Sadness is the salt that gives happiness its taste.
- Mahmoud Emam

Salt happens. It pervades our waters and diet and bodies. It flavors our language: Taken with a grain of salt. Salt of the earth. Worth your salt. Don't spill the salt. Salt brings life to food, heals wounds and relieves sore throats. It transforms the harvest into pickles and salmon into sweet jerky. It even sees us to the end of life - salt embalms the dead. What is it about salt that is both poetic and common?

There's an easy-to-miss turnoff on the Hwy 1 that blurs into forest and becomes a trail beside the sea. This place possesses a vast and lonely beauty. Nothing about it soothes the senses or offers comfort or softness, yet somehow that coast and its nameless waves restore the spirit. Hope glimmers there like salt caught in the rocks.

The first pilgrimage - each time is a pilgrimage, never just a trip - was on a chicken-skin-raising, windy winter afternoon. I went with a dear friend who knew that place and also knew, intuitively, that harvesting salt and seaweed could help to heal and gather the spirit. We drove seven hours that day to share just four hours on the rocks, but it was enough. The second was in June, when I brought my parents visiting from the Philippines. Their hair tossed by the wind, they bravely and half-reluctantly followed the winding trail as I insisted we keep going, to find one bright seam of salt we could symbolically gather from together. My mother's province is Pangasinan, which literally translates to "The Land of Salt" (asin means salt). We were cold and tired, yet I felt half-superstitious this trip could strengthen the wavering bridge linking our two worlds.

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.
- Isak Dinesen

Just before the fall solstice, I returned to the point once more in search of the small pools we had spotted in the spring. After a long sunny summer, the pools were now thickened and crystallized, the surface cloudy and still. We fell into a quiet meditation, wielding dinner spoons to separate flakes from water and scrape crystals from sandstone. Curious, I dipped a finger into the water and tasted it. It was nearly unbearable, an entire ocean concentrated into a brine that brought tears to my eyes.

The bag of salt from that day still sits in my kitchen, untouched. Next to it rests a pouch of red clay sea salt I've carried for years from the Big Island, and a large-grained salt from Pangasinan. I tell myself these are to be used for guests, for celebration or for gifts. While our household liberally uses boxes of store bought Kosher or sea salt, I hoard these talismans, these traces of another place and shared moments under the sun.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
- Nelson Mandela

My promised land is not one of milk and honey, but of salt. It is the substance of my mother's home province, and a point off the map on Hwy 1 where I remembered how to come alive. In some inexplicable way, this last pilgrimage also helped to recover my creative salt. It reminded me I am worth my salt only when I return to things that refuse to be abandoned, to heed an inevitable pull to the kitchen and the blank pages of my journal.

We write, cook and salt to affirm a place in the universe. Our lives can be scrawled or simmered, set in loaves or stanzas, recipe or verse. They sing the same words in different languages: I am here, I am here. Happy Filipino American History Month!

Alex Orquiza’s dissertation, “A Pacific Palate: exchanges in food, nutritional science and cuisine between the United States and the Philippines, 1898-1946,” examines how Filipinos reacted to American food policies. While the actions take place in the Philippines, it is also an American history story analyzing the everyday tangible effects of empire at the periphery. The study explores reforms in schools, advertising, the new English-language popular literature, and the different consumption patterns in Manila and the provinces. Using approaches from anthropology and comparative transnational empire studies, it differs from previous histories of the Philippine-American exchange in its extensive use of Tagalog and Bisaya sources and its goal of analyzing the Filipino middle class alongside the Spanish- and English-speaking ruling elite.

Many of us still look at Spain with nostalgic eyes and claim that we borrowed many foods from THAT colonial power (rellenos, paellas, chorizos, afritadas, etc.). However, if we measured the square footage within business areas in the Philippines devoted to American style fast food chains as opposed to those featuring Spanish foods, you would know who won the food wars in the Philippines.

Alex first came to Cendrillon (our restaurant in SoHo from 1995-2009) around late summer in 2008 following the advice of his dissertation adviser, the eminent anthropologist, Sid Mintz, that he go and see me. Sid became a good friend through other notable academics in NYU and he knew that I had much contact with the most important Philippine food scholar, Doreen Gamboa-Fernandez.

I was personally excited at the thought of knowing someone who was going to devote a good number of years, legwork and brain power doing serious study on the American influence on our food. I had written a short chapter about it in our cookbook, Memories of Philippine Kitchens (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2006). My chapter, entitled “The American Influence: Transformations,” albeit brief, expounded on my personal theory on what the Americans did to institutionalize and ingrain a taste preference so thoroughly in the Filipino psyche during this period in Philippine history that we feel the repercussions even more deeply today. Considering that Spain had us under her yoke for 350 years and America only 50, why are we so enamored, bedazzled and bewitched still of all things American especially with its food?

In every type of forum imaginable that deals with Philippine food, no one asks why Filipinos love fried chicken, hamburgers and fries. The one question that is constantly asked by both Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike: Why is our food not mainstream in the US and for that matter, wherever Filipinos have settled? The question does not even ask why our love for American food is not in the least bit reciprocated. Filipinos themselves are oblivious of their taste preference. I guess it reflects upon how this worldview accepts American food as a default—that it is loved and eaten everywhere, it is a universal food and no one even questions why we eat it all the time.

