Exploring Southeast Asia's Most Unappreciated Cuisine

The home cooked meals makes a lot of sense that i actually just realized it myself… my mom is not the best cook; hell i still can’t tell sometimes if what she cooked is afritada, caldereta, mechado,, until i taste it. Her repertoire is very limited to sinigang, tinola , adob9 or karekare.. but i find myself refusing to eat filipino foods not cooked by her. I only eat at filipino restaurants when ihave no choice. Hahah. i eat at carinderia, id just settle for fried ulams or just go fastfood. There is something comforting with my mom’s homecooked meals


Also in this generation of the internet where filipinos have such strong pride and need for validations, we tend to forget to embrace our own. I HATE it when say a foreign person would ask for food recommendations and instead of recommending actual good local food, we would be all over jollibee. So instead of introducing our cuisine, we direct them to western food and it is so annoying.

If you're trying Filipino food for the first time, it's best that you ask a local especially if you're actually visiting the Philippines. If you're going in blind, chances are you will end up in an underwhelming restaurant.

WHO WILL EAT VEGGIES IN RESTAURANT WHEN WE ALWAYS EAT THAT AT HOME?

Boils down to personal pride nowadays. We can always make it appealing but we choose not to. Even incorporating chilis and spice will invoke the phrase "masyadong maanghang hindi na malasahan😂".

Your rappler sourced murder rate on war on drugs won't help either, because even normal morbidity in hospitals were tagged as extrajudicial killings 😂😂😂

This is nicely done… will share and recommend…

OTR, this is by far one of the best videos that highlights filipino food. Ok, so in response to your question on how filipino food is some what not so prominent in other countries is for me three main reasons. 1. Filipino food is typically at best during gatherings, its not that its not so much as restaurant worthy food, its simply because filipino food is prepared best when its served to filipinos. Its comfort food, nostalgic feeling for an older generation of when they were in the Philippines and most of the time, filipinos want other filipinos to have a sense of belonging and its harder for abroad filipinos to obtain that feeling when confronted by other ethnicities. Secondly, when it comes to food, filipinos are not ambitious about businesses or exploring the possibility of being exposed to the public. Not that they dont care if other people would enjoy the food but its in our nature and our upbringings to pursue careers in engineering or health care as it was taught to us that it is the most practical thing to accomplish in terms of economic stability. As much as we want to share our culture and food to the rest of the world, it is very difficult for filipinos decipher the code of pursuing their goals in means of establishing a comfortable lifestyle with a great choice of career versus sharing what we love to eat to the rest of the world. Last thing i want to point out is, most filipinos are humble, shy and often cannot deal with the social pressure of talking to someone who is foreign to out culture. Nevertheless, a typical filipino who moves to california with a goal of economic stability will inevitably adjust and conform with their surroundings but will find it difficult to pursue a career in food and restaurant business as they fear the circumstances of failure or disappointment. Filipino food is so diversed and there is no one way approach on cooking a specific dish, thus it is very difficult for most filipinos to force relations to some of the dishes we prepare let alone someone who is foreign to our culture. Filipinos love to cook, its a staple capability that we were taught to acquire. This requirement of learning how to cook though, is not something we were taught to expose to another community of people but a must have to know in order to help feed our families. Filipinos understand our general hardships thats why we enjoy cooking filipino food for the filipino community. restaurants in los angeles understand the value of what filipinos bring to our general community in regards to health care so they typically set up shops near hospitals in order to better serve front liners during the pandemic. As much as i personally want our food and culture to go mainstream, its just not in our agenda. Our agenda in regards to food is to feed our families and hopeful to feed other filipino families in order to fill that voidness of homesickness. OTR, i enjoy your videos!

Hello, I don't know about you. But in the US & Canada, Pinoy food is now known & accepted. In fact my Armenian Persian officemates would shop in Filipino market to prepare Pinoy food. We have parties in our office where we would serve our food & everyone eats it. Besides in the Phil, there are so many expats from diff parts of the world who now live there & eat the local food. I've seen many tv shows in the US who featured Filipino cuisine.

I'm surprised why her husband is telling you KINILAW originated from Japan. But in fact its OTHERWISE..... Here is the fact about Kinilaw: Kinilaw is native to the Philippines. The balangay archaeological excavation site in Butuan (dated c. 10th to 13th century AD) uncovered remains of halved tabon-tabon fruits and fish bones cut in a manner suggesting that they were cubed, thus indicating that the cooking process is at least a thousand years old.

FILIPINO FOOD , MOST OF THEM ARE FROM SPANISH CULTURE,

Best Filipino food is homecooked or "sa handaan".

I love this documentary I'm happy and I'm also sad.
Keep fighting to survive Philippines.

As a Filipino, I'm really happy that our cuisine is underrated. Because it means that only we Filipinos are enjoying our foods, we have many noodle dishes that won't lose to other asian countries noodle dishes like ramen of japan, black bean noodle of korea, vietnam pho, etc. We have many delicious rice cakes that can compete with Japan's mochi. And I am very happy that mostly us Filipinos get to enjoy our foods.

Filipino cuisine is diverse and still evolving.

