Larry Cruz, restaurateur, journalist, dies in US; 66
By Thelma Sioson San Juan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:47:00 02/05/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The country’s pioneer in theme or concept restaurants, the journalist who, as if by accident, shaped Philippine café society, Lorenzo “Larry” Cruz, died Monday in Washington DC. He was 66.
Cruz -- or LJC, after his initials, as he was known in the restaurant and food industry -- was in Washington to seek treatment for cancer. He succumbed to pneumonia.
His wife, Norma Cruz, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Manila that her husband died at about 11 a.m. (Manila time).
Norma said the family had yet to decide whether the body would be cremated in the United States or in the Philippines. A wake will be held here.
Last September, Cruz underwent surgery of the intestines to remove a tumor. Last month, he flew to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Washington for further tests. By then his cancer was in an advanced stage, and the doctors discovered that it had started in his thyroid. It was a very brief battle.
Cruz was chair of the LJC Group at the time of his death -- yet he never saw himself as a dyed-in-the-wool businessman.
Restaurants
The LJC Group has 14 restaurants, cafés and bars in Manila, Makati, Alabang, Quezon City and Cebu City.
Among his famous restaurants are Anghang, Fely, Abe, Bistro Remedios and Bistro Burgos. Café Havana was established six years ago in Malate and four years later at Ayala’s Greenbelt in Makati.
An antique collector, Larry opened Koleksyon in 1978, an antique shop, in what was once a taxi drivers’ carinderia (eatery) on the corner of Remedios and Adriatico streets.
Journalist, publisher
Despite his trailblazing achievements in the restaurant business and the fortune he made off it, Cruz saw himself as a journalist and publisher until the end.
“I am not a businessman really,” he told us over dinner -- our last, it would turn out -- a week before he left for Washington. “I love creating concepts. The business follows.”
That night Cruz had yet another concept for a book that he wanted to publish, this time on his experiences as a journalist and restaurateur.
Glossy magazine pioneer
When it came to concept, we couldn’t but have great faith in Cruz. It was he who pioneered the glossy magazine industry in the country by publishing Metro magazine in the late 1980s.
Even if he knew that journalism or publishing was always an uphill financial climb, he never could resist going into it. That last dinner, as a parting shot to us, he dared us yet again to try another magazine concept.
Media was in his genes. His father, E. Aguilar Cruz, was a veteran editor (Daily Mirror), essayist and painter, after whom the highly successful specialty restaurant, Abe, was named.
Writing news for radio
Cruz began his career writing news for radio and TV, worked in Asia magazine and later other culture and arts magazines with veteran editors like Johnny Gatbonton.
He carried over this passion for print media when he became head of the Bureau of National and Foreign Information (BNFI) under then Press Secretary Francisco Tatad during the 1970s in the Marcos years.
At the helm of BNFI, Cruz published culture and arts periodicals, the coverage and depth of which remain unmatched to this day. He was also assistant press secretary in the Marcos years.
ABC Gallery
Given his and his father’s journalism background and interest in the arts -- they ran ABC Gallery, one of the country’s foremost art galleries in the ’70s -- Cruz moved in the arts and culture circles.
And such a circle couldn’t let the day pass without a stimulating, heated conversation -- and good food and wine. They needed a place to hang out -- at the Cruz’s gallery. In time, this became Café Adriatico on Remedios Street in Malate -- a lifestyle-defining landmark in the country.
Delicious food
Café Adriatico proved that with delicious food and tasteful and good ambiance, the right clientele would come.
Without a business plan, indeed without planning, Cruz stumbled on a restaurant formula that would change the way Filipinos ran and developed restaurants, and the way Filipinos dined and enjoyed company. He provided the classy ambiance, the food -- and the right crowd -- that defined, from that day on in 1979, what a night-out in Manila would be.
Social destination
Café Adriatico turned Malate into a social destination. Cruz, it would turn out, started not only a restaurant, but a lifestyle.
Soon, the restaurants around Remedios Circle were other specialty dining places opened by Cruz -- Bistro Remedios, Café Havana and Prego. Their names would change through the years but the attraction of a good meal and night-out would be just as strong.
In time Cruz had the LJC Group of restaurants, opening in malls and introducing concepts that would be copied. He had just opened Fely J’s Kitchen Asian and Filipino cooking as a tribute to his mom.
Kapampangan cuisine
In 2006, Cruz opened the wildly successful Abe, serving Kapampangan cuisine, as a tribute to his father.
In 2007, he developed the four-hectare Abe’s Farm in Magalang, Pampanga, named after his father. A portion is occupied by Larry’s weekend country home, which is more like an enlarged bahay kubo.
The farm is open to groups of 10 to a hundred who need to book themselves for workshops or weddings at package rates.
Digitizing files, photos
According to longtime associate Glenna Aquino, Cruz was also digitizing all the restaurant files and photo archives for a library that a new generation of hotel and restaurant students could use and learn from.
Cruz knew not only good food; he knew the good life, and loved good knowledge he gleaned from books, magazines and his travels. A renaissance man to the end, he had taste.
When we asked him how he wanted his biography to be titled, he said, “Larry can’t cook.”
Plans are being made to fly home his remains this week. With reports from Cynthia D. Balana and Inquirer Research
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