one filipino dish a week

As week 6 rolls along here, I’ve really been thinking about authenticity of Filipino cuisine outside of the Philippines. In a previous post, I talked about popularity of Filipino food outside the Filipino community. I have been navigating through the websites for different reviews and comments on the thin lineup of Filipino restaurants in the NYC area and one common theme of comments that I noticed is authenticity. This really got me thinking and question how authentic can ethnic cuisine be outside of its native land?

What makes the final product authentic anyway? Is it the process? Is it the ingredients? I suppose it’s a combination of both. The process is something that can be learned, passed on, and shared. Filipino food isn’t that hard to make. It’s not fancy schmancy French food that has to be done extremely specific. Hmm… What happens if French techniques are applied to Filipino cooking? Well, that’s going to be shot down in a second by the authentic patrol. But I digress. The ingredients is most likely the biggest culprit in this authenticity crime because it’s what gives the food that umph! It gives it the taste of the place where it belongs like terroir in wine. It’s like using tapioca pearls instead of landang for the binignit. It had the familiarity of that rainy afternoon of my childhood but it just wasn’t the real deal. It’s hard to find all the ingredients that make authentic Filipino food here in the east coast of the US. Most of the time we’re forced to substitute with what’s good enough or go for the frozen variety. Is that then the reason why the restaurants can’t re-create authentic Filipino food, ingredients? Or are we, Filipinos, simply too proud of our own province’s version of the dish that we simply can’t recommend the restaurant’s version to non-Filipinos?

I don’t think I’ll find any answers any time soon so as these next weeks come through I’m definitely going to try to keep it as authentic as possible. Whatever that means.