But life has its many surprises. Alex’s findings give us big, bold clues as to why Filipino food remained in the shadows too long compared with the growing Filipino population in the US. The Americans wanted it that way for they saw no redeeming value to it. And in my opinion, it is because of gross ignorance on their part and a desire to make the Philippines a receptive market to their products and goods NOT that there is something inherently inferior in our food.

Alex and I conducted an email exchange of ideas and questions triggered by his research findings not only in the libraries but also out in the marketplace both in the US and the home country and how our food is presented and viewed by both Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike.

AMY BESA: Alex, can you briefly describe what your research is about?

ALEX ORQUIZA: I'm a first-generation Filipino-American from the San Francisco Bay Area now finishing my PhD in the Johns Hopkins department of history. For the better part of the last three years, I've been researching the changes and American influences on Filipino cuisine during the American Period. I came to this project because I've always been interested in the intersection of food and history. I had originally intended to do a dissertation about the disproportionate representation of Southeast Asian restaurants in the US. There are a ton of Filipinos in the country, yet there are few Filipino restaurants. Alternatively, there are almost no Thais, but you can find Thai restaurants everywhere. But as an historian, I sought the answers in the past and am convinced that the colonial legacy of the Americans in the Philippines still resonates today in Filipino food.

Amy: Tell me more about your approach or mindset when you decided you were going to pin down every source available in both the US and in the Philippines that would be relevant to the Philippine-American food exchange from 1898—1946.

Alex: My weird 18th-century approach to the project, with the "rigor and discipline" you cite, really comes from two places. First, I'm an historian by training and appreciate work that can be supported with evidence. There are not many cultural historians working on the Philippine-American exchange in the first place, and because of the destruction of the archives in Manila during World War II, very few works that cite archives and original resources. The only way to write this story is to chase down every little bit of minutiae—menus, advertisements, school syllabuses, diary accounts, and letters—that I could find.

Secondly, I recognized that so much of the historical research on the American Period in the Philippines was focused solely on Manila. Perhaps it's a function of the fact that much of the scholarship, and many of the scholars, is based in the National Capital Region. But Manila is not representative of the rest of the provinces. I wanted to find these regional stories, compare them against each other, and find explanations for the differences in the food histories of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao during the 20th century.

Before I left for the Philippines, I spent six months researching in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC for American records on food. Not surprisingly, most of the accounts written by Americans described a distaste and little interest in trying Filipino food. There were, however, some exceptions with Americans impressed by fiestas, the variety of produce, and a real fascination with lechon.

So when I arrived in the Philippines, I was very excited to see that Filipinos oftentimes reacted the same way to American food. It took a whole lot of advertising, educating, and instruction to convince Filipinos to eat like Americans—and it wasn't always successful. So I just went in with an open mind, realized I needed to spend double the amount of time I had intended in the archives, and ended up seeing the country through its university and provincial government libraries.

AMY: I always describe you to others as someone who is both an insider and an outsider to Philippine society having been born and raised in California, but choosing to focus on Philippine foodways for your dissertation. Can you expand on that? Where are you most at home, here in the US or in the Philippines?

ALEX: I really believe that the reason why I was successful in finding so many sources was because of my status as a Fil-Am. As you said, I am "an insider and an outsider to the Philippine culture." My dad is Nuevo Ecijeño and my mom is Ilocano, so right off the bat, I instinctively wanted to conduct research outside of Manila. I quickly enrolled in intensive Tagalog instruction when I arrived and over the course of my research, was happily speaking Tagalog with colleagues and librarians who immediately respected me as an American-trained Fil-Am interested in immersing myself in non-American viewpoints on Philippine history. I grew up surrounded by titos and titas in one of the most densely Filipino communities in the United States. But that is not the same thing as the Philippines. After two years, I definitely have my moments when I will tell my Fil-Am friends that the differences are just more than we realize. Being a Fil-Am really prepares one just a small fraction for the Philippines.

That being said, I feel equally at home in both countries. My mom and dad live in California. But I have so many relatives in Manila that holidays there are actually more exciting than here. I love that new friends are so easily made in the Philippines and take our reputation for hospitality very much to heart in the States. I definitely want to return and teach again at U[niversity of the] P[hilippines] Diliman in the future. I recognize that my career as an American scholar affords me more fellowship opportunities than my colleagues in the Philippines. I've only been able to do this thanks to funding from Johns Hopkins and the Fulbright Commission. When I see how much my colleagues in the Philippines believe in my project, I truly feel indebted to all those who helped me there. It would be foolish to stay in the US and not to give back.

AMY: What do you think is the mindset of restaurateurs in Manila that feature Filipino food? I think what they produce in their restaurants would be a Rorschach test on how they feel about Filipino food.

I ask this question because you discovered through your research how the Americans who were in the Philippines during the colonial period showed nothing but disgust for the Filipino food they encountered. I somehow feel that the legacy of having our food so disparaged and dismissed easily lingers on to this day.

