which time she had a Filipino boyfriend and asked her mother to return to her home country. Although her mother, she gave permission and Forés resumed her education until graduation in 1981 at Assumption College. By this time, the relationship was over. With a degree in accountancy, she moved to Hong Kong and worked as a trainee for Axona Holdings. While there, she began to experiment with cooking. When the company downsized during the 1980s as the market shrank while preparations were underway for the British colony to be transferred to China, she moved back to New York.

Reunited with her family, her mother got her a job working for fur licensee Valentino's, and eventually moved onto their head office. While she was away, her mother had become heavily involved in the New York party scene, with Forés later recalling the time she was introduced to people such as Salvador Dali, John F. Kennedy Jr., Franco Rossellini and Margaux Hemingway. She once again began to cook for herself, family and friends, describing it as a Martha Stewart influenced approach. Following the death of her grandfather in November 1985, the family returned to Manila. She began to crave a change, describing it as "They say when there are major changes in a family, when something happens to key members, it’s an opportunity for other members of the family to also make changes in their lives, it was a pivotal point. I was beginning to see that I was becoming more passionate about food than the fashion. It didn’t really get me in the gut as much as the food."