“Filipino Food: It’s greasy, all tastes the same except for the occasional bird’s eye chili and shows the culinary creativity of a tribe of Hunter-Gathers that just discovered fire.”—European food blogger.
“I, too, reached the sad conclusion that the food in the Philippines simply isn’t good. I researched, I tasted and then I found the answer I’d been looking for: the Sofitel Manila Sunday Brunch.”—IndianaJo.com.
“I think sisig is perfectly positioned to win the hearts and minds of the world. Filipino cuisine is underrated.”—Anthony Bourdain.
“The Department of Trade and Industry-Bureau of Philippine Standards has established the Technical Committee on Filipino Dishes [BPS/TC 92] to develop Philippine National Standards on popular Filipino dishes such as Adobo, Sinigang, Lechon, and Sisig taking into consideration the variations observed in all regions of the country.” Let the controversy begin.
WHY? WHYYY???!!!” “Authentic Filipino adobo taste? Who has the right to say a taste is authentic Filipino?” “That will be the death of our cuisine” and we know that an important part of any people’s culture is their cuisine. #DontTouchMyAdobo. “What’s the point of ‘standardizing’ the Filipino #adobo when I will always maintain that my lola’s adobo is the best.”
DTI clarified that the standards were not mandatory and would only “define what we will promote internationally.” Almost immediately a netizen came up with this slogan, which we think is great: “We have more variations of adobo than we have islands, but each one is guaranteed to give you a taste of the varied, rich culture and traditions of the Philippines. Adobo, the flavors of the Philippines.”
“Culinary diplomacy” is actually a thing. The basic premise is that “the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach,” at least that is what Taiwan said when they took bubble tea and oyster omelets to the world. Taiwan spent $25 million. “Taiwan has sought to boost its tourism sector.” We are not too sure about the tourism sector but who has not had a “bubble tea”?
Thailand, as usual, went full serious with their “gastro-diplomacy” in 2002 with the “Global Thai” program. The purpose was to increase the number of Thai restaurants worldwide to 8,000 by 2003 from about 5,500. By 2011, that number had increased to more than 10,000 Thai restaurants worldwide and now is up to about 30,000. Concurrently with the promotion and recipe and ingredient standards, the Export-Import Bank of Thailand offered loans to Thai nationals wanting to open restaurants abroad, and set up an infrastructure for loans of up to $3 million for overseas food industry initiatives, including Thai restaurants.
South Korea launched its own culinary program in 2009 with a $77 million investment in “Korean Cuisine to the World” or “Global Hansik” to promote Korean cuisine (hansik), as well as to increase the number of Korean restaurants worldwide to 40,000 by 2017. It worked.
Since 2010 Malaysia has undertaken a similar project by running the “Malaysia Kitchen” program to promote Malaysian cuisine in Australia, United States and United Kingdom.
Is this plan from DTI a good idea? We will probably never know. We love our freedom of individual choice and apparently there are a hundred wonderful recipes for adobo. How can we pick just one standard by consensus?
There are 15 presidential hopefuls—plus “I don’t know”—on the latest Pulse Asia survey and we know how incredibly difficult it is going to be to get that down to one person by May 2022. Are we sure we want to try to pick one adobo recipe?