I am still asked WHY Filipino food is not mainstream in the US. For most people, mainstream means that it should be as ubiquitous as the Thai and Vietnamese restaurants that litter the landscape. I always respond that we should NOT compare ourselves to these other cuisines and how they have proliferated in many cities. This feeling is so ingrained that I am convinced that people like to wallow in their misery. And when we break through this glass ceiling, they are so blinded by this “victimhood” that they can't see the great strides we have made in moving our food forward in this country.

ALEX: My restaurant view of Manila is admittedly small because, as a grad student on stipend, I was penny-pinching and did not break my bank at the “sosyal na sosyal” places. So I spent the majority of my money eating at “turo turos,” to be honest. But I'll give you a few vignettes instead to let you know how much I'd rather be eating kinilaw in Dumaguete or lechon in Cebu.

I was dragged unwillingly to Abé in Fort Bonifacio one night by a bunch of Americans on a Saturday night. I wanted to take everyone to the Pasig dampa but was outnumbered because my American dining companions were told that Abé was "the place" to go for Filipino food, which was shocking to me because, while I respect what they're doing at that restaurant by cleaning up presentation and it's a beautiful space, it's pretty far removed from how many Filipinos eat. Anyway, while we were there, my American companions unfortunately voiced their views of Filipino food as "something overcooked with rice" or "pork with pork." As the only ethnic Filipino there, I certainly was upset and spent most of the evening talking to the waiters in Tagalog about how disappointed I was in dining with such closed-minded people.

Luckily, most Americans are not this bad and many of the Americans I dined with in Manila would rather go to the Cubao dampa than Abé. But there are a few places that I got excited about while I was there. Reyes Barbecue, which is a chain, made a remarkably good inihaw na pusit. Within UP, Chocolate Kiss served a pretty great sinigang. Binalot tries to follow along the ethos of baon packed individually in a banana leaf. For someone who didn't want to spend more than P250 per meal, I was a very happy camper with the amount of dining options.

But it's that high price point that worries me. The overwhelming majority of higher-priced restaurants in the Pinas are still not serving Filipino food. The pride and drive to create, say, a Danny Meyer empire of making really well-made, well-marketed Filipino food still hasn't hit the industry in Manila. Most Filipinos are still satisfied to equate the best meals with buffets in hotels in Makati. An intimate, local, and proud restaurant that we could recommend to our expat friends visiting Manila still escapes me. Which is why I still tell my friends to just go to the dampa.

AMY: Finally, do you think your research can contribute towards dealing with this mindset and provide a “satisfying” explanation to the aggrieved Filipino regarding this perceived slight by the American diner to our food?

ALEX: I think my research could help explain why this colonial mindset still exists for sure. I don't think I realized it was so pervasive when I was growing up in California because, to be honest, I grew up surrounded by it. Most of the older Fil-Ams I knew were so interested in showing they had made it in the US that looking back to the Philippines was a low priority. I didn't know a whole lot when I first arrived in the Philippines myself just because it's not something we first-generations had much experience with, no matter how many summers we flew back to visit our families. I know things have changed and there's a larger number of balikbayan who spent more time in the Pinas than kids born in the US like me. But even then, the knowledge of what the Americans did in the Philippines is under explored in American academia. In the Philippines, it is looked at critically and receives a proper post-colonial critique. However, not enough of that story is taught to Fil-Ams and if they are exposed to it, it's at the university level in the few Filipino American history courses in the country when it should be a large part of the American history survey or curriculum. I'd put it this way: the British education system spends a lot more time talking about their legacy in India, the Caribbean and Africa than we do. While it was only 50 years, the American Period in the Philippines still has incredibly resonant repercussions simply because, well, the reach of the US is still so strong in the Philippines. That may be a controversial viewpoint for many, but it's undeniable.

ALEX: My turn to ask you questions: Why are some restaurateurs still obsessed with this idea of bringing Filipino cuisine to the mainstream?

(Note: At this point, I did not get the chance to answer Alex’s questions via email, but I will answer them here.)

AMY: Food is so much intertwined with identity and self-respect. This is why I feel so many Filipinos want a “restaurant they can be proud of, something to showcase their food and culture” because if you accept their food, you accept them, too, in the social context of the US. The problem is that, just like adobo and its limitless variations, everyone has his or her own idea of what that place should be. So the quest goes on because many Filipinos believe that they are the only ones who know what a true Filipino restaurant should be. It is good that such pride exists and a demand for a good Filipino restaurant is bottomless. But the downside to this is the “crab mentality” and knives are ever ready to stick it into anyone who deigns puts his or her stamp on the food that does not match their own.

ALEX: What are the disadvantages of mainstreaming Filipino cuisine so that it's as ubiquitous like Thai or Vietnamese?

AMY: You know the saying “beware of answered prayers.” Everyone wants to see a proliferation of Filipino restaurants around just like Thai and Vietnamese restaurants which sprout all over the place ad nauseum. When you talk to people whose food has been mainstreamed like the Chinese and Indians about how their food is represented in these restaurants, they always say that the food is no good and does not compare to home cooking. The restaurant industry has really suffered a huge decline in the past couple of decades and it is caused by twin factors of people demanding good food for cheap prices and soaring prices of food, gasoline, kitchen supplies everywhere. Most businesses are forced to use shortcuts (packaged mixes, cheap cuts of meat, frozen fish), hire inexperienced cheap labor and cut costs wherever they can. If people want to have many good Filipino restaurants around, they should put their money where their mouth is: they should be willing to pay the price of what it takes to build one and keep it going.

