HE had just emerged from a strenuous financial regimen that saw him shed off the Racks chain of American country food, and now Jaguar dealer Wellington ?Willy? Soong has found himself suddenly thrust back in the restaurant business.

Soong was supposed to simply be the silent financier of Mickey?s, the two-year-old European deli that has the makings of another Santi?s, when he agreed early this year to bail Mickey?s owner, Michael Beck, out of a domestic and financial straightjacket.

With the 48-year-old Beck now in a coma after a botched suicide attempt last week, Soong not only has to posthaste take command of the deli?s finances, he has to find fast another industrial partner fast who could sustain Mickey?s gourmet and marketing buzz.

According to the grapevine, Beck?s estranged wife, Nadja, just might be persuaded to return from Germany to continue the Jupiter Street delicatessen and boulangerie that the couple had painstakingly started.

The wife earlier this month relocated to Germany with her three kids with Beck, after having sold out her minority stake to Soong as part of a divorce settlement with her German husband.

Despite the friendly parting, Beck apparently took the separation badly.

His wife?s wedding gown was on the bed, according to friends of the family, when Beck?s nearly lifeless body was found hanging by the bathroom of his newly-rented house in Urdaneta Village on Feb. 16.

Yesterday noon, despite the tragic turn of events, the Jupiter Street deli was humming with business, with a mixed group of local and expatriate crowd wolfing down their lunch.

Nearby, separated only by a glass wall from the dining room and deli counter, a steak was being sizzled to perfection by the wood-fired kitchen, a daily show that has attracted both the curious and the cosmopolitan.

Soong hesitated to discuss the future of the deli, but nevertheless volunteered that the ?prospects are good? for the sausage business that Mickey?s was branching out to.

According to the grapevine, another Mickey?s minority partner, King Sue, the makers of Chinese ham and apparently the deli?s pork supplier, is determined to continue the deli-restaurant business as well, given its strong following with the right crowd with the right pockets.

Money-go-round

? Goldilocks appears to be going from strength to strength, despite the tough times.

The bakery-restaurant chain has just opened its 19th US branch in Temecula, San Diego County, California.

Goldilocks opened its first bakery-restaurant in the United States only in 2005 in Las Vegas.

? PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan is financing an indie film inspired by the life of his grandmother.

It is not immediately clear whether MVP would appear even in a cameo role in the yet-untitled film.

If he does, it would all the more fan the speculative talk that the telecom tycoon is ready to vault the boardroom into the topsy-turvy world of politics.

Heard through the grapevine

Qatar Telecom has yet to take over the operations of the local Liberty Telecoms but there already is a brewing shareholders? rift between minority shareholders allied with the San Miguel group and a Bahrain group allied with QTel over the latter?s unilateral choice to use Motorola as the preferred supplier for the multi-million-dollar equipment contract.

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)