When your mom is the queen of local catering services, you’ve got no choice but to follow her footsteps, right?

Well, not exactly. Jasper Verzosa, older son of Jet Verzosa, founder of catering juggernaut Josiah’s, doesn’t serve 200 guests in one go—but he does take the same pains to ensure the same quality goes into each dish he prepares for his little restaurant in Nurture Spa, Tagaytay.

Formerly called Amuin Café, the cozy 20-or-so seater is now called Tanglad Bistro, in reference to the ready availability of lemongrass and its use in both the food in the restaurant, and the oils and products used in the spa. Bestselling dishes, for example, are the Adobo (which has lemongrass and coconut milk), Lechong Tanglad Kawali (which is boiled in lemongrass water first, then served with lemongrass honey sauce), and the lemongrass pasta (which uses the fragrant herb instead of basil in its pesto). All—plus the roast chicken and the cream dory—are significant improvements to the old menu, thanks to Verzosa’s passion not only for the art of cooking, but to the love of the business.

“I love food! I basically grew up in the kitchen,” says the 25-year old, who was exposed to his mother’s business as early as five. While his mother taught him about employee relations and how to keep them loyal—“You have to treat them as family, while setting the boundary of being a boss and being nice. My mom loves her people very much. She knows all about their lives so she knows how to deal with them on a personal level.”—he in turn, injected some “new school” approaches to the business.

Food Prep, First

Having graduated in 2004 from the Center for Culinary Arts Manila, Verzosa worked for Westin Philippine Plaza (now Hotel Sofitel) as line cook. It was a conscious decision to not work immediately for his mother.

“I wanted to get experience from a large banquet hotel like Sofitel, so I could apply whatever I learned to our family business,” he explains. “There are some things you cannot change, like the original recipes—kasi ang mga naabutan kong tao andun na, bata pa lang ako sila na yung nasa kitchen; hindi sila pwedeng palitan kasi [maiiba yung] lasa (the people who work for my mom are the same people who were there 20 years ago; it’s not that easy to replace them with new people because they know just how the food is supposed to taste). So what I brought in were things like food safety and food handling, like color-coded chopping boards—things you learn in culinary school.”

Now, he says, Josiah’s conducts regular training for food preparation for its staff, and has gotten an international certification for HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points). “I’m most proud of that, because not all caterers practice proper food preparation.”

Restaurant vs. Catering

His sister, Fresh, meanwhile, who is currently taking her Masters in Enterpreneurial Management at Ateneo, opened the family’s first restaurant outlet in Lancaster Hotel on Shaw Boulevard. Having met Mike Turvill, whose wife Cathy, owns Nurture Spa, Fresh and Turvill struck up the possibility of Josiah’s handling exclusive catering of the Spa’s events. The invitation to handle Tanglad Bistro quickly followed.

“Running a restaurant is very different from running a catering business,” Versoza reflects. “With catering, you concentrate more on the preparation instead of the actual cooking. For example, you have 17 weddings a day, like we do every December—planning is very crucial. Four months before December you have to have all your ingredients with you, all your equipment fixed and running, the freezers, the stoves should be cleaned, the exhaust should be well-ventilated. Lahat. When  December comes, you have no more time to fix stoves and refs and troubleshoot.

“In a restaurant,” he continues, “It’s a la minute. You have to think fast, in the kitchen you have to cook five dishes at once. I enjoy restaurants more because I like the fast pace.”

When asked what he considers himself more, though—a chef or a restaurateur—he says he’s split, skills- and passion-wise, down the middle. “I wanted to be more a chef than a restaurateur, to be more inside the kitchen instead of outside. But I talked to Chef Gaita Fores (of Cibo and Pepato fame); she’s both a restaurateur and a chef. She runs the show and at the same time she cooks, teaches the chefs all the recipes, and handles the money. I think it’s like that in the beginning. You have to be conscious about operations both on the outside and inside.”