ALEX: Do Filipinos in the US play an active role in introducing Filipino cuisine to other Americans?

AMY: Of course, they do and the more enlightened they are about our history and how our lives are affected on a daily basis by what happened a century ago, the better we will be for it. One cannot define a good strategy in promoting our food in this country without that understanding. Where do you start? You can see the results of people who try based on assumptions that are all over the map. The worst is the assumption that our food is brown, oily and stinky and so we must surreptitiously pass it on to the unsuspecting American just in case they might like it and then we tell them it is Filipino if they like it. I get horrified when I see posts like this on Facebook.

Sometimes it is good to have a discussion about this with people who have no emotional stake in the subject matter. It happened earlier this year when I had a meeting with Leslie Stoker, the President of my publisher, Stewart, Tabori and Chang. She was quite excited that the head of the London-based Sales Department of their holding company had specifically picked out Memories for a revised and updated edition because of its sales potential. In this day and age, the publishing world is no longer run by its editorial board, but rather it sales department. So if Sales says this book is a seller, we need to have it updated to reflect the new restaurant, Purple Yam (the first edition ended with a chapter on Cendrillon recipes), then it will have a much longer life in print. Sales had deemed it to be THE Philippine cookbook that people go to and wanted to take the opportunity to increase its sales all over the world.

---

At that moment, I felt some pride in what we had accomplished. To stoke the fire, I said, “Yes, this would be good for Filipinos because they feel that their food is largely ignored here and abroad.” Before I could add to that, Leslie looked at me and said, "Well, it is because we do not know enough about it. That’s why we need this book to solve that problem.”

Well, that pretty much shut me up. How simple! Our food is not mainstream because people do not know about it and we need more books like Memories to educate people about it. So much for the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth.

I really had a good laugh after that. And I proceeded to rid my mind with all that baggage. This is really what we should all do in the new year of 2012. Throw out all the baggage and start with a fresh look because our food is good. People will love it when they learn about it. We wish all of you a year of happy and healthy eating. And eat that Pinoy food with love and relish it because there is nothing like it in the world.

Alex Orquiza’s dissertation, “A Pacific Palate: exchanges in food, nutritional science and cuisine between the United States and the Philippines, 1898-1946,” examines how Filipinos reacted to American food policies. While the actions take place in the Philippines, it is also an American history story analyzing the everyday tangible effects of empire at the periphery. The study explores reforms in schools, advertising, the new English-language popular literature, and the different consumption patterns in Manila and the provinces. Using approaches from anthropology and comparative transnational empire studies, it differs from previous histories of the Philippine-American exchange in its extensive use of Tagalog and Bisaya sources and its goal of analyzing the Filipino middle class alongside the Spanish- and English-speaking ruling elite.

Many of us still look at Spain with nostalgic eyes and claim that we borrowed many foods from THAT colonial power (rellenos, paellas, chorizos, afritadas, etc.). However, if we measured the square footage within business areas in the Philippines devoted to American style fast food chains as opposed to those featuring Spanish foods, you would know who won the food wars in the Philippines.

Alex first came to Cendrillon (our restaurant in SoHo from 1995-2009) around late summer in 2008 following the advice of his dissertation adviser, the eminent anthropologist, Sid Mintz, that he go and see me. Sid became a good friend through other notable academics in NYU and he knew that I had much contact with the most important Philippine food scholar, Doreen Gamboa-Fernandez.

I was personally excited at the thought of knowing someone who was going to devote a good number of years, legwork and brain power doing serious study on the American influence on our food. I had written a short chapter about it in our cookbook, Memories of Philippine Kitchens (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2006). My chapter, entitled “The American Influence: Transformations,” albeit brief, expounded on my personal theory on what the Americans did to institutionalize and ingrain a taste preference so thoroughly in the Filipino psyche during this period in Philippine history that we feel the repercussions even more deeply today. Considering that Spain had us under her yoke for 350 years and America only 50, why are we so enamored, bedazzled and bewitched still of all things American especially with its food?

In every type of forum imaginable that deals with Philippine food, no one asks why Filipinos love fried chicken, hamburgers and fries. The one question that is constantly asked by both Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike: Why is our food not mainstream in the US and for that matter, wherever Filipinos have settled? The question does not even ask why our love for American food is not in the least bit reciprocated. Filipinos themselves are oblivious of their taste preference. I guess it reflects upon how this worldview accepts American food as a default—that it is loved and eaten everywhere, it is a universal food and no one even questions why we eat it all the time.

But life has its many surprises. Alex’s findings give us big, bold clues as to why Filipino food remained in the shadows too long compared with the growing Filipino population in the US. The Americans wanted it that way for they saw no redeeming value to it. And in my opinion, it is because of gross ignorance on their part and a desire to make the Philippines a receptive market to their products and goods NOT that there is something inherently inferior in our food.

Alex and I conducted an email exchange of ideas and questions triggered by his research findings not only in the libraries but also out in the marketplace both in the US and the home country and how our food is presented and viewed by both Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike.

