Nastasha: Welcome to Exploring Filipino Kitchens. I'm your host, Nastasha Alli. I’ve been excited for this episode a little while, not just because I've been giddy since we recorded it, but really mostly 'cause it's pretty special to connect with someone over, you know, a shared interest and something that we clearly feel very strongly about.
Luisa Brimble is a multifaceted storyteller who's based in Sydney, Australia, and her professional work ranges from photography to writing and cooking, and we've been following each other online a couple years, so I've been super excited to say the least, to finally get a chance to chat with her for quite a while.
Her work's appeared in an equally impressive range of mediums, from award-winning cookbooks to viral cooking videos and through conversations we've had online over time, especially during my trip to the Philippines. I had the pleasure of meeting really a kindred spirit and someone who also found refuge and solace in food and the experiences that we share with others, that really come to shape us over time. And I connect obviously with people who feel that, way and that similarly about food in particular. From her website it says that as a photographer, Luisa has worked with some of the most influential publishers and authors in the industry, including Prestell Publishing House in New York, Hardy Grant Publishing, Penguin Random House and Thames and Hudson. And her images have been featured in bestselling cookbooks such as Community, Neighborhood, and Family. She also successfully crowdfunded two independent projects, the Alphabet Family Journal, and Wild Adventure Cookbook. That one was recognized by the prestigious James Beard Award Foundation in 2019. Her Substack newsletter called In the Foreground, continues to explore the deep contrasts of food, and particularly around how it shapes identity, memory, and belonging, particularly through the lens of Filipino cuisine.
Like I said, a kindred spirit in all of this. Um, so we kind of knew our chat was gonna be a while. We talked about travel and our cookbook collection and really a lot about the Bicol region, where Luisa also grew up in the Philippines. And I guess maybe it's just that I've come to know a Bicolana sister now again, who gets hella excited talking about food and history and culture and really kinda where we fit into the whole thing, into the picture of the global foodways of the Philippines that are shaped and are constantly, you know, evolving and changing through the diaspora and how we relate to that food, how we cook it in our kitchens, and how we share it with other people. Let's get to it.
Takeways from Philippines trip
Luisa: What do you think are the takeaways from your travels? Like, what are the things that taught you about the Philippines? Because you spent, like, a whole year there, right?
Nastasha: So I kind of think of my trip as like in three sections. There's like three parts of it. The first part of it was the backpacker route. So that was where I went to like Palawan, Cebu I've been to before, but like, I hadn't been to the south part of Cebu, so I went to Moalboal, and that kind of area. I went to Siquijor, because that's like a really big tourist place now, and so beautiful, like, I love Siquijor.
Luisa: Wow.
Nastasha: One of my favourite, destinations, period, there. And then like, some of the north, so I went to where, Apo Whang-od was, up in Kalinga.
Luisa: Okay. Yep, yep.
Nastasha: Spent some time in like Baguio, and Sagada. All of these places I'd, except for Baguio, like I'd never been to other, any of those other places in the north, so that was the first half of the trip. The second half of the trip was the Bicol to Leyte region. So that was my plan because from, from Manila, I spent Christmas in Manila with my family and stuff. So like, after like the second half of January, I was like, okay, I'm going to go south.
So I went from Manila down to Bicol and then down to Samar, Leyte and then ended in Southern Leyte. Then I flew back to Manila because I was meeting a friend, that kind of thing. So that part was like the second half, and that was the unexpected and amazing part of it. Because A, I got to explore Bicol. Never, ever had been to Bicol. Never been to that area. My Lola on my dad's side is from Sorsogon. So she speaks Bicolano. My dad speaks Bicolano. I don't. Because that just got lost by the time, like, you know, my dad was a teenager. And so that was also part of my desire to want to explore the Bicol region. Like, I do have roots in there, and like, I've already self professed, I'm a Bicolana at heart.
And then the third half, it's a few things, like there was a few family things that I had to deal with. My grandmother passed away sadly while I was in the Philippines that year, so I went back to Manila again to kind of spend a little more time with family and that was, emotional. So lots of kind of perspective. And then I think after that, I was feeling very kind of like, you know, there's a lot of like emotional weight and stuff to things. So it's like, I wanted to just go somewhere, and go to the beach, like, I already kind of knew, even before I went on my trip, I was like, oh, it would be amazing….in my head, that would be amazing if I had, like, several months to spend somewhere, and I can just get started on this book that I want to write, and, figure stuff out, and all that.
So yeah, like that four months that I spent in, in Daet in Camarinas Norte was it. It was very chill, like, I bought most of my meals from the karenderya at the corner there, that the lady already knew me by the time I left, and she's like, Oh! Balik ka ulit ate! Welcome ka anytime! And things like, we'd go to the local talipapa and like the market and buy all the fresh seafood and I'm like….my Toronto life cannot with the level of the level of variety of the seafood that's there.
Luisa: Wow.
