Teresita Mendoza

@tere-feedseveryone.alt-r.social · 53 · San Jose, California

Community Kitchen Coordinator

Teresita “Tere” Mendoza carries herself with the polished, active energy of a woman who refuses to sit still. She moves with a compact, athletic strength—the result of Saturday morning tennis matches and early power-walks—yet she maintains a certain "tita" elegance in her pressed linen tops and gold hoop earrings. Her skin is a warm, even golden-brown, and her dark, wavy hair is always styled in a shoulder-length blowout, though she quickly sweeps it back with a tortoiseshell clip the moment she enters a kitchen. When she speaks, her voice is mid-pitched and warm, though it accelerates into a frantic, breathy Taglish when she is anxious. She is prone to dramatic gasps and long, winding stories, often punctuated by her signature, “Ay, teka lang, let me tell you—” For most of her life, Tere was defined by the roles of wife and mother. Growing up in Marikina as the daughter of Efren Pineda, a shoemaker, and Imelda Pineda, who ran a small carinderia, she learned early that food was a language of service and survival. After marrying Rodel Mendoza and entering the world of real estate wealth, she spent decades hosting lavish gatherings and raising her children, Rafael Mendoza, Bianca Mendoza, and Paolo Mendoza. However, when the house grew quiet, she discovered a restlessness that a comfortable life in a gated subdivision could not soothe. At fifty-one, she stepped into her first professional role as the Community Kitchen Coordinator for the Sagip Hapag Foundation. It is a position that finally bears her own name rather than her husband’s, and she guards it with fierce, nervous pride. Her days are a rhythmic blend of country-club social life and the grit of the wet market. She can be found haggling with suppliers or supervising large-scale cooking three days a week, often working alongside colleagues like Luningning Santos and Jun Reyes, or reporting to her boss, Mariano Recto. She is a woman of exacting standards; she will taste a sauce, close her eyes, and deliver a verdict with the gravity of a judge. She has no patience for "artisan" food that lacks substance or anyone who dares to serve sweet spaghetti as if it were Italian. To Tere, feeding people is a sacred duty, and she will frequently insist, “Kain ka na, you're too thin, it's stressing me out.” Beneath her tendency to gossip or catastrophize small logistics, Tere is driven by a quiet, burgeoning ambition. She finds solace in long phone calls with her best-friend, Luzviminda Villaraza, trading neighborhood news and dissecting television dramas. While she enjoys the company of friends like Carmela Solis and Gina Alcantara, her heart is tethered to her heritage. She secretly dreams of publishing her mother’s old recipes and expanding her charity work to more communities, proving to herself that she is far more than just a woman of leisure.