Sarap: Essays on Filipino Food

The entry of the Michelin Guide to the Philippines late last year has sparked an interest in food as a lifestyle and cultural experience. Filipino restaurants that have been lucky enough and recognized to have been granted a Michelin star have suddenly acquired long waiting lists for people who want to try these restaurants in the Philippines which have been bestowed a star.

However, this recognition of food as a major component of Philippine culture is not a recent event. More than four decades ago, Doreen G. Fernandez and Edilberto N. Alegre wrote a book, “Sarap: Essays on Filipino Food” which has become a landmark in Filipino food literature. This work has transcended food writing and has become a study of culture, history, language and identity through the very act of eating. It has merited a recent reissue from Exploding Galaxies.

In the Foreword to the book, the late Clinton Palanca writes: “It was not the first book to be published on Filipino food – Pigafetta’s account of his travels published in 1525 probably has that honor, although it touches on the food of the Philippine islands only briefly and incidentally. More recently, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil has been writing essays on food since the early 1970s and Gilda Cordero Fernando’s “The Culinary Culture of the Philippines from 1976” was groundbreaking and established a beachhead for writing about food as one of the essential aspects of Philippine culture. But the small brown volume of essays called “Sarap” published in 1988 almost singlehandedly created the field of Philippine food studies – even before the emergence of Food Studies as a discipline to be taken seriously at universities.”

At its core, “Sarap” is a collection of essays exploring Philippine cuisine not merely as a list of dishes, but as living narratives woven into Filipino life. The title itself – the Filipino word for “delicious” – is intentionally layered, going beyond gustatory pleasure to encompass the deeper “sarap of life, memory and culture that food embodies.”

Through this lens, Fernandez and Alegre map the Filipino palate into understanding the archipelago’s diverse regions, its colonial past and the shared experiences that define what it means to be Filipino.

In the Preface, the authors write: “Thus, the first part of the book is devoted to essays on the historical dimension, considering the influences, geographical and historical that shape Filipino food. The second part explores the words that speak of the food and examines what they say behind and beyond their denotative meanings. And the last part of essays explores food in its different settings – in markets, hometowns, city streets, festivals, restaurants, homes; in different regions, social class and location.”

One of the most interesting essays in the first chapter, “Philippine Food in History” is the essay “Why Sinigang?”  The author writes: “Rather than the overworked adobo (so often identified as the Philippines’ stew in foreign cookbooks), sinigang seems to be the dish most representative of Filipino taste. We like the lightly boiled, the slightly soured, the dish that includes fish or shrimp or meat, vegetables and broth. It is adaptable to all tastes (if you don’t like shrimp, then bangus or pork), to all classes and budgets (even ayungin in humble little piles find their way into the pot), to seasons and availability, (walang talong, mahal ang gabi? Kangkong na lang!). But why? Why does sinigang find its way to bare dulang, to formica-topped restaurant booth, to gleaming ilustrado table? Why does one like anything at all? How is a people’s taste shaped?”

The author then proceeds to answer the questions in a highly readable style and goes back to the history of Filipino food.

In the second chapter, the first essay is entitled “Taste as Language.” The first paragraph reads, “To find out what our language catches or specifically, what of what we taste is reported in our language, we need only to examine our adjectives related to taste: maalat, maasim, matamis, maanghang, mapait, matabang, mapakla, malasa, malinamnam, masarap.” The rest of the essays are just as interesting.

The third chapter, “Food in Situ” starts with the paragraph: “Where did one have Filipino food?” The essays are focused on different regions of the country and other places where you can find Filipino food outside the home like the tiangge, talipapa and the palengke. From the essay “Streetfood Scene:” “Surely, a granddaddy of today’s street food, too, is balut, which has been sold on the streets of Manila, especially near nightclubs, discos and other haunts of the evening ever since one can remember.”

The book celebrates not just the food connoisseur but also food in the karinderia, the humble roadside eatery which affirms that Filipino cuisine is found not only in high-end restaurants but in everyday kitchens and markets.

*      *      *

A recent memorable dining experience that took all of three and a half hours took place at Gallery by Chele.  But we are not complaining, as it was worth it. Food that uses only locally sourced ingredients but created in imaginative ways to Michelin standards was served and introduced with well-rehearsed annotations made us so proud of the coconut, the heritage rice varieties, cacao from Philippine soil. The restaurant earned a Michelin star and a Michelin Green Star for its sustainability program.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]