Ping's Comfort
Young actor Ping Medina partners with his mother in a restaurant business specializing in home-cooked comfort food
By Rhea Claire Madarang
These days, 24-year-old Ping Medina not only entertains Filipino audiences as an actor in TV soap operas and independent films but also satisfies Filipino palates as a restaurateur.
He recently partnered with his mother, Victoria Chupungco-Medina, in running PenPen, a restaurant that serves home-cooked dishes in the Tomas Morato Avenue area in Quezon City. The restaurant is named after his father, veteran actor Pen Medina.
The young Medina says he is happy with acting but wants a more stable source of income. He played a supporting role in the independent film Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros) and frequently does supporting roles for TV dramas on ABS-CBN and GMA 7.
"Mabilis ang pera sa line of work ko, pero pag wala kang work, wala ka nang ibang source of income [Money comes fast in my line of work, but when you don't have an acting assignment, you don't earn anything at all]," he explains.
Medina first thought of setting up a food stall for fried squid in an MRT station or in any public place. This was at the time when there were still but a few stalls selling the food item. But then fried-squid food stalls started to mushroom all over the place, so he opened his mind to other possibilities.
It was then that he remembered his mother's year-old restaurant on Tomas Morato, PenPen, which catered mainly to the lunch crowd. He realized that he did not have to look far to venture into business, so last August, he partnered with his mother in running the restaurant.
He took charge of PenPen's redecoration, menu expansion, and marketing. He furnished it with new chairs and tables to better suit the restaurant's casual look and feel, and he bought a large industrial stove for its kitchen. Altogether, mother and son shelled out about P100,000 in the improvements.
The menu of the refurbished restaurant reflects Medina's taste in food. He says: "Mahilig ako sa simple lang pero masarap.Yung pag kinakain mo, gumaganda talaga ang pakiramdam mo. Comfort food talaga [I'm fond of simple but delicious food, food that makes you feel good when you eat them—real comfort food]."
For this reason, Medina added the tagline "Comfort Food Araw-Araw [Everyday]" to the restaurant's signage, and proceeded to expand the menu to include what he describes as Filipino home-style cooking "with a twist." Indeed, the items in PenPen's menu are now largely either his own concoctions or modified family recipes. For example, PenPen's mini-cordon bleu is Medina's own recipe, its crispy liempo (a pork dish) is that of his mother, and the creamy garlic kalabasa [squash] is a slightly different version of his older brother's recipe.
Medina learned the business hands-on. During his first month, in fact, he experienced being cook, waiter, and busboy. He says that this way, he found out what it takes to do the job right. By running the business on a day-to-day basis, he says, he was also able to identify which systems were effective and which were not, so he was able to make the necessary changes.
To promote the restaurant, Medina started with online postings on blogs and on Web forums. Eventually, restaurant reviewers asked him to write about his restaurant. PenPen restaurant then got featured on TV shows on QTV and on Jack TV on cable.