AMY BESA: Alex, can you briefly describe what your research is about?

ALEX ORQUIZA: I'm a first-generation Filipino-American from the San Francisco Bay Area now finishing my PhD in the Johns Hopkins department of history. For the better part of the last three years, I've been researching the changes and American influences on Filipino cuisine during the American Period. I came to this project because I've always been interested in the intersection of food and history. I had originally intended to do a dissertation about the disproportionate representation of Southeast Asian restaurants in the US. There are a ton of Filipinos in the country, yet there are few Filipino restaurants. Alternatively, there are almost no Thais, but you can find Thai restaurants everywhere. But as an historian, I sought the answers in the past and am convinced that the colonial legacy of the Americans in the Philippines still resonates today in Filipino food.

Amy: Tell me more about your approach or mindset when you decided you were going to pin down every source available in both the US and in the Philippines that would be relevant to the Philippine-American food exchange from 1898—1946.

Alex: My weird 18th-century approach to the project, with the "rigor and discipline" you cite, really comes from two places. First, I'm an historian by training and appreciate work that can be supported with evidence. There are not many cultural historians working on the Philippine-American exchange in the first place, and because of the destruction of the archives in Manila during World War II, very few works that cite archives and original resources. The only way to write this story is to chase down every little bit of minutiae—menus, advertisements, school syllabuses, diary accounts, and letters—that I could find.

Secondly, I recognized that so much of the historical research on the American Period in the Philippines was focused solely on Manila. Perhaps it's a function of the fact that much of the scholarship, and many of the scholars, is based in the National Capital Region. But Manila is not representative of the rest of the provinces. I wanted to find these regional stories, compare them against each other, and find explanations for the differences in the food histories of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao during the 20th century.

Before I left for the Philippines, I spent six months researching in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC for American records on food. Not surprisingly, most of the accounts written by Americans described a distaste and little interest in trying Filipino food. There were, however, some exceptions with Americans impressed by fiestas, the variety of produce, and a real fascination with lechon.

So when I arrived in the Philippines, I was very excited to see that Filipinos oftentimes reacted the same way to American food. It took a whole lot of advertising, educating, and instruction to convince Filipinos to eat like Americans—and it wasn't always successful. So I just went in with an open mind, realized I needed to spend double the amount of time I had intended in the archives, and ended up seeing the country through its university and provincial government libraries.

AMY: I always describe you to others as someone who is both an insider and an outsider to Philippine society having been born and raised in California, but choosing to focus on Philippine foodways for your dissertation. Can you expand on that? Where are you most at home, here in the US or in the Philippines?

ALEX: I really believe that the reason why I was successful in finding so many sources was because of my status as a Fil-Am. As you said, I am "an insider and an outsider to the Philippine culture." My dad is Nuevo Ecijeño and my mom is Ilocano, so right off the bat, I instinctively wanted to conduct research outside of Manila. I quickly enrolled in intensive Tagalog instruction when I arrived and over the course of my research, was happily speaking Tagalog with colleagues and librarians who immediately respected me as an American-trained Fil-Am interested in immersing myself in non-American viewpoints on Philippine history. I grew up surrounded by titos and titas in one of the most densely Filipino communities in the United States. But that is not the same thing as the Philippines. After two years, I definitely have my moments when I will tell my Fil-Am friends that the differences are just more than we realize. Being a Fil-Am really prepares one just a small fraction for the Philippines.

That being said, I feel equally at home in both countries. My mom and dad live in California. But I have so many relatives in Manila that holidays there are actually more exciting than here. I love that new friends are so easily made in the Philippines and take our reputation for hospitality very much to heart in the States. I definitely want to return and teach again at U[niversity of the] P[hilippines] Diliman in the future. I recognize that my career as an American scholar affords me more fellowship opportunities than my colleagues in the Philippines. I've only been able to do this thanks to funding from Johns Hopkins and the Fulbright Commission. When I see how much my colleagues in the Philippines believe in my project, I truly feel indebted to all those who helped me there. It would be foolish to stay in the US and not to give back.

AMY: What do you think is the mindset of restaurateurs in Manila that feature Filipino food? I think what they produce in their restaurants would be a Rorschach test on how they feel about Filipino food.

I ask this question because you discovered through your research how the Americans who were in the Philippines during the colonial period showed nothing but disgust for the Filipino food they encountered. I somehow feel that the legacy of having our food so disparaged and dismissed easily lingers on to this day.

I am still asked WHY Filipino food is not mainstream in the US. For most people, mainstream means that it should be as ubiquitous as the Thai and Vietnamese restaurants that litter the landscape. I always respond that we should NOT compare ourselves to these other cuisines and how they have proliferated in many cities. This feeling is so ingrained that I am convinced that people like to wallow in their misery. And when we break through this glass ceiling, they are so blinded by this “victimhood” that they can't see the great strides we have made in moving our food forward in this country.

ALEX: My restaurant view of Manila is admittedly small because, as a grad student on stipend, I was penny-pinching and did not break my bank at the “sosyal na sosyal” places. So I spent the majority of my money eating at “turo turos,” to be honest. But I'll give you a few vignettes instead to let you know how much I'd rather be eating kinilaw in Dumaguete or lechon in Cebu.

