Tourism through Slow Food?

I am writing this as I ruminate on a paper I am doing for the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) on tourism-related IP marks that have a tourist impact. Imagine champagne in France, Parmigiano Reggiano in Italy, Iberico black pig in Spain, to name a few, have become tourist attractions as they have been mentioned in many cookbooks, magazines and tourist publications highlighting the tourist place and the product.

This is what we hope will become of our Kalinga coffee, Sagada oranges, Tultul salt and Chong-ak rice, to name a few of our registered intellectual property marks that are also listed in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste catalog (www.fondazioneslowfood.org). Senator Loren Legarda has given the Slow Food delegation to Turin this year a budget through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) because we can promote these heirloom products and hopefully get them into the minds of potential visitors to the country. It is a bit of a pipe dream to use heirloom food as a draw for tourism, but with what happened to adlai and Barako coffee, we hope to be able to translate these promotional efforts into tourist dollars.

In Cambodia, they promote kampot pepper and sell the spice for as much as $50 a kilo when our Alfonso Cavite pepper only fetches $8 per kilo. What is the reason for this disparity? It is the use of intellectual property marks like geographical indications (GI) and collective marks as well as registered trademarks like Preah Vihear rice from the same ASEAN member-state which is Cambodia. The IP marks authenticate the traceability and provenance of the product. There usually is an association tasked with protecting the mark that only verified and authentic produce from a specific region can carry the logo or mark.

Though I will skip the Terra Madre celebration this year, Slow Food Manila will be represented by my colleagues Jeannie Javelosa, Carlos Loinaz and chef Rhea Sycip, who will hopefully be able to cook and hold taste sessions and sampling of Philippine produce. I featured Chef Rhea in my podcast to tell us how chefs discover new old ingredients. They are new in their menus but old in use and history. That includes kinampay ube from Panglao, Bohol; pili nuts from Bicol and Pipinito from our forests. It also includes the seasonal sampinit berries which we have found in Quezon and which Chef Rhea uses for her seasonal cake offerings.

More than just a tourism draw, the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto celebration happening Sept. 26-30 in Parco Dora, Turin, Italy will be about preservation of food culture and getting our NCCA involved is a step in the right direction. It is the right venue to show the world our similar yet different and diverse food cultures. While we see different corn varieties, for example, in every region of the world, they could be from the same mother corn plant from many years ago. Even cacao, rice and other grains could have come from the same plant but just traveled with colonizers, unwanted visitors and other conquistadors who brought their food (seeds and planting materials included) along with their armies.

Chef Rhea tells me that the way to preserve these heirloom varieties is to keep going to public markets and patronizing the small producers who come with their produce – a few kilos of Tultul salt, a few kilos of the atis fruit, some souring ingredients like libas and alibangbang leaves, santol and guyabano fruits and many more. You may not find them in supermarkets, as fresh “just picked” atis will not travel well. This is why chefs must continue visiting public markets, especially those in nearby “provincial” towns – in the Calabarzon area, for example.

For our recent participation as Slow Food Manila and Slow Food Cavite in World Food Expo (WOFEX), I had to order sua and tabon tabon from the Cagayan de Oro public market, pili from a friend’s farm in Bicol and cacao from a farm in Batangas. You cannot find these old ingredients in a grocery or at the last mile of a long supply chain for local produce. Sua, siling labuyo and tabontabon are ingredients used in kinilaw, or Pinoy ceviche, Mindanao style. Even in the public market, they are sold together, almost like a kinilaw cooking kit of sorts.

Listen to our podcast Good and Green, as I ask Chef Rhea what she will be doing in Turin to showcase our Filipino food, and maybe conduct sampling of our ever-famous adobo, champorado using adlai, suman or rice cakes and whatever will travel well from Manila to Turin. Fresh ingredients are a challenge and chefs must use their talent and skill to bring as much of our produce to have sensory sessions with visitors to the Philippine stand.

Will we find tourists because of our participation? It is a long shot but definitely we would have showcased our food culture to over 160 countries which are part of the Slow Food movement. They will be tasting heirloom grains as Chef Jam Melchor cooked arroz caldo using chong-ak heirloom rice to a curious crowd at Terra Madre in 2022. In 2018 we also did a tasting session of Kalinga rice in Terra Madre also with Chef Jam, along with the very farmers who grew that rice – Rowena and Lam-en Gonnay of Pasil, Kalinga.

And finally, Slow Food preserves PRESIDIA ingredients that are protected by a community which can happen to our salts, rice and maybe even coconut wine in the future. I was just in Lucena, Quezon where I tasted export-quality lambanog, now called Premium Coconut Liquor. Packaged and dressed for export, it comes with a high price but that is how we also honor good quality products. Be careful about buying lambanog as some unscrupulous vendors mix methanol and water to be able to sell it cheaper. Get the one with a brand, FDA approval and provenance.

Listen to our podcast for more ideas about Slow Food.