Nastasha: Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I'm your host, Nastasha Alli.
This episode, we have none other than Abi Marquez, who's known across social media as lumpia queen. It's not an exaggeration to say that her viral videos have been viewed literally across the world. She even taught the cast of the latest Superman film in 2025, how to roll lumpia for real. They were recently in Manila for a press tour, and honestly, it's just so much fun to watch. Just look up Superman, lumpia.
Abi is an incredibly popular content creator known for her, what if we wrap this lumpia wrapper series on TikTok. That's the closest approximation I'm gonna get to that. She's got millions of followers across all platforms, a managing team and a studio based in Manila and the whole world ahead of her.
I am so excited for this interview. Abi and I talk about testing recipes, cooking at home, and getting judged by your content online, because even the most popular content creators still feel that. And along with that, all the amazing things that can happen when you really put in the work and really believe in what you do.
So let's get to it.
Meet Abi
Abi: I am Abi Marquez. I'm a food content creator from the Philippines. And a lot of people call me Lumpia Queen or in the mall, uy si Lumpia Wrapper! That's also me.
I focus on sharing recipes or encouraging other home cooks to cook more in the kitchen or the younger generation to start cooking. I love sharing good eats, where to find them, how to eat them, and I also love meeting new people and collaborating with other food content creators, both locally and internationally.
Yeah, that's me.
Cooking at home
Nastasha: Where are you based now, Abi?
Abi: I'm in Laguna. But always traveling to Manila for events, for collaborations, meetings.
Nastasha: What part of Laguna? I grew up in Paranaque, like in the Sucat area.
Abi: I'm in Santa Rosa, although I grew up, so my parents' house is like 50 or a hundred meters from the bridge that connects Cabuyao and Santa Rosa, Laguna.
Nastasha: Ah, okay.
Abi: I think most of the time I spend it in Cabuyao.
Nastasha: Uhhuh.
Abi: And like the McDonald's is closer there. But officially I'm from Laguna. Right now I have a studio, that's where I'm in right now, a studio, basically a big kitchen where I can cook whenever I want, however long I want without disrupting my mother.
Nastasha: In your videos, like, the original kitchen that you have, that's your actual family home kitchen. Right?
Abi: Yes. Family home kitchen. And I love it so much. I had it, like almost replicated for this new studio of mine. And I've grown attached to it. I think, I don't have any intentions of letting it go soon. I love the wooden cabinet, Lola feeling that it gives.
Nastasha: Iba kasi eh no if there's like a kitchen that you really love and you feel like attached to, it's like, I don't know. For me, I think it's like the more time you spend there, obviously cooking and like trying stuff out and making stuff and seeing stuff that went really well and stuff that, you know, you have to adjust later the recipe.
Parang, the kitchen becomes a part of the whole story.
Abi: Yeah. And also on the technical aspect of content creation, people remember your background. And when they see your background, they know that, oh, this is Abi Marquez's kitchen, and yeah, they know what to expect already.
Nastasha: Awesome. Okay, um, I've been super looking forward to this interview because like a big part of what resonates with me with your content is that it feels fun and approachable. And I think that really stems from you, from your ability to kinda share that with people. And if you could share with us something that's maybe like a formative memory or something from your childhood or even later adulthood that really connects you to your Filipino heritage through food.
Early food memories
Abi: I have a good memory if food is involved. So, one of my earliest memories is playing with my playmates sa kalsada or the street with our Philippine games and sharing to them the snacks that I'm supposed to save for school. And you can imagine my mother getting mad at me for taking out the whole box of school snacks.
And to give away to my playmates because food is my love language. And, I would always tell this story about how I would make juice and snacks for our guests without anyone asking me to do it. And this was at the age of four. And I also remember having kitchen sessions with my mother and my father experimenting with ready to bake very, very bland pizza dough from the frozen section of the grocery store and my mother boiling milk.
I don't know why, but I just remember that I remember putting peanuts in my sandwiches thinking, oh my God, I'm a genius. And growing up, food has always been there. When I was in elementary school that was around 11 or 12 years old, I would bake cookies and brownies for my group mates who would come to my house for like a big school project.
