The day the country’s founding fathers ratified Philippine independence in Malolos in 1898 seems to have been a busy one, including the stomachs of the revolutionaries.

There was an elaborate lunch banquet, with salmon, stuffed truffled turkey and beef Châteaubriand, washed down with Bordeaux and Sauternes, so Aguinaldo and company must have been discreetly loosening a button or two before making way for an equally extravagant dinner: fish in white sauce, larded beef, pigeons and roast capon, among other dishes.

Most people are already familiar with these menus and they are available on the Official Gazette (www.gov.ph), so I will not reproduce them.

Every year there is yet another batch of youngsters who are shocked to discover that the first meals of the Philippine Republic were not local food but French, and these menus will continue to get more and more surprising as time goes by and Filipino food comes into its own, while the dominance of French culture continues to wane.

Filipino writers Nick Joaquin and Ambeth Ocampo, both historians as well as bon vivants, have defended the revolutionaries’ choice of a very traditional French menu to celebrate the national victory.

Gene Gonzalez points out that half the stuff must have been tinned, which is a fair point since this was before the advent of refrigeration, and while Lyonnais saucisson could have survived the boat journey, it was unlikely that things such as haricots verts (French green runner beans) were fresh.

What most likely happened was that they trotted out the very best that their larders, store cupboards, wine cellars and kitchens could produce, because if starting your own country isn’t the right time to bring out the good stuff, I can’t imagine what is.

One day, too, it would be difficult to comprehend that at the turn of the 20th century, only a French banquet was a real banquet: What were they supposed to do, roast a lechon as if it were some village fiesta?

French was not only the culture of world diplomacy, but also the language of revolution, especially in 1898 when both the French and American revolutions must have been in more recent memory.

Heavy meals

Unless further historical evidence turns up, we shall have to be content with what we think we know about the Malolos banquets, and anyone who claims to know more is indulging in conjecture. As someone who has cooked and eaten some of the things on the menu, I can, however, say with certainty that these must have been very heavy and filling meals, though no more elaborate nor leaden than what was being served in Paris, London or Madrid in that era.

In the meantime, portion sizes have shrunk, as well as the length of the menu for something to be properly called a banquet, and if this dinner were to be held today it would be far less French, more American and global influences, and with more Filipino elements; much like the recent state dinner held with the president of the country that took away the independence first celebrated in 1898.

There is no such thing as a completely Filipino banquet, partly because of the great paradox that to be Filipino is to love the foreign. The hours-long queue outside Tim Ho Wan is as much a part of our national food culture as the remarkable work that people like Micky Fenix and Amy Besa are doing, documenting local foodways before they disappear completely.

Almost all starches for thickening are not indigenous; even the grain used to mill our flour is imported. Aguinaldo and Aquino like beef, which is not native to the country. Aguinaldo’s chefs could have hacked up a goat, we could have served Obama a chunk of carabao au jus, but to prove what point?

The best days of Filipino food are yet to come; but whether they come in our time or a few generations from now is uncertain. In 1898, there was literally no cuisine as refined or as coherent and stratified as the French. The idea that there would be a Filipino national cuisine, in addition to a Philippine nation, was not even on the horizon.

Twin engines

A balance must be struck between the love of mammon and the love of mamon. The twin engines driving the creation of a Philippine cuisine are nationalism and prosperity. Nationalism gives the impetus, while prosperity the means.

A sense of nation makes us want to research and remember the obscure rice-fermentation processes of Negros, while an educated middle class with disposable income supports these endeavors with their wallet and their palate.

Wealth allows us to import chains of pork buns, gourmet ramen soups, artisanal coffee-making processes; and a sense of nation gives us the desire to fold this knowledge into the preparation of our own ingredients.

Independence, for better or for worse, has given us the freedom to choose which foreign or local cuisine to eat at our tables today, as well as the freedom to screw things up so that we have nothing to eat tomorrow.

It has given us the freedom to create a national cuisine, so that one day when schoolboys ask why the revolutionaries ate French food at Malolos, we can tell them that the Filipino one hadn’t been invented yet.