I was dragged unwillingly to Abé in Fort Bonifacio one night by a bunch of Americans on a Saturday night. I wanted to take everyone to the Pasig dampa but was outnumbered because my American dining companions were told that Abé was "the place" to go for Filipino food, which was shocking to me because, while I respect what they're doing at that restaurant by cleaning up presentation and it's a beautiful space, it's pretty far removed from how many Filipinos eat. Anyway, while we were there, my American companions unfortunately voiced their views of Filipino food as "something overcooked with rice" or "pork with pork." As the only ethnic Filipino there, I certainly was upset and spent most of the evening talking to the waiters in Tagalog about how disappointed I was in dining with such closed-minded people.

Luckily, most Americans are not this bad and many of the Americans I dined with in Manila would rather go to the Cubao dampa than Abé. But there are a few places that I got excited about while I was there. Reyes Barbecue, which is a chain, made a remarkably good inihaw na pusit. Within UP, Chocolate Kiss served a pretty great sinigang. Binalot tries to follow along the ethos of baon packed individually in a banana leaf. For someone who didn't want to spend more than P250 per meal, I was a very happy camper with the amount of dining options.

But it's that high price point that worries me. The overwhelming majority of higher-priced restaurants in the Pinas are still not serving Filipino food. The pride and drive to create, say, a Danny Meyer empire of making really well-made, well-marketed Filipino food still hasn't hit the industry in Manila. Most Filipinos are still satisfied to equate the best meals with buffets in hotels in Makati. An intimate, local, and proud restaurant that we could recommend to our expat friends visiting Manila still escapes me. Which is why I still tell my friends to just go to the dampa.

AMY: Finally, do you think your research can contribute towards dealing with this mindset and provide a “satisfying” explanation to the aggrieved Filipino regarding this perceived slight by the American diner to our food?

ALEX: I think my research could help explain why this colonial mindset still exists for sure. I don't think I realized it was so pervasive when I was growing up in California because, to be honest, I grew up surrounded by it. Most of the older Fil-Ams I knew were so interested in showing they had made it in the US that looking back to the Philippines was a low priority. I didn't know a whole lot when I first arrived in the Philippines myself just because it's not something we first-generations had much experience with, no matter how many summers we flew back to visit our families. I know things have changed and there's a larger number of balikbayan who spent more time in the Pinas than kids born in the US like me. But even then, the knowledge of what the Americans did in the Philippines is under explored in American academia. In the Philippines, it is looked at critically and receives a proper post-colonial critique. However, not enough of that story is taught to Fil-Ams and if they are exposed to it, it's at the university level in the few Filipino American history courses in the country when it should be a large part of the American history survey or curriculum. I'd put it this way: the British education system spends a lot more time talking about their legacy in India, the Caribbean and Africa than we do. While it was only 50 years, the American Period in the Philippines still has incredibly resonant repercussions simply because, well, the reach of the US is still so strong in the Philippines. That may be a controversial viewpoint for many, but it's undeniable.

ALEX: My turn to ask you questions: Why are some restaurateurs still obsessed with this idea of bringing Filipino cuisine to the mainstream?

(Note: At this point, I did not get the chance to answer Alex’s questions via email, but I will answer them here.)

AMY: Food is so much intertwined with identity and self-respect. This is why I feel so many Filipinos want a “restaurant they can be proud of, something to showcase their food and culture” because if you accept their food, you accept them, too, in the social context of the US. The problem is that, just like adobo and its limitless variations, everyone has his or her own idea of what that place should be. So the quest goes on because many Filipinos believe that they are the only ones who know what a true Filipino restaurant should be. It is good that such pride exists and a demand for a good Filipino restaurant is bottomless. But the downside to this is the “crab mentality” and knives are ever ready to stick it into anyone who deigns puts his or her stamp on the food that does not match their own.

ALEX: What are the disadvantages of mainstreaming Filipino cuisine so that it's as ubiquitous like Thai or Vietnamese?

AMY: You know the saying “beware of answered prayers.” Everyone wants to see a proliferation of Filipino restaurants around just like Thai and Vietnamese restaurants which sprout all over the place ad nauseum. When you talk to people whose food has been mainstreamed like the Chinese and Indians about how their food is represented in these restaurants, they always say that the food is no good and does not compare to home cooking. The restaurant industry has really suffered a huge decline in the past couple of decades and it is caused by twin factors of people demanding good food for cheap prices and soaring prices of food, gasoline, kitchen supplies everywhere. Most businesses are forced to use shortcuts (packaged mixes, cheap cuts of meat, frozen fish), hire inexperienced cheap labor and cut costs wherever they can. If people want to have many good Filipino restaurants around, they should put their money where their mouth is: they should be willing to pay the price of what it takes to build one and keep it going.

ALEX: Do Filipinos in the US play an active role in introducing Filipino cuisine to other Americans?