And knowing that they liked it, I then started baking and cooking for people at school, and making my teachers taste them out of my father's pasalubong. So what that looks like is whenever he comes home from work, he will give us pasalubong, like a small snack and sometimes it includes a bar of chocolate that's not meant for cooking, but very cheap chocolate meant for eating.
And I would use that to make chocolate chip cookies. So a big batch of cookies with just one bar of chocolate made my teachers complain like, why is your chocolate like this? And I'm like, I just got it from my father's pasalubong. What do you mean? Where do you expect me to get it? I'm 11. Yeah.
Nastasha: This is giving me so many throwback memories. Um, 'cause when I was in grade school, my favorite was the chocolate crinkles box that you get from the Maya brand. And then there was a period where I was so obsessed with making these crinkle cookies like every weekend. And we would have these like, toaster oven 'cause, but that's the mix. And I used to bring it into school too, but like by Monday I'd bring it in tapos wala na. The cookies were supposed to last like the whole week at home. Benta. By Monday, Tuesday, I brought it all to school and everybody's eating them already. So
Abi: Good for you for sharing.
Nastasha: You spread the happiness around a little.
Abi: Yeah. And not selling though. You didn't
Nastasha: Yeah.
Abi: I charged them. So there's a bit of a foreshadowing of business interest there.
Nastasha: What I did use, to charge people for was, so in our school we would have siguro maybe twice a year there would be these fairs, right? And you could bring your own food to sell. Um, so what I used to sell was cheese sticks. This was before like the dynamite craze pa it was just like plain cheese sticks, in lumpia wrapper with the ketchup, mayo kind of sauce.
Abi: Uh, I love it.
Nastasha: Yun yung mabenta, before.
Abi: Mm.
Nastasha: yeah.
Abi: I am a sucker for those. I cannot say no to them. Especially kapag yung cheese, it's the processed one.
Nastasha: Yung Eden.
Abi: Hindi yung diluted cheese powder you can get sa palengke. Yes.
Nastasha: Hits the spot.
Abi: Hits spot. I can eat 20 of those.
Recipe testing
Nastasha: I'm sure you've had lots of different types of lumpia and experimented with all the different fillings. Like how much do you make, when you try out these batches? Typically?
Abi: So my culinary training, I would say, is always cooking for a group of six people. 'cause I started cooking in my house for my family and we're a group of six, so we need to make sure everybody can taste the batch. So it's a family size serving. At home, when I was still cooking at my parents' house, it would be my siblings and my parents to judge and critique my food and eat them.
Um, but when I got my studio at first, I didn't have any siblings to give the food to or any colleagues. So I would give them to the security guards of the subdivision. And even until now when we make a big batch recipe that's like good for 20. It would always bleed into my neighbors, the security guards in our village and I would sometimes pack them up and bring them to my events and give them to my managers or my fellow creators.
Or sometimes I would even pack the dish and just book a Lala move or a courier service to bring it to Manila and reach like 50 kilometers away from me because I also want to share the food. So now, I have my own team. We are like seven people whenever we film and we get to share what I cook for that shoot day.
Nastasha: I love this part that you're able to share with the security guards and the other folks who are there . It's very normal for Filipino people to wanna do that, right? Because of course, you don't want the food to go to waste. And you have other people around you. So, when I started doing this podcast, part of why I wanted to start it is because I wanted to talk more about the culture around Filipino food and, what it is, why it feels so special to us and why when you talk to Filipino people, oftentimes anytime you're talking about food, we'll end up talking about it for a long time because it's always so connected to not just the food.
But also like the stories of home, you know, and how you grew up and, it's very reflective of our values, as well. And so, yeah, that's one of the things also that I really appreciate with your content is that, there's those elements about our culture, whether it's, you know, stories about playing outside with your friends, like when you're little or, the different ways that we like customize things like ramyeon or like anything that has to do with Korean fried chicken.
All these kind of trendy stuff that happens.