Nastasha: Things like my friend's kid, who, my friend's a surf instructor, she owns a surf school there, and her kid obviously grew up by the beach, he's off in the waves doing his thing. It was the first time I saw it, this is one of the things that sticks in my head a lot….on the beach, like, late afternoon, there's these kuyas that are, like, throwing these, big nets, right, like, just by the shore. They’re not even very far. So you toss out these nets, and I'm just watching them, whatever. And then later, eventually, a whole bunch of people start crowding to the beach, and I'm like, okay, what's happening? And then everybody starts getting like a little bit of this line and so there's like 25, 30 people of all ages just like slowly pulling in the fishnet from the shore and like by the end they've got like this big haul of the very little fish, that come up and yeah…so the reason that this sticks in my head so much is that my friend's kid was, you know, there and like grabbing everything and he came back with a literal plastic bag full of this fish. He was running up and he's like ate, ate, ang dami o! And he looked so excited and then he just ran back like to his house and then they made it, like fried it up and then served it with I don't know, I think sukang maasim or something. But that was one of the things where I'm like, this is just so normal here.
Luisa: Yep. Yeah, so let's go back to the three things.
Nastasha: I think the reason that particular story stuck with me, my friend's kid coming up with a plastic bag full of fish, and being so excited about it is because in my day to day life, like here, now in Toronto…that bag full of fish, what that means is that they're making it for everybody, right?
Like they're frying it up and everybody's eating it. And it's probably going to be like in dinner, it's going to be in pulutan, maybe it's going to be in breakfast the next day, and I think the nicest thing about having gone to the Philippines for that long is that I remember that food is not meant to be, I mean, sure, a lot of it you do have to eat alone because you have to feed yourself, but there's just so much more with the community of, like, literally just sharing a meal with people that the quickness of day to day life in a lot of modern societies kind of, you know, doesn't allow for.
Luisa: Yeah, there's two things in there. Individualism and collectivism. I don't know. I know they're like two dualities. I don't know if they're like opposite or something but I don't know there has to be something that ties them together in the middle you know. I mean, yeah, I can see how you feel about that experience that you had with, you know, the community, the Kapwa feeling in the Philippines.
Nastasha: I'm going to call that number two, like the Kapwa feeling is like. So, it was very healing for me, because, again, like a big part of why I decided to go and spend a year is to kind of heal from some personal stuff that was happening, and I think that being around, it's not, I think, I know that being around Filipino people for an entire year, like, it's not perfect, but it was so good for my mental health to be around a lot of optimism.
And then the third favorite part, I would say, was really just the food, like, it blew me away, especially the second part, the Bicol to Leyte part, I've again never traveled there, and so even just the real deal Bicol Express. That was like mind blowing to me. My favorite anecdote of how I realized the Bicol Express I knew is like, not really what, what people there eat is, uh, I went to this, like it's a little chain restaurant called Graceland, in Bicol, and when you order Daing na Bangus or, Pinangat, they serve like just like a small portion of Bicol Express, which is really like mostly the shrimp and the chili and like very, very small slivers of the pork.
Luisa: Yeah.
Nastasha: The fact that that was what was in like a fast food joint, like a local fast food joint, that was the first time where I was like, oh my god, of course, the Tagalog version of Bicol Express, which in reality is what's exported to most of the world because that’s just what happens. It's just a variant, right? But like the real deal is mostly the sili.
Luisa: Yes. Yes.
Sinantolan
Nastasha: Can I tell you my favorite dish, period? It's Sinantolan. Ginataang Sinantol. I'd heard about the dish, but I'd never had it. And I ate so much of my friend's mom’s sinantolan 'cause it's like, it's one of those foods that is A, super seasonal, B, super local, and like in my head is like the perfect example of the foodways of the Bicol region. So obviously the coconut is a big thing, but the santol, I remember eating santol a little bit when I was growing up, but it was not very common in Manila. I did not know that you could use the outer part of it, the brownish part. I didn't even know you could eat that. So I was blown away, like, when I would go to the palengke in Daet, beside the rotating thing that grates the coconut, they also have, like, a whole stack of grated santol, because those are two things that go, like, super together. And because it's inexpensive to buy at the palengke, people usually put just a little bit of meat or shrimp in it, just for flavoring. But you'd have, like, we went on an island hopping trip and we bought, like, 40 pesos worth of santol and, like, 30 pesos worth of coconut and like had enough to feed like 25 people, plus the rice and like all this other stuff, right? So, galing. And again, it's also very seasonal because santol is seasonal, and you can't really keep it for very long. Like there's no easy way to preserve the fruit itself.
Luisa: Yeah. Okay, let's describe santol. Santol is sour.
Nastasha: Yes.
Luisa: Sour, sweet, when you go right into the buto.
Nastasha: I'm trying to remember. I'm going to look up what the English name is of santol actually. It's cotton fruit.
Luisa: Yeah, because it's like when you see a cotton plant.
Nastasha: Yeah. And it's a little fluffy and a little white.
Luisa: I actually remember. So, okay, the fruit is sour and sweet. So once you peel the skin, you can eat it as well. Like I remembered we used to doot doot it in salt. So basically, there it is, like what you're seeing there is the sourness. And then you have the fat of the coconut coating that thing, but you know, it's kind of like just to tame the sour…
Nastasha: That duality that you're talking about.