AMY: Of course, they do and the more enlightened they are about our history and how our lives are affected on a daily basis by what happened a century ago, the better we will be for it. One cannot define a good strategy in promoting our food in this country without that understanding. Where do you start? You can see the results of people who try based on assumptions that are all over the map. The worst is the assumption that our food is brown, oily and stinky and so we must surreptitiously pass it on to the unsuspecting American just in case they might like it and then we tell them it is Filipino if they like it. I get horrified when I see posts like this on Facebook.

Sometimes it is good to have a discussion about this with people who have no emotional stake in the subject matter. It happened earlier this year when I had a meeting with Leslie Stoker, the President of my publisher, Stewart, Tabori and Chang. She was quite excited that the head of the London-based Sales Department of their holding company had specifically picked out Memories for a revised and updated edition because of its sales potential. In this day and age, the publishing world is no longer run by its editorial board, but rather it sales department. So if Sales says this book is a seller, we need to have it updated to reflect the new restaurant, Purple Yam (the first edition ended with a chapter on Cendrillon recipes), then it will have a much longer life in print. Sales had deemed it to be THE Philippine cookbook that people go to and wanted to take the opportunity to increase its sales all over the world.

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At that moment, I felt some pride in what we had accomplished. To stoke the fire, I said, “Yes, this would be good for Filipinos because they feel that their food is largely ignored here and abroad.” Before I could add to that, Leslie looked at me and said, "Well, it is because we do not know enough about it. That’s why we need this book to solve that problem.”

Well, that pretty much shut me up. How simple! Our food is not mainstream because people do not know about it and we need more books like Memories to educate people about it. So much for the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth.

I really had a good laugh after that. And I proceeded to rid my mind with all that baggage. This is really what we should all do in the new year of 2012. Throw out all the baggage and start with a fresh look because our food is good. People will love it when they learn about it. We wish all of you a year of happy and healthy eating. And eat that Pinoy food with love and relish it because there is nothing like it in the world.

The Philippines and its diaspora are a culinary landscape. A global archipelago of scent, sight, sizzle, and spice. An empire of eating memories. 

Food Worlds assembles artists and scholars who together create a map of the world through Filipino food. And what a rich, unending series of combinations and juxtapositions that has turned out to be. Worlds, plural.It is no wonder that the late and great food historian Doreen G. Fernandez (1934-2002) argued that “[i]n spite of his daily participation in its preparation and consumption, the Filipino is often hard put to say just what Philippine food is.” She explained: “The reason for the confusion is that Philippine cuisine, dynamic as any live and growing phase of culture, has changed through history, absorbing influences, indigenizing, adjusting to new technology and tastes, and thus evolving.”¹ Indeed, the very idea of a recipe as the conceptual basis for cooking rapidly disintegrates when it comes to Filipino food worlds. In Kay Cuajunco’s documentary Bibingka, the eco-chef Aileen Suzara implicitly rejects the recipe as a way to learn about Filipino food when she says: “We can get past wanting these measurements and metrics on everything. We can get back into an embodied knowledge around how to cook something.”

Filipino food worlds manifest the incredible riches of the Filipino landscape, testify to the resourcefulness and innovation of its diverse cooks and regions, and serve as an historical record of the Philippines’ encounters with, accommodations to, and indigenization of various colonial powers.Food Worlds takes up this approach to Filipino food ways to consider what making and eating Filipino food reveals about Filipinos in the Philippines and its wide-flung diaspora, as well as those others who (refuse to) eat Filipino. Thus, we focus on the Philippines but also extend our analysis to other communities shaped by the multiple specters of colonialism, militarization, and globalization.

We ask, How does food ground, enable or destabilize Filipino identities? Which foods are central to those identities and how? As the energetic response to the March 2014 blog post “I’d Rather Go Hungry than Eat Filipino [Street] Food Again” indicates, Filipinos around the world are deeply—albeit ambivalently—vested in food as a site of national identity and pride. Kay Cuajunco’s aforementioned video Bibingka explores precisely this tension between celebration and ambivalence, while Laura Kina’s paintings of American foods in Okinawa—accompanied by Wesley Ueunten’s reflections on his “Okinawa Diaspora Blues”— and several works about SPAM suggest the bitterness and even shame that imperial food stuffs engender even as they become the substance and sustenance of childhood memories. “Sprikitik,” from Jessica Hagedorn’s novel Dogeaters, further links those food memories to family politics, writ small and large. Our Pinterest crowdsourcing project adobo MY way, a competition to find the best adobo recipe, may even fan the flames of food nationalism. Just a bit.

We also explore one of Fernandez’s most persistent questions: What are the historical determinants and legacies of Filipino foods? While Fernandez untangled the Chinese and Spanish influences in many iconic Filipino dishes (adobo, pancit, lumpia, paella), she also insisted that Filipino cooks indigenized these dishes, working and reworking their foreign origins, elements and methods until they were wholly Filipino. Alex Orquiza’s essay, “Home Cooking as Diplomacy,” focuses on a cookbook as an instrument of the American imperial project in the Philippines, and Johanna Poethig’s series of tableware, Placesettings, traces those influences as Filipinos and other Asians migrated to the United States. Elaine Castillo’s video The Head Is the Best Part/September 29, 2013 movingly documents the transnational conversation between a daughter cooking “abroad” in England and a mother sharing cooking tips and stories at “home” in the Philippines.

