Ask any Filipino here or abroad why our cuisine is not as popular among Westerners—unlike Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian even Singaporean dishes—and you will get a variety of explanations. Our cooking has too much oil, or the colors are not that appealing, or the food is unhealthy.
Well, aren’t most delicious dishes unhealthy?
I have my own theory. If you notice, Thai and Vietnamese cuisines use mostly Asian ingredients like pandan, coconut milk, mint leaves, chili, shrimp paste, soy sauce, patis or fish sauce, and many others. You will hardly see any Western ingredients in their dishes. So, when a Westerner tastes the food, it is exotic to them, being unfamiliar flavors.
Our cuisine, on the other hand, because of centuries of Spanish influence on us, has Western ingredients like tomato sauce or paste, cream, cheese, etc. The presence of these ingredients makes our cuisine not so exotic to Western palates. Samples of such dishes are mechado, menudo, afritada, morcon, relleno, etc.
If we serve dishes without these ingredients, I believe they, too, will make an impact in the international market. Our restaurant in Paris, Aux Iles Philippines, served escargot with binagoongan sauce, prawns with taba ng talangka sauce and sinigang. All these dishes the fine-dining French found very exotic and appealing.
In fact, our resto was rated then as the No. 2 Asian restaurant in Paris, just after a Vietnamese restaurant called Le Nemme. As foodie Myrna Segismundo would say in many of our discussions on this subject, all we need is around five Filipino dishes that will make a mark in the world market.
Not much attention
Thailand and Vietnam have only a handful of exceptionally popular dishes. So, for me, local dishes such as adobo, sisig, sinigang, tinola, lechon manok or inasal na manok, lechon, taba ng talangka, dinakdakan, etc., should eventually put us on the same level as our neighbors.
Also, we don’t give too much attention to our sweets and desserts. We have exceptional sweets or kakanin—Via Mare and Ferino’s bibingka galapong, for instance. La Tasca’s bibingkang malagkit is also a winner. More: sapin-sapin of Dolor’s in Bulacan; Gerry Sevilla’s ube halaya and pastillas made from carabao’s milk; tibok-tibok of Susie’s in Pampanga; buko pandan of Nathaniel’s—all these will surely make any foreigner smile in satisfaction.
Sansrival is another example of a delicious dessert, but one that might not be as exotic as the others since it has all these Western ingredients such as cream, butter and nuts.
Like ‘sapin-sapin’
A few months back, I was walking inside SM Megamall when I came across a tiny stall on the ground floor. It was selling Napoliones of Bacolod—a spin-off of the French pastry Napoleon or flaked pastry cream. In the stall right beside it, meanwhile, was something I had never come across before, called inutak (the saleslady was giving away sample bites). It was white with purple and had a sapin-sapin-like texture. I could not believe I had never come across this one before, because it was so good.
Inutak is like a combination of sapin-sapin and tibok-tibok. The first thing that came to mind was, “Now, this will surely make any foreigner dream about our food.” I am told it originally came from Pateros. One of the customers at Wooden Spoon was telling me that the original one is all white. I have not seen one, but I feel the ube color adds a nice touch to it.
Whenever there are potluck dinners and I want to bring something good and different, inutak has become my contribution of choice. Not too sweet, sticky and bursting with flavors (in fact, there are different flavors). But get the original! If I were to make a list of Filipino desserts I feel would appeal to the foreign market, inutak will be on top of my list
Happy eating!
Kristina’s Inutak is located on the G/F, Bldg. A, SM Megamall, right across Po.