Banana leaves are life
Abi: Yeah. And that's also what I love incorporating in my videos. But actually, I think I did not know that I was doing that, but that's what made people engage and made the videos relatable to the viewers, is that I naturally just show my life in my videos. So, for example, when I made the Suman recipe video, of course I will get the banana leaf in front of the house.
Where else would I get it? I don't get it in the market. I get it from my neighbor. I get it from our own banana tree. Yeah. And then I need to chop it down. So I thought of including it in the videos and I think most of the engagement from that video is people reacting to, did she just get a banana leaf by herself?
And some of them are like, this is how big banana leaves are. Like naturally. And sometimes when I make, like for example, a tinola video, I would show how I would steal the malunggay from our neighbors and people would react to it saying they relate to that, or that's something real. And to the people who are not familiar, they think it's, it's crazy, but this is our life and I love how I can showcase those common practices that we have here in the Philippines. It really is more than just the food itself and the recipes itself.
Langka day
Abi: Like for example, today, we were filming, a turon langka video, and I had to extract the langka meat from a whole giant langka.
So it's so big, it will take you hours if you do it alone. So I called my team to help me out. I did not force them to help me out. I was just, oh, hey Alden, you wanna join us? And at some point it became five of us tearing down this jackfruit. And I was telling them, you know guys, when I have to make a speech about how food brings people together, we need to take apart of this.
Yeah. We're all young people. So we kind of talk like that, like, uh, asar, asar sa isa't isa.
Nastasha: So there's a picture right of this langka.
Abi: And even a video of people cracking jokes about langka, while we're all extracting the langka meat.
Nastasha: I can't remember which video it is already, but there are some videos where you have like some side comments in the back. I think part of what I really kind of miss or connect with when I watch your video sometimes is that it does make me remember my friends back home. 'cause it's that part yung nagkukulitan, nag aasaran, there's these like side comments.
It's like an inside joke that you have with, with your friends. It's very, again, kind of reflective of Filipino culture. It's not just that you're eating, but it's like, yung magkakasama kayo kumain and there's this kind of camaraderie that's around it that is really hard to explain to people if they haven't been in that kind of environment or situation.
Abi: Yeah, it's very different.
Becoming a creator
Abi: So I started creating content during the last year of college. That was around the end of 2021 and I started to tinker with TikTok. I love the feature of pressing the red button to record, and then when you let go of it, it stops, and then the next one you just keep doing that and eventually TikTok ties them all together into this one, like movie magic video, I love the process of filmmaking and the process of making videos, and during that time it was the pandemic. So I was at home cooking a lot, spending a lot of time in the kitchen, because I already love cooking. So I think inevitably those two hobbies of filmmaking and cooking clash together that I just started making these videos for no reason at all, except just enjoying the process. And maybe a little bit of, I want to remember my own recipes 'cause I never write them down. And then January 2022, I think it was my fourth video, I created this, five ingredient recipe video for tuna pasta.
Something that I would make my family for dinner and I put a voiceover on top of it, and that was my first ever viral video. On the first day it got like 29,000 views and, it was so crazy for me. I was never used to that much of attention. I had like 14 followers during that time and to me, it was crazy to reach like 30,000 eyes and then in three days it became 1 million and I think it just really made me feel like of course appreciated for what you're doing, especially that you love what you are doing. And I also love the feeling of people getting value from that video and saying, oh, this is such a nice recipe. It's just five ingredients. I have all of the ingredients.
Now I can make it for myself. It's that aspect of helping people out or making them try the recipe. I also felt like I was sharing my food with them through sharing the recipe, and I also love the social aspect and the way it starts discussion. I think in the first 10 videos of mine, I did mostly Filipino ulams and people would fight in the comments talking about, this is not giniling, this is picadillo, this is not what we call it.
And I just loved how it started discussions. And I think with that first viral video. That made me feel like, oh, I can do this. Something like that. I did not know I could do this. If I got viral once, maybe I could get viral again, and I just, I'll see what happens. I'll just keep making videos and posting it. And every single video that I posted after that, it went viral.
Going viral
Abi: How I did that is basically looking at that viral video, being a nerd and writing down everything that I did. I would say the light is at 45 degrees. I did voiceover. The video is this long. So the next video I did the same intro, same treatment, like, this five ingredient dish is gonna be your new favorite.
Exactly the same, but they did not perform the same. So it also gave me this kind of a challenge, and I love challenges. I love proving myself to myself. I'm that kind of person. And I think one month after that I got, I would guess around a hundred K followers after a month or maybe even more.
And that also meant opportunities started to come in, specifically paid opportunities. I was getting paid, I think , 8,000 pesos for hosting a live video. I was so scared of charging. I was like, what do I charge? 8,000 or 10,000? What if I say 10,000? They will not want to work with me. But I was so shocked that people would offer me money.
And products for making like a TikTok video. And just because I was having this, I would say kalokohan in my kitchen, I did not know what I was doing.
Philippines creator industry
Abi: So that made me realize that there is an industry. There is a creator economy that vloggers earn for real. That there are professionals who do this, people who do this professionally.
And what made it easy for me was I think six months after that I also earned my first million pesos. And that was exactly the same month I graduated college.
Nastasha: Oh.
Abi: And I said, you know what? I am earning from this more than what I ever dreamt of earning if I were to apply as an employee, you know.
Nastasha: What did you go to school for?
Abi: Restaurant management, hotel and restaurant management.
Nastasha: Me too. I'm an HRM grad.
Abi: Yeah. So it was a no brainer for me and I think what strengthened that also was two months after starting, that's when I did the lumpia series, and it's pretty much a short series. In a week, I just posted three videos experimenting with frying marshmallows and chocolate in lumpia wrapper.
Nastasha: The s'mores, right? That was the first part. That's what I remember. Yeah.
Abi: People just, it just made an impact to them that even when I started cooking Filipino ulam, again, everyone would just say, what if you wrap this in lumpia wrapper? And it was fun, it was curious, it was funny. So I just started doing what people told me to do, to show them that I will not back down.
I love a challenge and they love that. And realizing that I'm showing Filipino culture, realizing that I could be what people call me right now, a representative of Filipino cuisine to the world, those things, they just followed, I would say. But really my origin story is a bored college girl stuck at home during the pandemic, who had a background in cooking and filmmaking, just tinkering with social media and finding out that she has the skillset for that, and finding out that she can share her food through the internet and not just her playmates in the street. Yeah.
Nastasha: I've been kind of just like smiling and nodding my head along while you're talking about this 'cause like, well first of all, the bored college girl tinkering around on TikTok. I think that's the story of so many.
Abi: Yeah, it is.
Nastasha: So many creators, especially during the pandemic, right? It was like this perfect time to, I mean obviously there was a lot that was not great about that period, but, it did really signal a change in how content was created, I think, because it made it a lot more accessible to people and especially with people in the Philippines.
'cause this is the next part that I kind of wanna ask you about is that
Getting judged by your content
Nastasha: I mean, I consider myself a creator as well, like doing the podcast and being able to interview people. It's creating content that you wanna share with other people who are interested in the same topics, right? Like food and culture and history and that kind of thing. So one of the things that I personally kind of had to convince myself to be better at was this whole being open and being authentic part.
I kind of feel like growing up in the Philippines, at least for me, during, the late nineties, there was still a very like, you know, you have to be a certain way. When I first started doing the podcast, I wasn't even sure if people were gonna listen, like is anybody besides the few people around me who are interested in food, gonna wanna hear about all these different stories from different people and how they have been cooking Filipino food and why it's a big part of their life and identity.
And it kind of feels like also because of how easy it is now to post content with these apps. Right. It's also helped, at least for me, feeling ko parang it helps break down that kind of barrier from people who are Filipino who are medyo nahihiya kasi that's still a big part of it. Nahihiya ka ayaw mo sa camera or like, I'm not sure if like my voice sounds great.
There's all.
Abi: The fear of being judged.
right
Nastasha: Exactly. That's where I was going.
Abi: By relatives.
Nastasha: At it's such a big part and like obviously you have to get over that when you're creating content online, but like, I dunno, it just feels like that's kind of a unique aspect of Filipino culture that I don't really get to talk about with other people so much.
So yeah, I was just wondering like if we're talking about that hiya factor, like was that ever a thing for you, you found? Was it easy to get over?
Abi: Yeah. It is a thing. It is still a thing. People still get surprised when we film in public, and I would be like so shy to speak out loud. Like for example, hey, today we're at Jollibee and we're gonna eat this. I cannot do that in public. If I do that, I would say Ready.
Ready. I'm only gonna do this once. Say the line and then I would hide, oh my gosh. I still haven't gotten over that camera shyness in public. And people still wonder, really, you've been doing this for three years, you're still not used to doing this? And actually, before I was, uh, I was a talent I would say, I was used to being the person holding the camera, filming other people. That's really how I started with filmmaking. I would edit, I would be the cinematographer or the director or the scorer, scorer, high school scorer, but never the actress or the talent. Sometimes I would be the person in front of the camera, but I would be so bad, I would just laugh and be all conscious and everything.
So when I first did content, I actually did not show my face. I just did all hands-only shots. And that first viral video, I did not show my face either. It was just a voiceover and people were impressed by the voiceover that I felt like I was realizing how personality helps with content. And I think especially with the, what happens if we wrap series, I feel like people remembered my face and they associated some kind of credibility and relationship with that face thinking that, oh, this is that girl who did lumpia wrapper. What's she doing now? So I felt like I needed to show my face because my face helps people recognize that this is a video of mine and it gives the video a boost that, oh, watch this video, you know, this person.
But now I'm really comfortable showing up on camera, especially if, you know, I frame the lens and I look.
Nastasha: you let you, there's hair and makeup in certain
Abi: Yeah, there's
Nastasha: know, it's great.
Abi: I think it's good. I already know what looks good on me.
Think quick!
Abi: Um, I think, the most difficult thing for me now is thinking fast enough when doing the consumption shot. So consumption shot is basically when you taste what you just cooked, and you have to describe it in front of the camera after biting into it.
So what it looks like when you're filming is, so it's a video, so everybody should be quiet. It's a room full of people and they're all just staring at you taking a bite and reacting. Okay. So when I'm on camera, of course I am myself, but a little more expressive version of myself. I don't think somebody takes a bite of food and they say, oh my God, that is, well, I think I'm that person.
Nevermind. I am like that. Nevermind. I am like that. Nevermind. But I can totally react naturally. Like, oh, this is so good. Mm. Like something like that. I can do that. 'cause I do that even in restaurants. But what I cannot do is everybody's staring at me taking a bite, and then everyone's like,
Nastasha: Waiting lang.
Abi: And I have to say, in English, my second language. That's, that's good. It's a balance of sweet and something like that, you know? Um. Naturally, it should take me like a three minutes to think about what to say in Filipino and then translate it. Maybe I need one minute processing to translate it to English, but I don't think I've improved for the past three years describing food.
How do you say it? On.
Nastasha: On the fly. Yeah. It's hard. Like I was gonna say, this sounds like, you know those TV shows that you watch on the Food Network where they're really like yeah basta alam na nila yung descriptions and they know what to say and I mean, you do that really well, obviously, um, but yeah, I can see it takes practice.
Start knowing nothing
Abi: It does, it does. You really have to accept that you should start not knowing, like not being an expert at everything. I think that's what people should also know about the creators they look up to. We did not start knowing everything. You don't know how many takes it took for me to get this specific shot. How many, what do you call it? Stutter I did just to get this one line out there. So that's also to the listeners who are also viewers. It's not as easy as you think. Yeah. And don't get discouraged if you also bump into those challenges.
Nastasha: That's a great piece of advice for sure, kasi especially in this particular platform, right? Like everything does kind of look like it's very quickly put together. I mean, obviously a lot of that is like, due to the work that you put in beforehand to like, make sure you have the right shots and you have the right voiceover and all that kind of stuff.
So you've shared a lot about some of these challenges that you have around creating content or like some of the things that you've really learned over the last couple of years. What I'd like to ask is like where you see yourself going with your team?
And I'll preface that to say as well, one thing I really appreciate is that in some of the interviews and stuff that you've done, you always talk about your team as, you know, the, you're a team putting this together.
Team Abi and the future
Abi: Yeah. I love my team just to say that. I cannot live without them. Both my management and my, like, we call ourselves Team Abi, which is the production part of this whole thing. My management, Nyma, who does the business side of it. And then whenever we have to make a video, I head this team who helps me make the video.
And future plans when it comes to content, I think my content will evolve with me. Right now I'm traveling a lot. And that means getting familiar with international dishes, getting familiar with the ingredients that are available in other countries. And I think that should also not only like tempt me to create international dishes tutorials, but also when I make Filipino recipes, it informs me on how to make it more relatable to the global audience. And last year we did a lot of collaborations in the United States. This year did not expect at all, but apparently, people watch us from Europe and a lot more countries I want to visit and a lot more creators from there that I want to collaborate with.
Oh, I mean, Gordon Ramsey is from Europe.
Yeah, so travels and we've been flirting with the idea of long form content for a very long time. It's just very difficult for me as a short form creator to kind of change my wiring and think long form. But it's a dream of mine to finally start that. Right now we are focused on making regular content with short form, like mastering that and we're also working on a book. Nyma and I are meeting a lot of people and thinking how we could do this book and distribute it internationally and make sure it's affordable to Filipinos and make sure it's culturally accurate and funny. Keeping that young, organic, clumsy personality of mine in a written form of media.
Growing together
Abi: But also a personal aspect of it is, I started this as a content creator, and then I found myself becoming not just a creator, but also a leader and kind of a manager. Um, when I hired my team, it just opened up so much more room to improve on. Like, I had to learn how to manage a person's career, making sure they have goals and they're learning from their job, making sure I am able to pay them on time and just communicating what I had in my head because somebody else is gonna help me execute the vision.
It's very different from how I created my content when I started. Before I was just alone creating the recipes, doing the groceries, washing the produce. I mean, setting up the lights, the camera, doing the cooking, everything. Everything. Yeah, everything. But now I work with brands and , my team is growing, so I needed to be more responsible and to learn how to be a leader, which is crazy intimidating. Even until now. It kinda sometimes punches me in the gut at 2:00 AM thinking, oh my God, am I a good leader to them? But I love that discomfort as well. It means that I'm growing and hopefully when I come back to this podcast in the future, I'll be like, really, you don't know what to do with this.
Nastasha: Your previous kind of like feeling of like when you first started producing videos on TikTok and you're like, kaya ko ba yan? Kaya ko kaya yan? Kaya ko siguro yan.
Abi: And even just the hiring, it took me such a long time to finally decide to hire, and a lot of my fellow creators know this, like Ninong Ry knows this and like Cath and Gene and Jujuma. I was so scared of hiring. I told them I wake up at 1:00 PM I do not reply to messages 'cause, I mean, I don't know. I am not very reliable. I feel like if I hire a person, they would hate me so much and think, what is this job? I could always work for a big corporation to give me benefits, and I did not feel like somebody would be willing to work with me 'cause I just not hate, I did not hate myself. I've been like this, this is also what makes me a very creative person, but I just wasn't sure I could handle that commitment. But yeah, I mean, you gotta do things.
Nastasha: You have to do things that you have to. And it's kind of crazy how for me, like I still get a lot of imposter syndrome when I talk to people who I really look up to. But yeah, I think the belief in what we're doing, and really at the end of the day, this is a lot about wanting to see what's in your head, as you were saying, on the screen or in real life, it's so like, that's what you want, right? You wanna see the vision in your head, in real life.
Travels to Cagayan de Oro
Nastasha: What are you excited to cook or eat next?
Abi: I'm so excited to eat and try whatever we're cooking downstairs. If you remember I was telling you, we tear down a whole jackfruit and our challenge today is making a sweet and savory dish with jackfruit.
Nastasha: Sarap.