Nerissa Balce’s meditation on “The Meanings of Marrow” moves—like so many Filipinos—between the Philippines and elsewhere to reflect on how humble bulalo finds its different incarnations and aesthetics in a number of settings. Martin Manalansan, Sita Bhaumik, Tim Manalo, Robert Ku, and Melissa Rosete-Wolfe further consider the forced dislocations of “the smelly immigrant,” the “gross” school lunch or restaurant dish, and the fetish of “foreign” products turned textile. These works nuance our understandings of diasporic lives and insist that we see the embodied subjects dematerialized as smells and “exotic” ingredients.

In considering Food Worlds, we also—of necessity—question from where and how food arrives at our tables. Balce reminds us that it is frequently immigrants who perform the labor of transforming body into meat, and Jerry Takigawa’s False Food and Aimee Suzara’s “Litany for the Sea” insist that our food ways are also made up of all the things thrown away and spilled, drifting through our air and oceans.

As the number of sources compiled in “Filipino Food Resources” suggests, there is already a vibrant conversation about Filipino food worlds. We invite you to explore our virtual exhibition as it unfolds from April to June 2014, and we look forward to your comments and thoughts. Please share!

In addition to our generous contributors, we would like to thank the following organizations for allowing us to republish works included in Food Worlds:
Berg/Bloomsbury Academic Press
Maya Besa Roxas, on behalf of the family of Doreen G. Fernandez
Gastronomica
Open Media
Our Own Voice and Rowman Little
Penguin Press
University of California Press

Exhibition List:
Tria Andrews, “Chicken and Rice, Vito Cruz, Manila”
Michael Arcega, SPAM/MAPS
Roberto Ascalon, “Spam”
Nerissa Balce, “The Meanings of Marrow”
Amy Besa, “A Conversation with Historian Alex Orquiza”
Sita Bhaumik, Letter to an Indian Grocery Store, “To Curry Favor”
Eileen Castillo, “The Head is the Best Part/September 29, 2013” and “Santelmo”
Clare Counihan, "Filipino Food Resources"
Kay Cuajunco, Bibingka
Doreen Fernandez, “Culture Ingested” (with Barbara Kischenblatt-Gimblett)
Jessica Hagedorn, “Sprikitik” from Dogeaters
Laura Kina, “Black Market” and “Okinawa—All American Food”
Robert Ku, "SPAM" from Dubious Gastronomy
Martin Manalansan, “Immigrant Lives and the Politics of Olfaction in the Global City”
Tim Manalo, Balut
Johanna Poethig, Placesetting
Melissa Rosete-Wolfe, Orientalist Gift Wrap
Dennis Somera, “getoffthegravytrain,” “tomorrow tamari’maybe,” and “The Brick Oven”
Aileen Suzara, “Searching for the Land of Salt”
Aimee Suzara, “Litany for the Sea”
Jerry Takigawa, False Food
Wesley Ueunten, “Okinawa Diaspora Blues”
Imin Yeh, Interview with Johanna Poethig

Endnote:

First paragraph from essay:

The Sinulog Festival is a festival originating in Cebu City in the Philippines, celebrating the Cebuanos’ conversion to Roman Catholicism; it is held on the third Sunday of January and honors the Santo Niňo— the Santo Niňo de Cebú—or Holy Child Jesus. The festival is wellknown for its street parade, and especially for its exuberant dancing. Sinulog, which comes from the Cebuano root word sulog, or water current, is a description of the forward-backward bodily movement of dancers which mimics the flow of the water current in time with the beat of a drum or drums (de la Calzada 1965 as cited in Bautista 2010: 220). Over the years, the Sinulog Festival has become staged in a variety of different overseas locales. In Hong Kong it is conducted by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who are mostly domestic helpers. This report examines the Sinulog Festival in Hong Kong, exploring a cultural heritage that crosses borders, physically and socially, and considers how its meanings have changed in its Hong Kong context.

The full essay can be found here, free of charge until December 31, 2013.

Abstract

The presence of Filipinos as corporeal and discursive subjects within both America and Asian America has long been contested. On one hand, the dynamic juridical status of Filipinos in America has ranged from American colonial subjects and American nationals to naturalized and native-born citizens. On the other hand, the presence of Filipinos in America has provided labor in key industries from agriculture to nursing. Filipino America has always been a transnational social formation whose history, economy, and culture reflect the interrelated histories of the Philippines and the United States. This essay explores Filipino American aesthetic practices that engage with the corporeal and discursive production of the “Filipino” in both America and Filipino America. The essay investigates the implications of Filipino American visual art and artists “returning” to the Philippines and argues that a cultural logic of “fictions of return” forms a central part of the production of Filipino America as a transnational sociospatial formation. The first section discusses the production of Filipino America in the context of America's exhibitionary complex. The article proceeds to trace exhibitionary practices in the transnational art project Galleon Trade Arts Exchange. The article then discusses works by Christine Wong Yap, Stephanie Syjuco, Reanne Estrada, and Gina Osterloh to highlight how Filipino American visual art has critically engaged with the multiple contradictions within Filipino and Filipino American experiences. The article ends with a rumination on the relationship between cultural production and desire to return and belong.

Please find the full article here free of charge.