Kamuning Bakery Cafe Burnt, but Continues to Bake

Quezon City’s pioneeer, artisanal and iconic 79-year-old Kamuning Bakery Cafe wishes to express sincere gratitude for the overwhelming outpouring of concern and support by multi-generation customers, friends, the general public and others including many artists, intellectuals, government and business leaders, diverse NGOs, etc. after it suffered an accidental and destructive fire last February 6, 2018.

            Special thanks to the media for support in this difficult and sad crisis.

            Kamuning Bakery Cafe also wishes to thank the Quezon City local government and firemen as well as many Filipino Chinese volunteer fire brigades of Quezon City, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Manila, Marikina, Kalookan, Valenzuela, Bulacan and others for their assistance.

            The plan of Kamuning Bakery Cafe is to somehow, in time and after good planning, rebuild with a special focus on restoration and heritage preservation. The two antique “pugon” or wood-fired brick ovens, parts of the building facade and some memorabilia survived the fire.  

            

Despite the burning of Kamuning Bakery Cafe on February 6, 2018 from   12:52 a.m.to 2:43 p.m., which destroyed most of the establishment and its equipment’s estimated by the Quezon City Fire Department in its February 21, 2018 official report at P22,384,054.46 million pesos in total losses or damages, KBC announced that it has resumed selling some breads and pastries outside the old site at Judge Jimenez Street corner K-1st Street, Quezon City starting February 22, 2018. Its selling hours are shorter from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., due to lack of electricity. 

            Before the fire, Kamuning Bakery Cafe has already operated two small branches at 100 Scout Delgado Street, Quezon City (beside Annabel Restaurant, Morato Avenue) and at SM North Edsa’s 2nd-floor East Bridge (between parking building & main mall, near SM Cinema). These two small branches continue to serve customers despite the fire, with some baking facilities at the Scout Delgado branch.

            Kamuning Bakery Cafe shall continue its various socio-civic undertakings, such as the non-partisan and tertulia-inspired Pandesal Forum with media and intellectuals. Pandesal Forum hosts leaders, newsmakers, artists, and reformers for dialogue with media and intellectuals, with the goal of helping elevate the quality and idealism of public discourse on issues.

Duterte’s Independent Foreign Policy benefits Philippines economically & strategically, will make country safe from possible nuclear attack in any superpower rivalry, analysts say

At the February 8 Pandesal Forum with media at Kamuning Bakery Café in Quezon City, it was the consensus of various geopolitics and economics analysts that President Rody Duterte’s independent foreign policy of balancing Philippine diplomacy with a pivot to Russia and China has numerous strategic and socio-economic benefits, and it safeguards the country from the danger of a possible nuclear attack during a conflict between rival superpowers.

            The analysts said that not only has this reform in foreign policy direction gained new trading partners and allies such as the world’s second largest economy China and energy superpower Russia, Duterte’s independent foreign policy has gained record-high economic gains from traditional ally Japan and also expected to boost USA’s traditional ties with the Philippines under new President Donald Trump.

            The geopolitics and economics experts who shared their multi-disciplinary analyses were General Victor Corpus, former Senator Francisco Tatad, former Undersecretary Butch Valdes, analyst Rod Kapunan, ex-diplomat Ado Pagkalinawan, Catholic University of Louvain graduate and strategic analyst Celso Cainglet, Phil-Brics Strategic Studies, Inc. founder Herman T. Laurel, and the Integrated Development Studies Institute (IDSI) director, Wharton-educated economist and geopolitics analyst George T. Siy.

            The experts said that an independent foreign policy is mandated in the Philippine constitution, that President Duterte is the only Philippine leader in modern times to have upheld this policy not only in terms of balanced and pragmatic diplomacy to make the country an equidistant friend of all major powers, this policy also seeks to uphold the all-important goal of economic sovereignty.

            The analysts said that President Duterte’s reform of seeking neutrality of the Philippines with regards to the strategic rivalry and possible military conflict between the big powers USA and China, USA and Russia will ensure the long-term safety of the Philippines from any nuclear attack by the powers, in the same way most Asean countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and others are not militarily tied up with or strategically beholden to any of the major powers.  

            The analysts said the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the U.S. was signed in 1951 at the height of the Cold War between the capitalist countries and Communist countries, but the world has changed a lot since then and the Cold War ended in 1991, but the country’s leaders had failed to renegotiate the Mutual Defense Treaty and to reform Philippine foreign policy directions.

