Ever have those times when you're craving for something special, such as Hungarian ghoulash, seafood kare-kare, beef stroganoff, or laksa, but it would take too much effort to cook it at home just for yourself or just you and your husband? You are not buying them either, since they come in party trays and therefore too much for just the two of you. 

A good answer to such problematic situations is Celebration Dishes by Dolores. An online food delivery business, Celebration Dishes has as its home-based cook and owner Dolores Cheng, a former advertising agency stalwart, the brains behind the very successful Manprom. She succinctly puts it: "I am a statistic of the pandemic. My marketing enterprise and career of 40 years came to a painful end during the Covid pandemic. Any business can survive a year, a year and a half without revenue, surviving on savings; but two years or more was more than stretch. It was disaster."

But in truth, her advertising career and her love and penchant for cooking were already setting her up for a career in food way before the pandemic occurred. As top brass of Manprom, she traveled a lot and got to try a lot of cuisines. An adventurous eater and a weekend cook even then, she tried many dishes, experimented with them in her kitchen, and developed her versions of the classic recipes for her file, ready to take out and whip up a cherished memory on cue. The final push came during the pandemic, when a couple of friends dropped by her flat, and she served them her laksa, a noodle dish she learned from her Malaysian mom. They liked it so much that they suggested she offer it for orders. It was timely to do so, since the trend at that time had people ordering food from home cooks to add variety to the monotony of daily dishes.

And her celebration dishes began.

"I called my food Celebration Dishes because I wanted people to experience a bit of fancy dishes even at home, even alone. Dishes one would find in the restaurants, then closed, dishes that were a bit tedious and complicated to do, but all done from scratch," Dolores explains.

She started with abbondanza platters, or food designed for special occasions, customized for a minimum of four diners. Eventually, she shifted it to 'Single Blessedness' portions to give solo diners the same luxurious dining experience. She still does abbodanza platters, though, when requested to.

Every week, she releases a schedule of her dishes for the following week, and people order in advance, also on FB. People order days before, she cooks, and she sends them out for delivery. Her menu is as varied as Chinese lumpiang sariwa, char siew rice, laksa and beef hofan to all-meat paella, roasted half Cornish game hen, beef stroganoff and pasta pancetta to seafood kare-kare, laing linguine, chicken inasal Ilonggo style and crispy pork belly.

The weekly food cycles on her menu do not do an exact repeat, although her dishes do, more often with new items — and her price ranges are reasonable for the generous, no-scrimping-on-ingredients "Single Blessed" portions that she offers. Always in the P300 range, except for the steak, which has a premium price of P420. For inquiries and orders, call or send message to 0917-8881759.