Goodbye, Alfredo’s

MEDIUM RARE

After 54 years as a culinary landmark – Quezon City’s steak house – Alfredo’s will soon be removed from its site on Tomas Morato Ave. The two-storey structure designed around pine logs will be replaced as a high-rise condo, the way to go as developers have been going.

“I was 26 when we started,” reminisced Mitos Cabrera Araneta, “I’m now 84.”

They were good years, Mitos, including all those times our UST Philets alumni gathered for our multiple reunions to mark whatever occasion or non-occasion was on the agenda, such freeloading events possibly having contributed to Mitos’ daughter Lisa’s decision to shut the place down. As Lisa must have rued to her mom, more often than not, we oldies brought our pot-luck dishes, stayed for hours in an airconditioned function room, flushed the toilet dozens of times and used up rolls of toilet paper, didn’t order anything but hot and cold water, etc.

Alfredo’s was unique in a city where citizens, gourmets and gourmands from out of town owned an appetite for steak, “imported and local.” The taste for porterhouse, tenderloin, sirloin, and other cuts was acquired, if memory serves, from the old Jusmag restaurant not far from Morato. In those days, Jusmag’s reputation was built around the belief that its steaks came straight from the US army commissary.

In due time, Alfredo’s inherited Jusmag’s clientele and succeeding generations. Alfredo’s secret was not a secret: Serve steak and serve it well, not well-done (unless specified) but if the customer wanted it medium, medium it was, not rare. Non-beef dishes were also on the menu – my favorite was clear chicken soup with bits of celery – but how many people went there for chicken, or pork, anyway?

At its peak, Alfredo’s had a complement of 160 butchers, cooks, kitchen aides, servers. In 2022 with the closure came a full compensation package for loyal employees.

Will there be another steak restaurant after Alfredo’s? Maybe not on Morato, maybe not in QC. Lisa is willing to share her recipes, though not the pine logs, the glass panes and other semi-antiques that were born in the fabulous ‘60s. The fixtures and furniture, including that corny pretend-fireplace at the foyer, are gone forever, like the logo.