            The experts said that in March 2015 at the highest point of the tensions over the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea controversy the SWS conducted a survey of the Filipino public sentiment over the prospect of armed conflict between the Philippines and China. The survey showed that 84% of the Filipino public were “worried” about armed conflict with China and half of the people were “worried a great deal”. This is the wisdom of the Filipino people speaking, a sentiment President Rodrigo R. Duterte respects.

            In September 2016 President Duterte set the new pro-Philippines direction, “We will observe and I must insist – I repeat, I must insist – on the time honored principles of sovereign equality, non-interferen ce and commitment to the peaceful settlement of disputes to best serve our people…”

            President Duterte launched the Philippines’ Independent Foreign Policy (IFP) with uniquely Filipino characteristics, re-opening bilateral dialogue with China which immediately bagged $ 25-Billion of investments, soft loans and assistance from China, boosted tourism and agricultural exports.

China’s initiative and prompted other other competing countries such as Japan playing to play catch up and offering $ 19-Billion of its own funding and support to the Philippines. President Duterte’s IFP has also opened the huge potential markets of Russia for Philippine agricultural exports and imports of 4-million barrels of cheaper Iranian oil.

            The normalization of ancient close ties with China also brings the Philippines a special seat on the gigantic 21^st Century “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) project of infrastructure, communication, innovation and trade links that cross from Asia to Europe and back to Asia via the sea, and the Philippines offers the unique prospect of making that New Silk Road circumnavigate the global as OBOR’s eastern hub to the Pacific.

            The experts at the Pandesal Forum said that the Philippines under Spanish colonial rule was an entrepot between the robust China trade with Mexico, Spain and Europe via the fabled “Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade”, that the new independent foreign policy of President Duterte can revive this strategic trade importance of the Philippines via the China-led trans-continental “One Belt, One Road” project.  

            As part of efforts to diversify sources of economic support, the Philippines’ new independent foreign policy reform can also help expand the country’s source of huge infrastructure development funding through the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure International Bank (AIIB) of which even many USA allies Canada, South Korea and Germany are also already founding members.

            Most important of all is the crucial emerging role the Philippines now plays under President Rodrigo R. Duterte as the Pivot for Peace in the Asia-Pacific, being the fulcrum for the balance-of-power in a Multi-Polar World, especially this year 2017 when the Philippines is assuming the role as chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Kamuning Bakery opens at SM North Edsa, 1st branch in 77 years

Quezon City’s pioneer and iconic bakery Kamuning Bakery Café has opened a new branch on December 23 at SM City North Edsa’s East Bridgeway, 2^nd floor, this is its first ever branch in its colorful 77 years history.

Founded in 1939 upon the invitation of Quezon City co-founder the media tycoon Don Alejandro Roces, Kamuning Bakery Café’s founder was Atty. Leticia “Letty” Bonifacio Javier, it was bought and revived in 2014 by writer and realty entrepreneur Wilson Lee Flores.  

Kamuning Bakery Café has steadfastly continued its unique pugon-style, artisanal, no-preservatives, all hand-made and Filipino/Spanish baking traditions.

Since September 2015, Kamuning Bakery Café has also hosted the non-partisan “Pandesal Forum” where leaders and newsmakers dialogue with media and intellectuals over pugon-baked breads and excellent Philippine coffee

. History of Kamuning Bakery Cafe with intellectuals, artists & reform stalwarts: Kamuning Bakery was founded in 1939 as Quezon City’s first bakery by Atty. Leticia “Letty” Bonifacio Javier and her husband Lt. Marcelo Javier (who died fighting the Japanese invaders of World War II in the Battle of Manila). It was acquired and revived in December 2013 by writer, history buff and realty entrepreneur Wilson Lee Flores, he restored the old cafe on March 20, 2015. Kamuning Bakery Cafe continues its artisanal and pugon or wood-fired brick oven baking.

Among its many colorful clients include pre-war media tycoon Don Alejandro Roces who facilitated sale of gov’t. land in 1939 at 50 centavos per square meter, his son the newspaper publisher & activist Joaquin “Chino” Roces, press freedom stalwart U.P. Dean Armando Malay, the late President Cory C. Aquino, national artists like Nick Joaquin and Levi Celerio, many showbiz celebrities, to a public school student who used to walk here to buy pugon-baked breads and is now the first female Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.