Romance comes with pizza, spices

PIZZA couple Frank and Pearl DiBerardino, owner of Auntie Pearl’s in Los Baños, Laguna photo by CLIFFORD NUÑEZ/CONTRIBUTOR

A grown-up Italian delivering pizza on one’s doorstep would be strange, but probably not to someone from Los Baños town in Laguna province, who may have heard of Uncle Frank.

Residents have gotten used to calling Italian-American Frank DiBerardino “uncle” since he usually manned Auntie Pearl’s pizzeria.

Since August 2010, Frank, 69, and his Filipino wife, Pearl Lawas-DiBerardino, 48, have been grilling burgers and pizza that their originally five-to-six-table joint has become one of the must-try restaurants in town.

Like a slice of pizza, their romance, too, bursts with flavors and spices.

“We met kind of weird,” Frank, a chemical engineer by profession, recalls.

He was on a business trip to Japan in 1991 when he first met Pearl, a graduate of economics from Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Calamba City, Laguna, who was then living with a sister in Tokyo. The woman attended a Japanese language school and worked at night in a seafood restaurant that Frank frequented.

“She was my waitress who came in and brought my isda (fish),” Frank says.

Little did they know they would end up with their own restaurant, which Frank chose to name Pearl “in honor of her.”

The couple got married in Pearl’s hometown of Los Baños in 1994 and they spent the next years in northern California until Frank retired in 2009. While in the United States, they spent most Saturday nights in the kitchen, “experimenting” on new recipes.

From their regular visits to the Philippines, Frank found himself comfortable with Filipino culture. Pearl, on the other hand, realized that she wanted to pursue nursing as a second career and so they decided to return to Los Baños in September 2009.

When she began her study at Lyceum University of the Philippines in Calamba, Frank ended up “a Filipino tambay” (males who usually hang out in a regular spot) as how his wife would tease him.

“Go find a job or do something. You like to cook? Open up a restaurant. Filipinos love to eat,” Pearl had told him.

Having been raised in New York City, Frank was very specific about pizzas. “I want to make pizza and I knew exactly what I thought was a good pizza,” he says.

So he spent the days of his first three months trying to find a good place to set up, a nice oven to bake with, the right amount of ingredients, and the perfect dough. He finally came up with his homemade pizza sauce and flavors.

Auntie Pearl’s pepperoni mushroom, classic all-meat, and the loaded are just a few of the flavors that gained following.

Unlike popular pizza chains, their pizzas are made of native spices and come in plates from solo (six inches or good for one) to a 15-inch pizza (good for four to six people), with prices ranging from P55 to P699.

The restaurant also serves grilled burgers, pasta, pies and, most recently, Filipino rice dishes, to cater to a mixed crowd.

Auntie Pearl used to be a small restaurant outside the University of the Philippines Los Baños campus, frequented by students, professors and expatriates.

In June, many thought it had closed down until word went out that it only transferred to a new place in Barangay (village) Maahas. The current location, beside a roadside church but hardly noticeable at night, is on a property owned by Pearl’s family.

Students and professionals, even a town mayor, were soon seen dropping by to its new place. Frank, sometimes, would also still drive his car around and personally deliver the orders.

To Frank, running their business is “family style.” In fact, some of the regular customers asked them to be wedding sponsors that he fancied the idea of putting on the menu a new pizza flavor to be called “Godfather.”

As for their being a couple, “it’s one thing to be romantic, but it’s another thing to be business partners,” Frank says.