Ann Casimiro’s Sweet Success
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Ann and her excellent Silvanas
Small-ish and delicate as their creator, they did not escape the attention of Pete Wells, restaurant critic extraordinaire of The New York Times, who called them “excellent” and added, “No gold leaf adorns the silvanas. It would only get in the way,” in contrast to an attention-hungry gold-leafed and ube-filled USD 100 donut in another Pinoy restaurant in the same borough (For more of Wells’ review, read https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/dining/tsismis-review-pete-wells.html). Indeed, there is no need for such extravagant preening when it comes to Ann’s pastries and meals. The real sumptuousness reveals itself right where it counts: the palate.
Ann’s culinary journey is atypical. She never went to a high-brow cooking school or worked as an apprentice to a fancy-shmancy chef at some gleaming, ultramodern kitchen right in the heart of Paris. Instead, her interest in food and that sweaty work in front of an oven or stove are rooted in her childhood.
As early as seven years old, she was already tasked to go to the wet and produce markets of Bacolod City to purchase ingredients for family meals. Her assignment didn’t end there. She also dove in happily to help in cooking the dishes and desserts. While buying ingredients in NYC is quite literally a world away from her childhood memories of the tias and manangs of Central, Burgos, and Libertad Markets with their old newspapers as food wrappers, cylindrical weights to balance their analog weighing scales, and kingki lamps to supplement the light from flickering fluorescent lamps overhead, the inspiration to cook delightful desserts and meals is unchanged.
Instagram-worthy indeed
Her passion for cooking is holistic; it goes beyond the borders of the kitchen. Ann sees food as an essential part of one’s daily life, so everything that surrounds it or is associated with it is something that draws her devotion. Her family and friends know her not only as an excellent baker and cook but an overall master of table settings, foodscapes for events (especially her own home parties), and flower arrangements. But above all else, baking takes up the most space in her heart.
Ann scours various publications and social media platforms for the latest trends in dessert-making. She closely monitors Instagram accounts of “tried-and-true purveyors of baked goods,” as she calls them but does not disclose a specific name. “If a post looks appealing to me, I follow that person and try their product. If it is good, I support them and share their post to others.”
Instagram and Facebook are Ann’s marketing tools of choice. In the same way that she has found inspirations and ideas from them, many people have found her and photos of her masterpieces shared by Ann herself and many friends and family members, prompting a steady stream of orders from more friends, friends of friends, and complete strangers. More often than not, first-time buyers become recurring customers who adore her baked goodies and praise them to the highest heavens on their own social media platforms, attracting even more people to order from Ann. And so it rinses. And so it repeats.
At around the same time that Ann registered on the radar of Pete Wells, she also received solid praise from Margarita Forés and Edu Manzano in an episode of Metro Channel’s “The Crawl.” Forés, herself named the 2016 Best Chef in Asia as part of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards, exclaimed, “They have the most amazing silvanas!” Meanwhile, Manzano added, “It’s another homerun!” Such approval left Ann dumbfounded, of course. “I never thought I would receive such commendations from internationally revered food and restaurant personalities so soon.”
However, Ann is not one to rest on her silvana laurels. While she may be celebrated right now for their popularity at Tsismis, her baked creations have been proliferating all over the metropolis and beyond long before mid-2019, the opening of the Pinoy restaurant. The foundation of Cucina de Casimiro, Ann’s eponymous business, is actually her sinfully delicious chocolate cake. It continues to make its way to various functions and house parties across the country and abroad, special-ordered, her rising star fueled mostly by word-of-mouth testimonies.
The deliciously sinful chocolate cake that started it all.
What really fulfills Ann is seeing that the final product of her labor tastes and looks great. She says, “If it doesn’t look Instagram-able or if I wouldn’t devour it myself, it isn’t going out that door!” Any and all compliments about her creations are nothing but icing on the cake. However, while she churns silvanas, chocolate cakes, sansrivals, and more from her kitchen, she still has a Mount Everest to climb. “I have tried multiple times to perfect the flan cake—with a few twists to a conglomeration of several recipes to make it my own. It’s such a tricky thing to make and it drives me nuts!”
How do you say “no” to a sansrival cake like this?
Even as she continues to work on the perfect flan cake, she does have her sights set on the future. “Perhaps I could open a small retail shop someday—fingers crossed.” Considering how far she’s come in a very brief time, Ann’s wish may already be rising in the oven as we speak.
To contact Ann Casimiro:
https://instagram.com/cucinadecasimiro?igshid=gf5phrwn3rnf
https://www.facebook.com/Cucina-de-Casimiro-483169048714983/
Agatha Verdadero
Agatha Verdadero is back to her passions of writing, teaching, publishing, and the outdoors, after a long hiatus. She has returned home to Kenya with her beloved poodle mix, Sam.
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