It's an unappreciated cuisine for a reason. No, sorry, actually three reasons, that kind of overlap:

1. It is incredibly unhealthy, most dishes drip in oil/fat and fresh vegetables are mostly seen as an abomination that needs to be boiled/fried/stewed until unrecognizable.
2. It tastes horrible. That is, unless you love extremely oily food (see point one above) and/or extremely sweet food - yup, sugar is put en masse into basically every dish imaginable, or contrastingly, very bland food - salt as an enhancer has not yet arrived to these shores.
3. I don't think the majority of Filipinos can actually cook. And by that I mean cook, like boil or fry an egg, or a fresh fish, or a steak, and then take it from there and add whatever spices you may prefer. The majority of times these simple things are just burnt to a very hard crisp or turned into a tasteless soup.

(4.) You may think an island nation like this would be great for all kinds of fish and seafood? Forget it. These treasures are treated with the same disrespect as all other food stuff.

Now I say this with the caveat of not having sampled Philippine food outside of the Philippines - I have merely lived there for two years with a Philippine family eating home-cooked as well as restaurant and street food on a daily basis during that time. But maybe that still counts as having tried the Philippine cuisine?



While you have genre restaurants of South East, South or East Asian cuisines like Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean or Vietnamese all over the world, you will never have that with the Philippine cuisine. It is simply too bad. As in not sarap.

PS. I do like Laing (taro leaves in coconut milk), preferably with a little dried fish or pork on top (you need to be careful preparing it though, you may get itchy inside). They can keep the rest. Sorry.

pagpag 😂😂😂

Also per my experience, Pinoy foods have bad rep because we always introduce them to the exotic ones first. I remember we had foreign visitors in our office who well said that they would love to try some pinoy foods and people were shouting balut (duck eggs with chick on it). So they tried it with a disgusted face (it looks disgusting but taste is subjective). That foreign visitor confided when they are about to leave that the balut will always be her impression with pinoy food that's why it dampened her eagerness with the overall pinoy cuisine.

Ang problema po kasi is kung mejo lumalim na po tsyo sa atning mha suthentic filipino food ay natatakot tayong baka hindi na msintindihan ng mha taga ibanh bansa gulad naming mha ilocano na simple lang kung kumain at magluto ng dinengdeng na hslos pakuluan mo lang at wala ng gisa gisa lalo laming mga mainstream na ilocano pinakuluang gulay lang like malunggay sitaw okra Talong asin tubig at ang magpapalasa nalang kung upgraded ng konti is yong inihaw na isda lalo na kung noong araw hindi uso ang vetsin bagoong dshil tulad nga ng dinabi ng narrator gsling daw yon sa thailand so kung noong hindi pa dunating ang mga thailanders noon yong finengdeng sy asin lang siyempre tapos yong buridibod namin modified finengdeng lang na pinalapot ng finurog na kamote or gabi or tugi(native kamote) at may bulaklak ng katuray at kalabasa st hinimsy na bunga ng malunggay at syempre inihaw na isda at kami dahil simple lang ang lasa ang sevond ulam jsn na partndr ng dalawang yan is iether inihaw/prinito na susay(tuna in steak slice) and/or insarabasab na baboy isasawsaw sa ginisang dugo ng baboy sa bawang dibuyas at luya minsan merong gata depende sa diskarte which are can not be appreciated by foreign (not ilocano) palate then yong vety suthentic nsmin pinapaitan ano kaya ang laso nun noong wala pang mga vetsin at very raw n pa sng ingredients na sng msgbibigsy lang talaga ng husto ng lasang pinapaitan is yong suthentic na papait which i could not explsin you how we ectracted it because hibdi ito yong pspait lang na kinuha namin sa apdo ng animal fron kambing or baka or Kalabaw wag nyo na skong pilitin panh iecplain kung pano ginawa at saan nanggLing yon dahil bska pagpunta nyo dito ay hindi na kayo kakain ng very authentic and I mean "VERY AUTHENTIC" na as in parang niluto noong unang panahon kaya hibdi bastabasta msintruduce sa ibang bansa lalo na kung ang bansang yon ay may fine dining pa kaya whst we introduce lang is yong mga fusion f9d or suthentic filipino fusion foods after ng dumating itong mga condiment na sinasabi ng narrstor nyo which is authentic parin nsmN because original filipino foods pa fin nsman but with foreign condiments and spices na po di po ba kaya maski sabihin mong suthebtic filipino pa rin yong dinenhdeng nsmin pero fudion na sya dahil meron ng bagong gsling thailand na what we could clsim lang na original na bagoong namin is yong padas at monamon(dilis)ay syempre yong bagoong gg ng pangasinan 😢😢😢

The home cooked meal remind me of my Palawan vacation. After our seminar, we went to the inn we were staying and totally forgot to order food. We ask the owner if we can still order. He just laugh and said - "The restaurant is already close but we're gonna have a kids party in less than an hour. Just join us. Its all free. Eat as many as you can." Minutes later, he knocked on our unit, invited us and we had the best dinner in the seminar for free. Way way better than the expensive stuff from the hotel. Filipino hospitality & home cooking at its finest

tara na? more like salo salo

You still forgot the indians and the arabs. That is why we also have some influences from them.