by the SERDEF Media Bureau
(first published in the Philippine Online Chronicles, June 17, 2012)
Food entrepreneurs had better sit up and listen.
After Korean bulgogi, Vietnamese pho (noodles) and Indian tandoori, Pinoy adobo and lechon may be next toast of the food-loving world.
Andrew Zimmern, American chef, food writer and teacher who hosts the “Bizarre Food” program on the Travel Channel, predicted that in two years, Filipino food would be the next big thing, “the one we will have been talking about for six months.
Zimmern visited the Philippines in 2007 where he enjoyed such uniquely Pinoy delicacies as balut and frog legs.
In an interview with Today.com, Zimmern explains that there is nothing more to explore and exploit in Chinese, Japanese and Thai cuisine as these are all over and everybody loves them. Implicit in this statement is that the quest for something new would take food adventurers to new gastronomic terrain.
Filipino food combines all these Asian influences with the country’s rich heritage of Spanish cooking, and thus can offer exciting possibilities.
Zimmern goes on to expound on Pinoy fusion cooking:
The impact of China is evident in the use of noodles (pancit), fried rice (sinangag) and spring rolls (lumpia). The Malaysian influence is apparent in the use of coconut milk particularly in desserts, as well as the use of chilli .
On the other hand, it was from Spain Pinoys learned to sauté with olive oil, prepare longganisa, flan, paella, and adobo, and season dishes with with garlic, vinegar, peppercorns and soy sauce.
As of now, Filipino food is not yet in the must-eat list of mainstream America but Zimmern thinks that will soon change. “San Diego (California) now has a big enough ethnic population of Filipinos that chefs are going there and seeing stuff. I think it’ll creep up into Los Angeles and from there go around the rest of the country,” he foresees.
In the meantime, there are Pinoy food entrepreneurs like Andrew James and Sandee Marasigan and Dale Talde who have set out on a mission to showcase Filipino food to the world.
The Masigan couple put up XO46 Heritage Bistro to focus “on preparing Filipino heritage recipes the way our forefathers did—the slow, long-handed way without any fusion influences. We’d like to show everyone that Filipino cuisine, in its purest form, can be made just as elegant, visually enticing and delectably complex as its Japanese or Thai counterparts. It is a cuisine that can be acceptable even to foreign palates.”
The couple dreams of bringing slow-cooked kare-kare, binagoongan sa gata, sugpo sa aligue and kinunot na lapu lapu to Spain, Canada, Australia and the U.K.
The world deserves to know how extraordinary Filipino food is, James concludes.
On the other hand, Fil-Am Dale Talde, a a Chicago native and an up-a-coming chef, has already begun to introduce Filipino food in Chicago and New York.
Photo: “IMG_1698” by , c/o Flickr. Some Rights Reserved