From 'mortal enemies' to partners: the love story behind a popular eatery

Today, those former rivals are husband and wife chefs at the helm of Lolo and Lola, a Filipino restaurant that has quietly become one of Canberra's small business success stories.

Named in honour of their grandmother and grandfather, the restaurant has been serving Watson for almost ten years, an outlier in a city where fewer than three in five food and beverage businesses live long enough to see their fifth birthday.

In Filipino, "Lolo" means grandfather and "Lola" means grandmother. It's a nod to the grandparents who first taught them to cook.

On weekends, that tribute to family becomes literal. Whole clans of diners arrive without a reservation, tables of 24 or 32, sometimes filling the room within minutes of opening.

"We wanna stay here for a very long time," Mr Prieto said.

"Because this is the only thing that connects our daughter to our heritage ... and for the continuity of our culinary traditions and our culture and our flavours. Profit has to be just the reward. The purpose is to share our flavours."

For Mrs Prieto, that purpose is rooted specifically in a Filipino idea of community, pakikipagkapwa. While there is no direct English translation, she described it as a mix of empathy and shared humanity with food acting as bridge.

The specials at Lolo and Lola change every week to showcase the Philippines as an archipelago with hundreds of regions, each with its own dishes and flavours. The couple have resisted the urge to "modernise" its flavours.

"As much as possible, we try to steer clear from modernising Filipino flavours," Mrs Prieto said. "Serve it as it is, how we know it."

The couple's journey to a Canberra mainstay began modestly. When they first arrived in Canberra, the couple worked in other kitchens, baked on their days off making Manila-style ensaimadas and hand-delivered them to Filipino households around the city.

It eventually led to a spot at the now defunct Westside Acton Park, where they sunk their savings into a custom food truck built in Queensland and shipped to Canberra.

With little storage, they changed the menu daily and often ate the leftovers themselves when trade was slow.

The breakthrough came with a Jollibee-inspired menu, fried chicken and sweet style spaghetti riffing on the beloved Filipino fast food chain.

"A lot of Filipinos miss Jollibee," Mr Prieto said. Word spread quickly, lines began snaking into the car park with both Filipino and non-Filipino customers.

Despite the continued success, Mr Prieto was blunt about the narrowing economics behind the business and the hospitality sector.

"If you are a restaurant or a café whose main goal is profit, you will not last long," he said.

"Twenty or thirty years ago, the profit margin of a restaurant is like up to 30 per cent. Nowadays, you'll be lucky if you reach 5 per cent profit."

In the ACT, first-time insolvencies in the food and beverage sector have quintupled since 2021. Yet in a city they describe as "very welcoming" and "very accepting", that diversity has also given Lolo and Lola room to grow.

Behind the gloss of the restaurant, the couple are not always the tidy version of a chef partnership.

"We fight a lot," Mr Prieto said.

Their arguments can be traced back to that Manila classroom, where they faced off as scholarship students in culinary school, both convinced they were the better cook.

"We used to be enemies," Mrs Prieto said.

"I was so jealous because he was so good. I didn't like him. But at the same time, I thought, if I'm going to choose a father for my kids, I want [them] to be like him. He's responsible, hardworking, sensible, and intelligent."

Their reconciliation began when they were forced to be in the same team for Chefs on Parade, a major culinary competition that required them to cook a three-course menu from a table of mystery ingredients.

The couple were constantly paired together for extra training and competitions.

"I was actually [creating] opportunities, giving him opportunities to make the first move," Mrs Prieto said. "But he was too shy ... so I had to make the first move."

After nearly a decade, the doors of Lolo and Lola are still open, the room still full, and the former rivals are still shoulder to shoulder on the pass, sending out food to a city that, against the odds, has chosen to keep their story going.