Filipino cuisine’s future will be shaped in farms, policies, homes
By Marinel E. Peroy
For many Filipino families, cooking food is a shared activity that brings everyone together. From marinating meat, stirring the pot, making sawsawan, or showing off a family specialty, each person has a role.
There’s always someone known for the best kare-kare, someone trusted with adobo, and a tita (aunt) who insists her embutido is the one to try first. These everyday dishes hold memories, identity, and pride long before they appear on any restaurant menu.
Filipino cuisine is getting more attention nowadays, but Chef Myke “Tatung” Sarthou reminded people that being seen is just one part of the story.
At the recent From Plates to Pages: A Gastronomic Dialogue and Tasting Feast conference in Manila, he stressed that the real challenge is to preserve, document, and understand the culture behind the food.
He believes the bigger question is whether the systems behind Filipino food can truly support farmers, producers, families, and future generations.
“Nostalgia and all this cannot be a strategy for feeding the Filipino people,” he said. “We really have to look at how we produce food and how we are able to feed the millions of Filipinos.”
Promoting Filipino food locally and globally
Chef Tatung linked Filipino cuisine to everyday issues such as access, affordability, and food production.
“We have these Filipino fine dining restaurants talking about ingredients sourced from this farmer and this ingredient sourced from this farmer and this artisan and all that,” he said.
“However, the ability to produce enough for the mass market is very limited… So, it’s not accessible to everyone. What is accessible to most Filipinos right now are ingredients that are mass-produced,” he added.
He pointed out that most discussions about food heritage start with restaurants, cookbooks, and special dining experiences, even though many Filipino families are focused on making their limited budgets last.
Independent food scholar and THEPHILBIZNEWS columnist Guillermo “Ige” Ramos agreed: “There’s a great cultural divide between policymakers, the farmers, the consumers… Some of us can actually afford to eat — Let’s splurge, like 8,000 pesos per plate in Hapag [for example]. However, for some families, the 8,000 is their one-month budget for food.”
They also discussed the challenges of logistics, working with private and government groups, and the difficult process MSMEs face in the Philippines.
When presenting abroad, moreover, Chef Tatung shared that he often has to cook Filipino dishes without Filipino ingredients because many are not widely available outside the country.
So, he asked the panel: If Filipino food is being promoted worldwide, where are the trade opportunities for Filipino producers?
“If you promote Filipino food, you need… every Filipino to take economic advantage of that culture and that product.”
He highlighted the gap between telling stories about Filipino food and actually supplying it. He noted that countries like Vietnam and Indonesia can benefit from the demand for ube when Philippine supply chains cannot keep up.
“In spite of our advocacy on trying to promote Filipino food, the grassroots [are] not really benefiting from all that, and that’s very reflective of how the government really supports the masses, the farmers, the manufacturers, and all that.”
Hyperlocatourism or regionalism as a way forward
Building a stronger regional food culture could be a way forward.
Mr. Ramos questioned the idea of treating Filipino food as one broad category, saying, “There’s no such thing as Filipino food; we have regional food.”
He said he does not mean to reject Filipino cuisine, but to make it more specific and honest.
“When you build a restaurant, don’t call it a Filipino restaurant, call it a Maranao restaurant, call it a Maguindanao restaurant,” he said.
He added that focusing on regions can help highlight the real communities, ingredients, and traditions behind the food.
Regionalism can also link food promotion to local economies. If restaurants, institutions, and tourism efforts highlight regions more clearly, they can create demand for specific ingredients, producers, techniques, and food knowledge, rather than turning everything into a standard menu like pancit or lumpia.
According to him, the Philippines is “an archipelago, 7,000 stories,” which makes it hard to have just one national food model.
“If the nation is invented, the menu is a work in progress,” he said.
Chef Tatung then added, “We have to rethink how we are able to make sure that we are able to feed all the Filipinos well, all the Filipinos sustainably from now and in the future.”
Filipino food is now celebrated around the world, but applause alone cannot feed a nation. Nostalgia may make us feel good, but it cannot really fill people’s plates.
The future of our cuisine will be shaped at home: in the farms that grow our foods, the markets that sell it, the kitchens that keep traditions alive, the policies that protect it, the regional food systems that support it, and the everyday tables where Filipino food continues to linger, not just as a source of pride, but a way of life.
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