In his paper, “Why Insist on an Asian Flavor?” Fernando Zialcita makes the very accurate observation that many people unfamiliar with the Philippines think that Filipino food is not authentically Asian. He notes that the Tagalogs’ predilection for sour flavors, for example, runs counter to, say, Javanese spicy sensibility.
The general idea is that there is no such thing as a “pan-Asian” taste sensibility, as many Westerners tend to think. How “non-Asian” is Filipino food really? As Zialcita points out, as does Doreen Fernandez in “Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Filipino Food,” in terms of flavors, the Philippines is very similar to several of its neighbors. Many of the food and dishes of Luzon have flavor profiles similar to Vietnamese cuisine, and especially Thai cuisine.
One cuisine that these two authors do not mention is Cambodian food, but I know from experience the extensive similarities here. There is a Khmer dish called amok, which is essentially a cross between ginataang manok and Bicol express. Khmer barbecue is also nearly identical to Filipino inihaw, with the dipping sauce, the familiar flavorful concoction of black pepper, calamansi juice, salt, and sugar. Sourness is a hallmark of Southeast Asian foods, in fact. Sampaloc (tamarind) is loved throughout the region, and especially in Thailand, where it joins patis as the secret ingredients to good pad thai. Patis, or fish sauce, is itself a hallmark of Southeast Asian food, being the most loved sauce in Vietnamese cuisine (which does not even make use of soy sauce).
It’s prudent to acknowledge that the Philippines is a very large country and that different food cultures have always existed throughout. Though the relative blandness of Tagalog food could be indigenous, that does not mean that blandness is the default of other cultures in the islands. Chili-infused vinegar is a staple of Ilokano food, while food from Sulu and Mindanao can be extremely spicy as well (piyanggang manok and tiyula itum come to mind as spicy; these are two Tausug dishes, specifically).
On the topic of chili, how important is chili to “authentic” Southeast Asian cuisine, really? Chilis are not indigenous to the region, being an import from Mexico during the colonial period. Before that, and even today in many cases, long pepper and its sister, black pepper, were/are the avenues for heat. Filipino and Khmer dishes are similar in the love for these indigenous-to-Asia peppers. In fact, as the above-mentioned Khmer “pepper juice” concoction proves, mixing black pepper with calamansi and salt makes for an extremely spicy sauce.
Virtually all Filipino food cultures also make heavy use of regular luya (ginger), luyang dilaw (turmeric), and other spices such as lemongrass. These spices are integral to South and Southeast Asian cuisines, and are also essential to savory ginataans, soups, and many other dishes in the Philippines.
I find that Filipino food fits in comfortably with those of neighboring countries despite perceived flavor differences.
Southeast Asia is one of the most culturally diverse regions of the world; it’s only natural to have flavor variations. An additional note is that adobo, the national dish, is an indigenous dish despite the Spanish name. Wikipedia says that the original name was lost to history, but I actually disagree with this, based on linguistic evidence. An indigenously named Tagalog dish seems to be paksiw. Paksiw, according to the linguist Carl Rubino in his Tagalog language dictionary, is a general cooking term that means prepared and cooked in vinegar, salt, and garlic. Adobo is, thus, another name for paksiw, or a type of paksiw; it was described by the Spanish as adobo since it was superficially similar to a type of Spanish food.
Further proof in my mind of the validity of paksiw as the original term are the myriad variations of adobo found throughout the country. Not to mention that a dish like paksiw na isda is indistinguishable from adobo, and that goes for something like paksiw na baboy, too. Some people say it has to do with sweetness, but paksiw na isda is not sweet, yet it is not called adobo.
Why are we so quick to assume that the Philippines is more Western than its neighbors? Even in Vietnam and Cambodia, it is usual to eat baguette with meals because of their colonial history under the French, just as Filipinos eat Spanish bread at breakfast. Not so different, really.
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Sterling V. Herrera Shaw is a graduate student in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman.