Nastasha: Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I'm your host, Nastasha Alli.
Today we start by throwing it back to this food and culture chat that I had, hard to believe five years ago now, with our guest, back when a lot of us were still stuck at home with the pandemic and really just trying to find ways to connect with the people around us.
On this episode, we chat with Bettina Makalintal, who's currently a senior reporter for the national team at Eater, easily one of modern food media's leading brands dedicated to all things food and dining.
People like me who started having enough money to eat out at restaurants in the golden age of food blogs, I'm gonna say this is circa 2010, know that Eater has been there from the very start.
And that truthfully, in the US particularly, over the last 10 years, the growth of Filipino food culture and awareness of the cuisine in general is just inextricably linked to the coverage that Eater and other national outlets actually give the restaurants that are serving those foods.
So I think it's kind of a big deal to have this chat with Bettina, at the start of this year because so much of the world that we live in feels distant still, and sadly unbelievable in different but not unexpected ways. I gotta say a lot of the times overwhelmed has just become a bit of my natural state that it feels a little hard to justify why even having these conversations about our food and community matter in the grand scheme of things, when I can barely keep up and when there are so much else that matters more.
But I think it does help to believe in the power of storytelling and supporting people who wanna tell their own stories. Because oftentimes we do this through food.
And we talk about a whole range of topics today that have to do with ourselves and our identity and culture as people from the Filipino diaspora, from this lens of living in North America and how we relate to the Philippines in a lot of ways still, because the world is much smaller than we think a lot of the times. And maybe we just need to be reminded of that.
So let's get to it.
Meet Bettina
Bettina: I'm Bettina Makalintal. I am a writer at Eater on the national team. I was born in the Philippines, in Manila, and then I moved to Pennsylvania in the United States when I was five. And so I lived there for most of my life. And then I have lived in New York, in Brooklyn, since 2018. So definitely, very much a child of the diaspora.
I think one of my fondest memories is, I grew up in my grandfather's house and like we had a giant mango tree in our front yard and obviously the mangoes were amazing, but I think that from that house, what gets a little bit less attention in our family is that we also had a cacao tree.
So I was always really excited as a kid when there would be ripe cacao pods and then we would cut them open. And I've never experienced this as an adult, but basically from my recollection, there's sort of like pulp or flesh around the cacao seed. And so it's this white, slightly milky, it's a little bit like guyabano. Um, but it tastes so different from chocolate. And I remember just loving that whenever we had it. But my mom , and I don't know if this is an old wives tale or actually real, but she would always say, like, you can't have too much because it'll make you jittery from all the caffeine.
So I think the fact that there was this limit on how much I could have, made it all the more appealing. The cacao tree is very memorable to me and the white flesh inside the cacao pod is sort of under sung even now, but that stuff is so good.
Nastasha: This is a little bit off topic, but recently I went to Costa Rica, which is someplace that also grows a lot of the tropical fruit that you'll find in the Philippines. And one of the places that we visited was a coffee farm. And so when they did the demo, similarly to a cacao pod, there's like a little bit of pulp around the coffee bean itself.
So you have the fruit and you break open the skin, and then there's like little pulpy bits. Um, so apparently that's what's used to make the liqueur of coffee, so like the Kahluas, and that kind of thing. And so I was like, oh, that's really interesting because, I mean, I was assuming it was the coffee bean. But for liqueur they use the pulp. And so that's making me think now, I wonder what the pulp on the cacao pods is used for.
Filipino food in today's media
Nastasha: Mostly I wanna dive in today on some of your work and experiences and perspectives as a food and culture writer. And so in some of the questions that I had forwarded, I wanted to really kind of just ask you about some of the stories in the last like, five-ish years that have stuck out to you in terms of how reporting or writing about Filipino food has changed for American publications in general or specific to places you've worked at?
Bettina: Yeah, totally. So I've been at Eater for the past four years and I think the one thing that really stands out to me, just looking at our coverage now, is like how much the familiarity with Filipino cuisine has really increased. I work on the national team, so we're looking very much at big picture trends and stuff like that.
So not just on my team, but like in every city, it seems like when I'm scanning my coworkers work, you know, it's not necessarily this big fanfare. 'Cause the national angle is typically like, Filipino bakeries are opening, or whatever, right?
Or like Filipino coffee is having a moment or something like that. Like that would be the national framing. But I think what I find really interesting now is that if you look at local coverage, there's constantly like a new bakery with Filipino influences, new coffee shops with Filipino influences, restaurants, popups, like, you know, I just think that there's so much happening.
And I feel like when it comes to covering Filipino food, you know, you used to have to do a lot more introductions, or a lot more explaining what Filipino food is like, telling people it has these things that you like about Thai food, or it has this flavor profile.
And in terms of coverage in American publications, I feel like that has really decreased now because I think that the familiarity is such that people, you know, I don't think they need to be told Filipino food is savory. It uses ingredients like this.
I think that's really refreshing to just see that this has really become part of the culinary vernacular in so many cities. You can just be like, oh, a longanisa danish or whatever. Right? And people know what that means, and it's something they're excited about.
I think that's the biggest thing that I've noticed.
Nastasha: That's amazing. I mean, I'm gonna try not to be too sentimental or whatever about it, but those stories are so easily shareable, right? And we're at a period now, I feel personally, where getting inundated with content is the norm now. Almost. That having that guide and really having stuff curated for you is a big thing. And with publications like Eater, that's what people look for, right? I have Stephanie Wu, comma Eater at the top of my promotions inbox every week, and I regularly read the newsletters because that's what I'm looking for even though I'm not based in the U.S. It's such a great barometer for like trends and such.
What happens with so much content?
Bettina: Totally. And I think on that note too, one thing that has really changed is that, across the board, five years ago, food magazines were, the food media was familiar to people, but I think in the past five years we've really seen this boom of food content on social media specifically, which has its ups and its downs in terms of people are inundated with more content than ever.
But at the same time, I think the big benefit is that people are largely so much more aware of food than ever.
If you like cooking, you like eating, one side effect is that so many people know how to cook really well, so many people are open to new ingredients. I think it sort of pushes people to go beyond the super basic thing, right?
When it was a food magazine that only published one issue a month, they're limited in what they can say, but when you can post essentially unlimited numbers of videos on TikTok, the level of depth that you can go into and The audience for that depth is so much bigger than it used to be, and I feel like that's been a really major change in the past few years.
Specificity is really helping people stand out. And so that ability to tell a really specific story about Filipino food, or talk about Filipino baking in a really niche way. I think that type of stuff does really well on social media. And that's the type of stuff that also cuts through the noise when everyone is sort of talking about food as a whole.
Nastasha: I love that cutting through the noise is, that's what we're talking about right now is food storytelling, right? I still remember the blogs when it was very difficult to find information on certain things. But the other thing too is that we're just being fed this stuff by the algorithm now, right? Like, I don't even have to search for buhay probinsya content creators or anything like that. They'll be, you know, people just cooking stuff they get from their gardens, wild stuff that grows.
And like this one creator, who's based in Bicol, he just posts about different leaves and stuff that his grandpa knows how to cook. And some of these videos get hundreds of thousands of likes. And it's fascinating to me because then you go through some of the comments and it's like people who say, oh, I remember eating that from when I was young.
So a part of that too is that these videos are now a bridge for people in the diaspora or OFWs specifically to connect back to their sense of home. The mediums and the formats have all changed, but the desire to consume those types of stories that are about the foods that we eat is still like super there. And
Bettina: Yep.
Flipping the narrative
Bettina: I've seen some of those videos and the thing I find really interesting there, the really powerful thing about social media is that you're probably not thinking like, how do I get my story in
front of
Americans who care about food, right? You're not going to pitch Bon Appetit or email a writer at Eater, right? Which is how media has historically worked.
So the really interesting thing about social media is that suddenly this person, you know, does not have to go through any middleman where you're making the case for why it's interesting that I cook food in my provincial house or whatever. Right? You're just kind of finding the audience specifically that wants that.
And clearly there is an audience for it 'cause I feel like you're mentioning one guy, but I can think of a couple other people who I've seen,
you know? And So I think that fact that these niches have been built and that there's audiences for them, it just feels really exciting and it feels really interesting.
Nastasha: And on that topic of multi genre food storytelling, I mean obviously the documentary style videos are really popular, lots of people watch them. I will specifically name FEATR because I love that they've really integrated a lot more of what people in the Philippines are interested in seeing and watching. And you do see where it is influenced by global trends and stuff like that.
That's just interesting to me because from the diaspora, it's almost finding that like, oh, that's another thing that I have in common with people who are in the Philippines.
And it kind of breaks down those barriers a little bit more, of things that we have that are different.
Bettina: Yeah.
Nastasha: Which helps in the food conversation.
Identity, frozen in time?
Bettina: Yeah, definitely. And I, I love everything FEATR's doing, and Pepper.
Like one thing that's really interesting there is for me, especially as someone who grew up in the diaspora in the United States where Filipinos are a minority, not just within American culture, but within Asian Americanness, is that part of that diaspora culture is that we have this very sort of frozen in time version of what Filipino culture is. That's very much based on the time when our parents left and when they came here.
My understanding of how my parents explain Filipino ness or share things, is rooted in actually the 1990s Philippines. And there is a large diaspora community in the United States and I know so many Filipino Americans, but all of us are operating on the same sort of frozen in time culture.
And at the same time, so much of diaspora Filipino American culture, inherent to it, is explaining ourselves to other people, right? There's always this baseline that we have to explain, or make a case for ourselves, or prove that there's a reason you should pay attention to us.
And that's a very specific lens, right? The diaspora lens, that's very rooted in the specific time influence. So it's really interesting to see Filipino creators from the Philippines now, doing their stuff directly and speaking to me.
They're just making content, but because they're based in the Philippines, it doesn't have the same sort of insecurity as this Filipino American who was raised in the United States has.
It feels like this reminder that culture is really dynamic, and the Philippines that I thought that I knew from what my parents tell me, even from the time that I last went 15 years ago, it's a reminder that everything becomes so much more exciting. And all this innovation that I see in the food scene here is also happening in the Philippines and sometimes those converge, but also their mindset is really different. And this sort of viewpoint around how they riff on recipes, or even explain them, is really different, because we are coming from these different standpoints.
I think this is something that feels kind of new to our generation. When my mom was my age, she was talking to her family in the Philippines through letters. Things were so much slower, and now so much of it is happening in real time.
The dialogue is much more in real time that we are interacting with Filipino food creators. And in the Philippines, we're sort of like influencing each other at the same time.
Sometimes we end up making similar recipes or thinking about them similar ways, but it just feels like there's a totally different way to think about Filipino food if you're a Filipino person and you're like the same age as me, you know?
Windows into worlds
Nastasha: Oh my God. Like I've just been nodding my head along 'cause I 100% agree with all of that on several levels. The thing that kind of comes to mind is it's really a window into their world, in both our worlds. Really.
Like it's an exchange, right? Because I'm sure those creators are also seeing stuff that's produced in the diaspora, not just about Filipino food, but about different food cultures as well.
That example of the generational thing, it's totally true. And I can just liken this to my own experience, when I first moved to Canada in 2007, wasn't even that long ago. The main ways that you would hear about other people's experiences on the ground, once you were already a landed immigrant, were family and friends, obviously if you already have them there, or through settlement programs. Those were really the two big things.
So if you didn't know anybody, those were the two ways that you got to know your new place, your new country. But it's crazy, with the speed that we have this technology at right now, and the number of international students that are migrating to different places, including Canada, that conversation is sometimes now happening prior to people actually getting there.
There's so much more back and forth about what you can expect, what the food is like. That's the connection to food, like these students talking about going to the grocery in Canada and how you can make a full week's worth of Filipino meals for under 50 bucks or something like that.
Bettina: Oh, interesting. That's such a good point.
Nastasha: So it's reflective of wider stuff that's happening all over, right? The speed of the connection that's happening now from different communities. And it's kind of funny too, there was some trend about broth over rice or something and Filipino people have been doing that for like ever.
Bettina: I will say that once I posted a picture of my soup on Twitter, and I put my rice in the soup, which is how I like to eat it. And all of these Filipinos started coming for me over it and they were like, why is the rice in the soup? So I saw the Filipinos doing the brothy rice thing and I was like, all right, I see that you've changed your tune now.
Nastasha: Yeah. That's funny.
On the Philippines Michelin Guide
Nastasha: Going back to something else that we mentioned a little while back, what does the Michelin guide in the Philippines mean to you on a professional and personal level? And I wanna preface this part of the conversation by talking about where we are coming from, from the professional industry side, right?
For example, I do not work in restaurants. However, I do work in the travel industry and I have background in working with travel companies to design tours that are featuring the food ways, the food and culture traditions of a certain destination.
And I love doing this as my day job because it means that I get to learn about all these different cuisines and cultures across the world. And my overall dream is to be able to do this in depth in the Philippines. So for me, this guide means obviously a really massive impact to the industry in the Philippines and globally.
Like that recognition that the Philippines is now a Michelin destination, it's like, my coworkers now who are well traveled and really like Asian food in general are now actually asking me about what my experience was at these types of places.
And so it's exciting. I just wanted to see I guess on your end, what some of your initial reactions to that was.
Bettina: I would say that obviously it's a good thing for drawing business to restaurants and also positioning the Philippines as a dining destination, right? You know, especially in the past few years, we've seen so much interesting, innovative, world class level food happening in the Philippines and I'm really happy to see all of that work and all of those chefs get recognized.
But I also think that as a diner I'll say that I personally don't put very much stock in Michelin in terms of how it affects my dining decisions. I do think that the people who care a lot about Michelin is really a smaller portion of the general dining public. If you say it to a lot of people they are like, wow, that's impressive. Right?
But I think that in terms of my dining, I don't know that Michelin standards is what I'm personally looking for. So I think for me it was a little bit of grain of salt, where I don't think that having a place have Michelin awards makes me feel like I'm going to cover it any more or I'm any more likely to go to it. If anything, maybe it'll make me less likely to go somewhere. But I think that it's very exciting and I see why so many people in the Filipino food scene are excited about it.
On a big picture level, I do think that it feeds into this impulse that I think is very common within Filipinos to sort of always seek validation from elsewhere where, you know, Filipinos can be fixated on what other people think of our food and if we've made it as a cuisine. And I do think that while Michelin obviously means a lot of good things in terms of business and the economy and tourism, I feel like it's the exact epitome of looking for external approval, which is needing this foreign European organization to say like your food is good in order to believe it.
And so that is a little bit of my hesitation with it. I wish that Filipino food was seen as good by everyone, or that the work that's being done was just recognized and then it didn't necessarily need to have Michelin approval or stars or anything like that.
Nastasha: I love that we're talking about this because obviously there's pros and cons about it. One of the conversations that I was following online was exactly about this. And for those who are based in the Philippines, it's a big badge of honor that you can have now. But also at the same time among the general Filipino population who probably didn't really know what even the Michelin guide was.
This external validation was now going like, oh, well why wasn't this included? And there was some regional cuisines that were included in the Manila and environs guide, which is great. But then there's also the concept of inggit a little bit where you're like really jealous about somebody.
This was just stuff that I was seeing and I know there's so many different perspectives and you know, who am I coming from Canada to really give that much input on it. But it's a big thing.
I also hope the biggest takeaway from what's happening now is that it's encouraging a lot more people there to look more internally, and I guess that's part of what I hope will rub off from more Western media being really interested in regional cuisines. And several people who I've talked to on the podcast in the last year, that's exactly what we were talking about. From a diaspora perspective, there's so much interest now in what those regional cuisines are because there's still not that much content that you can find online from it.
Natural interest in regional cuisines
Nastasha: The other nice thing is that because in general, there's that shift in many Filipino people's mindset to think of it as something more special. There are people who are really now focusing more on those regional cuisines and creating their own restaurants or doing food content online or writing about it and stuff like that.
I think that was one of the biggest things that I noticed when I was in the Philippines. So I was there for a year and I spent a good amount of that time traveling to the big tourist spots. But also then I spent four months in the Bicol region near a beach town.
And even with the locals there who I got to know really well, it was interesting because my favorite parts of that whole stay there was just finding these seafoods that I, you know, didn't even know. I don't know what the name of this fish is. It looks delicious either way.
And so seeing how they cook it and they were really open with just like, telling me what this is called in Bicolano versus what I know it is in Tagalog.
When I was in college in the Philippines, if I would've been that curious then about what is this called in Bicolano, the immediate reaction I would get from people would be, why are you interested?
Like, it's not that interesting. But in general I was starting to feel like more people there were starting to get a bit more of that pride. I dunno.
Bettina: When I was growing up, and this is how my mom still talks about it. Like Bicolano is a dialect, for example, of Tagalog. And Tagalog is the main language. But I feel like I've seen a shift, especially with younger people now, just calling those other languages as opposed to framing everything in terms of Tagalog or a central, air quote, Filipino culture.
So it definitely does seem like something that's happening both in food and the culture more broadly, of just being more proud of the regional specificity and being more specific, actually it's this language, or it's this tribe or this culture.
I think it's really exciting that those conversations are also diffusing into conversations here. 'cause I feel like there are a lot of chefs in the United States now who are specifically focusing on one region for a dinner series or something.
There are chefs who are now doing food from Mindanao and that's so interesting because I talked to so many Filipino people and they historically don't know very much about the food from Mindanao, and have never traveled there and don't eat a lot of things there.
So it feels really important. I think this is the important thing about like Filipino food having gotten to the level that it is, right? Where people are familiar with it.
So now you can actually go one step deeper and say, you know Filipino food well now, here's this variation of it. Or you know, it just feels like people's palates and their knowledge base is more primed now for exploring things like the food of Mindanao.
Nastasha: My God, I feel like five years ago us would've been clapping really heavily on that. I wanna put that in a little more perspective because I hope that in a couple more years if we revisit this conversation, the regionality thing is like.
So sure, you may think of it as another way to get people's foot in the door, some way for people to book that reservation, right? And from a business perspective, talking about people who operate restaurants and pop-up kitchens and stuff in the diaspora, that's another thing to set you apart, right? It's another way to get people booking tickets in those seats in the restaurant. It's something that adds to your USP, your unique proposition, among the many other dining experiences that people can have in whatever city they're living in. Whatever big city they're living in.
I feel like it's established enough that when these conversations or the way that we're going in the west starts to be more noticed in the Philippines, like I really, really hope what happens in the end is that those regional cuisines, which we love and wanna learn more about and wanna taste more. It's really, at the end of the day, that's what it is, right? Like more people wanna taste different types of food and different cultures and traditions and learn about them.
What hopefully happens is that those regions in the Philippines are getting like, the people who are trying to preserve those foods or those ingredients, get their due is what I'm trying to get at.
Tracing coffee routes
Bettina: I'm so glad that you brought this up because, for example, one story that I worked on recently was a piece about Filipino coffee shops, which feels like they're sort of popping up across the United States in lots of different places.
And I think the interesting thing there is that a lot of these are going one step beyond just representation or recognition in the sense that many of them are working with Filipino coffee producers to source beans from the Philippines.
That is the model for what I hope to see with the cuisine, right? Because it's like, the Philippines was once a major coffee producing country and it stopped and has never sort of regained that status in the coffee world.
So now it feels important to try to build this market for Philippine grown coffee in the United States now that people are already like, they want the ube drink, the croissant danish or whatever, right?
So it feels really important that the next step for the diaspora is to actually create these markets and build these systems so that the actual food producers in the Philippines can find a new outlet for their product or gain recognition on the global scale because obviously the Philippines is so abundant.
And it feels like despite the success of the profile of Filipino food in the United States, it feels like that last step of still importing things or having a market for things.
Like, you know, I've talked to chefs and they want these things from the Philippines, but they're still not necessarily being provided by major distributors here. So it feels like that's the next step where things really have to go is, like we've proved that there's the audience here, and so now that sort of infrastructure needs to happen so that we can actually bridge that logistical gap between the two places. Because clearly our food cultures are very much in conversation.
Nastasha: Yep, for sure. A hundred percent agree. The sourcing and, 'cause that all ties in, right? Like storytelling has so much to do with this too. How you tell the stories of those regions and the ingredients that come from it and the menus and how you develop all that.
It's safe to say at this point that we are at that stage where we know the stories, we're familiar enough with the ingredients and we don't have to explain what ube is to anyone.
But yeah, it's more like seeing how it's gonna go in the future and most of the people probably who are gonna be listening to the show too are within that generation where you're aware of the ills of the Philippines. And as someone in the diaspora, we are all trying to find ways to connect with that, or with that part of ourselves that wants to do something about how disconnected we feel from there.
And one other thing that's been quite nice that's happened over the last couple years is newsletters on Substack, for example, or like finding whole new audiences and people who have become a lot more courageous in a lot of ways on these platforms to really talk about, you know, what they feel and what their experiences are like, and tie it back to the everyday food that they eat at home with their mom, with their kids, where they go to eat out, and I guess what I was trying to get to was the comfort that we find in the foods that we grow up with and wanna learn more about is really there.
And so I guess from your perspective, as somebody who writes about food and culture, what are some of those ways, I guess, or things that you have noticed come up in these food stories where people are just trying to find a part of themselves or like a part of their identity through the food.
Food as a gateway
Bettina: I mean, it really is such an easy touch point for people.
I think the reason food is so compelling for the diaspora is that even if you feel super disconnected from the rest of Filipino culture, and even if you don't know a lot of Filipino people, you've probably eaten something that's Filipino, right? And so I think that's why food is such a sort of bridge space to start asking these bigger picture questions about yourself and your relationship to your family.
And even if I have no command of the language, right, I can feel like an expert in the way my mom makes lumpia or something, right? So I think that it's very validating. And whereas other parts of culture and identity can feel really destabilizing.
I think food feels like something that we really have a hold of and it feels like, you know, you know what your preferences are, you know how you like the egg and your longsilog, right? I think that's why we're seeing so many people sort of tell that story. 'Cause you don't need to have worked in a kitchen to write about how your mom made you breakfast and how it made you feel or whatever, you know.
So I think that it's interesting to see the many ways that people are now taking advantage of new storytelling methods to create content around food.
Nastasha: I mean that's just something I live by. Like food is an entryway into the culture. And everybody has different experiences, and so your own lived experiences obviously inform what your preferences are or what you like in terms of, do you like sour stuff?
Do you stay away from super sweet stuff? And it's very rich and so I think that's one of the things that I love now is that, even just through the course of our conversation today, we've talked about so many things and it just illustrates like how rich and varied the cuisine in general is.
Doreen is back in print!
Nastasha: One thing that I wanted to specifically talk about is that when we did the food and culture chat a couple of years ago, we were talking about the books of Doreen Fernandez for quite a while. I skimmed through the call that we did to refresh my memory, but we talked about her books quite a lot and how difficult it was at the time to find them in the US.
And now we're talking about like late 25, early 2026. A publisher in the Philippines called Exploding Galaxies has finally put Sarap and Palayok back into print with amazing photos from some really great photo journalists who are based in the Philippines. And that I think is amazing because it's closing the gap, you know, bringing this amazing storyteller to a whole new audience.
And opening that door again for people to learn about the cuisine and the culture in however way they want to, and specifically with that, it's a food book. Not many recipes in it, but it still attracts a lot of people.
Bettina: Yeah, I was so excited about that. And like the instant I saw that Philippine books was selling it, I bought it instantly. The shipping kind of did make me wince a little bit, but I was like, okay, I need it.
But one thing that's interesting now too is that, for a long time, and rightly so, Doreen has kind of been this singular figure of Filipino food, especially on a global scale, right?
And obviously her work is very influential. It's very foundational. I love it. And so this is not shade, but no one person can speak for any one cuisine. And so I think the thing that's exciting about this moment is just that we have so many more people writing and sharing stories about Filipino food and there's videos and everything like that.
And so the thing that feels really important is that, it feels like so many more people are building off Doreen's work, and that is like visible. And now there's so many people who are offering these different insights about Filipino food, and pretty much everyone is doing it with Doreen's influence, like she's constantly inspiring new people to think about Filipino food more seriously.
So yeah, I really like that fact that we have more access to Doreen's work, but also now there's so many other people who are taking Doreen's spirit and going like, oh yeah, there is so much more storytelling to tell about like Filipino food producers right now.
Nastasha: Let me take a second to gather my thoughts here. I also don't wanna throw shade to people in the Philippines who are listening to this, but, little bit of context. So the school that I went to in the Philippines was called, De La Salle College of Saint Benilde.
So in the Philippines, if you talk about going to a culinary school, it's that, or Enderrun Colleges, both are based in Manila, which are kind of like the premier cooking school. So I went to college with that group of people who are like, Filipino food, who really cares about that? We wanna do French.
When I met up with some of my batch mates when I was in the Philippines, that conversation has completely flipped the script now. And it is because of things like Doreen's books coming back in print. But also it's a perspective shift within that community and that society where, I had lunch with some people and we spent like literally several hours talking about Claude Tayag and Atching Lillian and Miss Louella from Cebu, who wrote Hikay, and just all of these books.
And I was just sitting there going like, wow, you guys, like, I don't wanna be all about this, but I feel like in the diaspora, we have such high respect for them, and it was really nice to see that they were really excited about it too. And they're kind of seeing that value I guess in it.
What I really hope is that people from the diaspora who go back to the Philippines as a balikbayan, someone who's rediscovering or setting foot back in some place where they're from, really like, understand both of those things, right?
Like they're there, there's a really active food scene, there's always been really good food. It's just not covered or promoted in the same way.
But also the perspectives have changed, from people in the Philippines to the diaspora. And again, food's a nice way to bridge that gap and talk about it.
Storytelling is alive
Bettina: Yeah, definitely. One thing I think that feels really exciting too about Filipino food that's happening in the Philippines right now, higher end places especially, is like you mentioned, I think for a long time there was always this sense that you had to sort of emulate French cooking in order to achieve greatness in the culinary world.
And it just feels like so many places that are succeeding in the Philippines right now, they don't have that lens. They're very much looking inward at how have people done things in the Philippines? What are the processes?
There's all this, you know, we've honed here over hundreds of years. Right? So it definitely feels like there's perspective shift on a large scale about where inspiration comes from and there's so many sources of inspiration and in terms of cooking traditions, but also the food writers in the Philippines and maybe we just didn't pay enough attention to them in the past.
Nastasha: Or their work hasn't been available. 'Cause that's the other thing that's really nice about the republication of Sarap and Palayok, for example, is that it's shifted that conversation among the food and lifestyle magazines and stuff in the Philippines.
And so that audience who does have the money to go out and spend 10,000 pesos on a Japanese dinner, will now consider spending that money at a place that does regional Filipino cuisine or something really unique with Filipino food. So they're global concepts that are still applicable anywhere in the world that you go.
Since we're talking about content a lot and stories, what are some of the food content or stories that you read about or watched recently that made you learn something new about food from the Philippines, whether that's there or in the US.
Bettina: Yeah, I mean, obviously I get so much out of feature style documentaries about different regions and stuff.
But the thing that I find the most illuminating is watching cooking videos from actual creators in the Philippines and seeing how are people just cooking in the day to day? When we're not trying to excavate some history or something like that. If you are a 33-year-old person who lives in Manila, how do you like to make food?
That's what I find the most interesting personally is just seeing that stuff where it's very clear that we're all having the same influences, but we still end up creating them in a very different way.
I feel like I've always felt that the gap between us and the Philippines is so big, for example, just because it's so far away and the time is different and you know, it's still weird to ship things there. And so I think just seeing stuff like that.
I feel like if I were to go to the Philippines, it would feel like going on vacation. And the experience that I would have is just a vacation experience by virtue of where my family would take me and what we would be doing. And so I just love seeing vlogs from people who live in the Philippines, when you're not trying to show off to like a visiting relative, seeing this is what things are actually like.
Nastasha: Like a window into that every day. The culture today as it is.
Bettina: It just is so interesting how TikTok, for example, has made the world so much feel a little smaller in a way where it's like, we are all buying the same amazon handheld fan, you know, in all these different countries.
'cause we saw a video of it, you know, and that sort of effect is interesting to experience 'cause it feels so distinct to this moment in time.
Nastasha: Yeah, no, it's true though. And everything that we're talking about is very distinct to this moment in time, because everything is changing and that's the only thing that's constant. But the value that we find in the stories that we connect with, that's never gonna go away.
And so the method that people tell stories at may change and the duration of how we consume content might also change. And I'm saying that because as much as I love long form journalism and really well researched stories, that will always be something that I will give a lot of value and attention to.
The short clips are also really good because it's something that is a little bit easier to make a part of your every day, if that makes sense.
That you're scrolling through things and you see something and you're like, oh. But because it happens so regularly, you build more of a connection to it that way.
Deep dives over short form
Bettina: Yeah. And I think one thing we've touched on in this conversation a couple times is like things being gateways to other things.
Right? And so I feel like the way the creator economy feels like it's moving right now is that it feels like people are sort of burned out on producing and watching constantly this hyper, short, short form.
And so it feels like a lot of people are leaning back into wanting to do longer content, to delve deeper, make like YouTube videos instead of tiktoks. Right? And so I feel like that's my hope for the current media moment, which is that especially with AI and stuff, it feels like people want to sort of reverse course into craft and dedication and commitment to an art form as opposed to just algorithm quick hits.
And so all of that to say is that I'm hoping that all of this is a gateway, 'cause obviously people have always been drawn to storytelling through food. And as we've seen in the past five years since we last spoke, so much of that just changed so quickly, that it feels like the next big shift is probably this deep dive culture and longer stuff is what I'm hoping.
Nastasha: Oh, me too. Yeah, I hope that really.
Bettina: And yeah, like nuance and storytelling and, yeah.
Nastasha: And the perspectives. And I don't wanna forget our diaspora population you know, actively doing stuff around food. Because it's nice that there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff, for example, and one of the content that I really enjoy watching is from a local cookie shop here in Toronto called The Night Baker. A lot of their stuff is behind the scenes. Like what happens when they wake up at four in the morning to get the cookie started for the day. Like that personal connection again is part of it and going in deeper with the stories and wanting to immerse yourself more in those stories.
I really hope we get there too.
Bettina: On the note of diaspora too, I think that for a long time that Asian American diaspora has felt like underdogs or being Filipino American has always felt like being a minority. Now it feels like we've hit this turning point, at least in the United States, but I think it's happening more broadly across the western world, where like Asian culture is really the dominant influencing force right now.
Just look at this massive influence of Korean culture on music, food, movies, everything. So I think it's really interesting, that shift of like third culture, culture, feels like mainstream American culture, because it literally is.
We are a huge chunk of the population. In a cultural influence way, in pop culture and food culture, everyone is on board with the thing that third culture people have always known. Which is that this thing we've made out of both influences, Filipino American food, Chinese American food. It's our time as the diaspora to really like, take the spotlight. I feel like we're taking it.
Nastasha: Yeah, I wholly agree. This is a generational thing, not to sound like such an old person. Talking about how pandemic feels like it was yesterday, the people who grew up in their teens and into their early twenties, right now, they grew up in a period where it was very normal. Like they didn't have to fight, quote unquote for that stage as much. I mean, I'm sure that's still a thing, but to your point, on a mainstream level, it's mainstream enough where it doesn't feel like as much of an uphill battle.
So even for people who start a podcast, you know, today, their perspective is totally gonna be different from yours and mine, but hopefully they're still gonna be talking about the food and the culture and what that means to them. And really, at the end of the day, that's all that we can do. Tell stories and our perspectives and tell it on behalf of other people or share it on behalf of other people.
Lunchbox then and now
Bettina: Yeah, and I think that's also a nice reminder that the work we've done in our lifetimes actually has made a difference in changing the conversation. For example, I am 33 and I feel like my generation is the era that every Asian American has the lunchbox story, right?
Where it's like you feel embarrassed to bring rice to school, or something like that, right? And that was not that long ago that I was a child. And it's interesting because there was a Wall Street Journal piece the other day that was like sushi is the new chicken nuggets with children in the United States.
And obviously that's a certain type of child in the United States. But the fact that in the last 20 something years, we've come from this moment where rice felt embarrassing, to everyone eats rice, and children just know what sushi is and have a preference for it.
I feel like sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the things in the world that don't change over your lifetime. And that you sometimes look past the things that have actually changed a lot for the better. And I'm like, okay. It's very heartwarming to realize that these little ways that we've tried to introduce people to new food or talk about food in a different way or be excited about different foods has led to people actually eating differently.
Nastasha: I love that we're gonna end this conversation on that because that's very uplifting, and the fact that within our lifetimes 100%, like 10 years from now, if we had the same conversation about ingredients, earlier talking about the access to ingredients that are sustainably grown in the coffee space, what's that gonna look like in five, 10 years?
Probably better, just in general, more access to it, more accessible and price wise too, you know, affordable enough for people to regularly buy it and all that. So yeah, I really love that. That's a nice end.
Bettina: We'll just have to touch base again in five years from now.
Nastasha: I'll put that in my calendar and be like hey.
Bettina: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was such a fun conversation.
Nastasha: My warmest thanks to Bettina Makalintal for making the time to chat with us for this episode. Head to the links in the show notes for links to her work on Eater, and follow her on Instagram at buttina. Our theme music is by Crowander with segment music by Eric and MaGill, 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.