The first course came with a warning of sorts. “The entrées have a little surprise of their own, just like my music,” songwriter Ramelyn Francisco told guests as Chef Ben Cruzate’s fruit starter arrived, its creamy gazpacho sauce hiding a kick of heat.
That surprise ran through the whole October 2 evening at Sol Victoria’s Tagaytay. Ramelyn was launching Love Stories Retold, her second album and her first in dance music. Ben was serving a ten-course “Culinary Story” tracing his career. Her songs came between his courses.
The promise behind the music
Ramelyn never planned to be a recording artist. When her son Coco was small, she joked that she had written his favorite song, “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Coco remembered. Not long before he passed three years ago, he thanked her for being a wonderful mother, then added, laughing, that she had “scammed” him because she wasn’t really a songwriter.
She answered with a promise to write him a real song. It led to Noteline Productions and to her 2025 album RAMdom Thoughts. Friends who heard it sent her photos of the songs in their car playlists, telling her they remembered her and that it made them sad.
“I hope one day we’ll have happy songs,” she says. is her answer: fiv indexe electronic dance tracks, produced by Noteline’s Chona Borromeo and Al Kaz Borromeo. “Tonight, I will give you some happy music,” she told the room.
What the songs say
Most of the album belongs to other people. “These are not my love stories,” Ramelyn says. “They are stories of some people recounted to me in conversations.” “Red Flag in a Suit” follows a woman who loves a spicy romance with the wrong person in a designer suit. “Love for Two – For Now” is “for all the things we compromised for love.” “Loving an Alpha” carries her firmest advice: never make yourself “small, or less, or manageable, just to feel loved.” The right person, she says, “will always try harder.”
“My One” is a vow to her husband PJ after 24 years. “My Goodbye Song” closes the set on a thank-you.
The chef who left IT
Ben’s story begins in his family’s kitchen. “It was not just a place where you prepare food,” he says. “We shared stories and expressed our love for food.” His mother’s lasagna set the standard, and when he told her he wanted to leave information technology to cook, her answer was brief: go, study. She has since passed away, and her influence is in much of his menu.
With modest savings, Ben enrolled at Moderne Culinaire Academy and entered the 2016 Philippine Culinary Cup, taking bronze in the Local Fish or Seafood category.
Sydney, in three dishes
Australia supplied the middle chapters. Cooking at a dinner-show kitchen there, Ben made ceviche daily until, he says, it “became a favorite,” and he now finishes it with coconut milk to add a touch of Filipino culture. A request for a special lunch produced his Hokkien noodle pares, beef over soft noodles with crispy onion and bean sprouts. When his head chef took a vacation, he cooked lamb every day for a month. “You will never know it’s lamb,” he told guests of the pulled shoulder.
Rounding out the ten courses were a soft sisig taco, lasagna, saffron coconut crab risotto, chicken inasal, and a Volcano Mousse.
The bulalo that won
The Kimchi Bulalo was the centerpiece. Ben had the idea long before entering it in a competition, though some diners hesitated to order it. On September 14, 2024, it won the Grand Prize at the Creative Bulalo Challenge, hosted by the Tagaytay City Tourism Office, beating 14 other restaurants.
“Winning proved how powerful it is to stick with what you believe in,” he says. “We never know the timeline of our success. We stick to what we do, and God will lead you to the right timing.”
The mousse closed the night. Ben came home and took on the helm of his grandparents’ restaurant, Sol Victoria’s Tagaytay, in 2020, during the pandemic and the Taal eruption. “Times were challenging,” he says, “but it led to where Sol Victoria is today, and the volcano is a witness to all of it.”
Both Ramelyn and Ben lost someone who first believed in them, and both answered by making something: she turned a promise into songs, and he turned a mother’s kitchen into a menu.