Abi: Sorry, is this the right answer to your question, but I love fried chicken and I'm trying to make fried chicken jackfruit downstairs.
I'm, so, I'm terrified. I don't know what it'll taste like, but, oh, I mean, we have mango habanero and not like jackfruit curry or
Nastasha: Yeah, no, uy exciting. I, I'm curious to see like if you do fry it, what the texture is gonna be like, so we'll see.
Abi: Gonna be a drizzle or a dip. Yeah. But aside from that, I would also love to try more Filipino foods, especially from Mindanao and the regions that I wasn't able to try growing up. We recently traveled to Cagayan de Oro and the food there blew our brains out. It was so good. The suwan suwan, the, what do you call this?
Nastasha: Sinuglaw, did you try that?
Abi: Oh my god, the sinuglaw, and also the fish marinated in vinegar and tabon tabon and, yeah.
Nastasha: This fruit that looks like a half brain, that's
Abi: Yeah. Tabon tabon Yeah. That's amazing. I loved it. We brought home a lot of tabon tabon and the suwa, as they call it. Um, yes. I think that's my current favorite destination for food so far in the Philippines, and I've only traveled like a handful of times. I so look forward to trying more regional Filipino food.
Nastasha: I've also been a couple of times 'kasi for me too, being raised in Manila, like, why would you travel to Mindanao? And there was still a lot of that stigma growing up for me.
So when I first went by myself like 2015, and I went to CDO. CDO was the first Mindanao city that I went to, and I had such a great time, and mind blown is exactly the response 'kasi, I wanted to go with no expectations, not with this idea na, you know, it's dangerous and what are you gonna find? But I was really glad that I did that because it really opened me to all these amazing flavors and yun nga, the main thing being na, you know, the Philippines is big and you know the Philippines is huge, but until you actually get there and you get to try, makapunta ka sa palenke, like, one of my favorite memories from the CDO trip is we went to the palengke and I ate puto maya.
Like, I think I ate. Cogon Public Maket, doon.
Abi: Yeah, I, I loved it so much.
Nastasha: Yeah, so good. And you, you know.
Abi: It's very different, like yung timpla or yung level of seasoning is very for the palette of the Filipino. So for sure it's according to your taste, but the technique and the produce, it's different. It's ugh.
Nastasha: I love it. Mind blowing. Yeah. For real. And hopefully that's where we see, like a lot more of these creators coming from, right? Like if you think about it, the Philippines is so huge and the fact that you can have like hopefully one day we'll see, you know, this really amazing network of creators from across the country, like being able to really showcase the food of their hometown and region and share that to the world.
That will be amazing.
Abi: Yeah.
Nastasha: Yeah. And wanna say again, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you being able to share your stories and just to be able to keep on doing what you're doing and help share the love of Filipino food with the world.
Upcoming work
Abi: Thank you so much. I have the best time.
I hope you guys can keep supporting my short form content. It's one of the best ways to get discovered and if we're gonna contribute to getting Filipino food recognized more around the globe, we need your help in spreading that recipe and that story with reels. So keep in touch. That is on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, Abi Marquez. Um, apparently I'm doing acting now. I have a TV show on GMA, if you wanna look at that. That, that's gonna be June of this year. Hope you also look forward to the book, and I'm always announcing where I'll be. Please keep in touch because wherever I go, I always look for collaborators, recommendations, maybe meet and greets or cooking demos. Maybe we'll have an opportunity to see each other. I hope somebody invites me to Canada
Nastasha: I was just gonna say, you have any plans.
Abi: So I can have poutine and meet Justin Bieber. Just kidding.
Nastasha: We'll, we'll find a way to make Canada happen, hopefully.
Abi: Yes, please.
Nastasha: My warmest thanks again so much to Abi Marquez and to Karen at Nyma for making the time to chat with us for this episode. Head to the links in the show notes for Abi's socials and of course follow her to stay connected.
Our theme music is by Crowander with segment music by Eric and McGill Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and tell a friend or leave a review. It really, really helps. Until next time, maraming salamat. Thank you for listening.