Between Broadway bits and burger bites

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By John Anthony S. Estolloso

PASS BY the crowded sidewalk of Ledesma Street, peer through the rows of shops brimming with merchandise and hardware, and you would find a quaint, old-fashioned hamburger resto nestled in between these. Enter through their sliding doors and you will be greeted by a shot of nostalgia: a diner-style counter, replete with bar stools, and at one end is a gridle station enclosed in glass, complementing the sliding panels above which the name of the diner is emblazoned: Glor’s Hamburger and Broadway Cafe.

You enter and look around – in stark contrast to the plastic chairs and tables are the venerable framed posters and bills of Broadway and West End musicals and plays. Yes, you read that right: right in the hustle and bustle of Iloilo City is an eatery which celebrates the cosmopolitan allure of musical theatre.

Somehow, I managed to have the chance to drop by a few months ago and sure enough, the vibe was still there. Established in 1974, the restaurant has been serving their hamburgers under the ‘posterized’ works of revered personages of the musical stage: Marvin Hamlisch, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Stephen Schwartz, John Kander, and Lin Manuel-Miranda, among others. Strangely, Stephen Sondheim’s opuses seem absent from the walls.

I was in high school the first time I had the Glor’s encounter. While passing through the general merchandise stores in search for cheap school supplies, I managed to get a glimpse of the colorful designs on the walls and at that opportune time when I was just starting to explore the magic of the musical stage, I realized that it was altogether a whole new world of theater: Broadway wasn’t just about masquerading ghosts and falling chandeliers after all – there was simply so much more. Fledgling theater enthusiast that I was, the experience was quaintly enchanting: all the razzle dazzle of the musical stage encapsulated in colorful posters and Playbills.

Still, truly yours was only an occasional visitor. Prior my recent gastronomical revisit, the last time I broke bread at Glor’s was more than a decade ago. It was a rainy afternoon: I can recall finishing Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows over a hamburger and a hot bowl of pancit molo, letting the latter go lukewarm as I exasperatedly followed the mishaps of Toad of Toad Hall. Disappointingly, I lately discovered that they no longer serve the traditional soups that used to accompany their burgers.

No matter, there is not much beef broiling over missing broth: the real allure of the restaurant is its theatrical theme.  Posters (some scribbled with autographs) of popular standards like Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Cats, Annie, Chicago, and The King and ! ogle at diners like old acquaintances from a more opulent age where tragic make-believe and happy endings are the conventional ways on how things run.

For a shot of nostalgia, framed posters of award-winning shows from the golden years of the musical invite patrons to look back and try something new. Renascent perhaps to today’s generation would be titles like Show Boat, Kiss of the Spider Woman, A Chorus Line, Bye Bye Birdie – and if younger folks can believe that drag productions were acclaimed in the 80’s, La Cage aux Folles.

The fading Playbills with their iconic yellow bands still running across the covers hold titles and designs of hits from yesteryears – Hello, Dolly!, Miss Saigon, Mamma Mia!, Hamilton, and dozens of other shows – enshrining within their pages the people who made things possible on the stage where it happened.

Dotting the lines of musical posters are the occasional bills of plays and photographs of performers: Peter Shaffer’s Equus and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly provide a somber contrast to the song-and-dance vibrance of the musicals while posters of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman seem to recall the best of existentialist drama that the American theatre-stage can muster. And who can miss that demure photo of a smiling Lea Salonga stuck at the resto’s crossbeams?

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What Glor’s has to offer with its burgers is the exhilarating albeit subdued ambiance of the classic theater lobby. Beyond the gastronomic fare is the visual feast: in here, more than the spice is the space – there’s no business like show business after all. So next time you intend to stroll through downtown Iloilo, check out the restaurant. Order a hamburger and while you relish its meaty, succulent flavors, let that vibe of Broadway musicals and plays take care of the rest.

[The writer is the subject area coordinator for Social Studies in one of the private schools in the city.]