Luisa: Yeah, so it's taming the sour.
The push and pull of Filipino food
Luisa: Like that's what you probably have experienced in the Philippines. And this is what I'm trying to write about in my substack is, all of these little things, it's like we don't think about Filipino food contrast. You know how we always go, what is Filipino food? We go, oh, it's a little bit of Spanish, a little bit of American, a little bit of Chinese.
But it's never about the food itself. Like, we always attach the colonization baggage. In all our food, when we don't need to. So now, like, we were just talking about santol, right, there's the exact amount of contrast in that dish that Filipinos know instinctively. They just know it in their life and they live it, not just through their food, but also in the way of life. Right. Like they're like the drama and no drama and then all of these Filipinos live in extremes, like the push and pull of the thing. Right. And then there's no freaking middle.
Nastasha: But we manage to like, we manage to thrive in that.
Luisa: Exactly. So they live in a extreme contrast, but they know the rhythm of life. They know the depth of like, they know how to fucking live life. Do you get it? Right? Everybody else says Philippine food is a sleeping giant. No, it ain't no sleeping giant.
Nastasha: I was so mad about that.
Luisa: You know, excuse me. Do you know that Filipino food is not behind everybody else. You guys just haven't seen the way Filipino lives because Filipino is actually teaching the whole world, the philosophy of life.
Nastasha: Bam!
Luisa: Come on. See this is why and we have the many many years of colonization, like it's so deeply ingrained into us that we are not enough. We are lost. We can't describe our own food. You know, it all needs to be articulated. Oh, I'm so passionate.
Nastasha: I get you, 1, 000%. So we're talking about, you know, these extremes to food. You've got, like, really an extreme of sourness on one end, and an extreme of bitterness and sharpness or whatever.
Outside the box
Nastasha: So if you think about it that way, it's like, oh, Why isn't Filipino food as, you know, as punchy as, like, as Thai? But then it's kind of funny because there's also this, like, prevailing thought, you know, that a lot of Filipino people are a little mahinhin and, you know, we're not very punchy and we don't, like, really, you know, step out of our, like, boxes too much or whatever. But, like our food, somehow, I guess, is the main way that we kind of, like, also show this expression of our ability and desire to be very extreme in certain ways.
Luisa: Can I tell you something about that? So a lot of neuroscientists have studied how, you know, why contrast is happening, why it's important to our brain, you know, it's the brain is always looking for something exciting. There's a lot of these studies, but one of the really good examples that Dr. Ramadcharan, can't pronounce his name, mentioned was he made an example of art. Okay, so what he's trying to say is, Art is not about realism. You know, you're not creating art for realism. You're creating art as hyperbole, which is exaggeration. Okay. And this is where Filipino food comes in.
Nastasha: I love it.
Hyperbole and extreme pleasure
Luisa: The realization. Okay. We are giving you an extreme end, which is total opposite, there's like right sour and then right sweet right there. There is no fucking in between, we're giving you exaggeration. We're giving you hyperbole. And you know what that gives you? It gives you extreme pleasure. Your brain lights up. Okay. And this is what happens because Filipino food is all about making you feel life.
Nastasha: Feel life, feel good. I wrote extreme pleasure down. Because I really like that and because I really agree.
Luisa: Right. We want people to feel our food. Like saying to you, I want more of this life. Thank you very much.
Nastasha: I want some more of this life. Are you kidding me?
Naya-naya
Nastasha: One of my favorite learnings, I guess, that I've taken away from, Ms Felice Santa Maria, is she talks about, the concept of naya naya or naya naya. I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it. Do you remember kind of that phrase? It's about, give me a second here. I just want to pull up her description. Okay, so, Nayanaya, or Nayanaya, was a word synonymous with being hospitable. So according to Ms Santa Maria's research, it has two meanings. One is to entertain and to serve guests, and the second is to be a happy person. And this phrase, I'll read something, that she says here. So when one practices, naya naya or naya naya, one becomes naya nayaon, meaning one achieves a feeling or a state of kindness, benignness and harmony. By feeding others, one brings not only happiness to them and to oneself, but puts the giver of food in a state of peace with the world for having practiced goodness. Isn't that lovely?
Luisa: That is beautiful.
Nastasha: When I was talking earlier about, you know, this feeling of community that I miss the most from my trip to the Philippines, like, I think that encapsulates that pretty well, because it's not just a feeling, it's an outright way that we show that we're hospitable. I mean, yes, we know that Filipinos are hospitable, like this is part of our calling card and part of why we're scattered all over the world and so many customer service positions because of this, you know, one of the ingrained thoughts that is a part of our culture, but, there is historical, you know, precedence for it. And it's, it's real, you know, I like to think.
Luisa: Yeah.
Nastasha: I do wanna kind of go back to this idea of like, how we invite other people into the table. So like, if we're talking now about these flavors and these cuisines and these dishes that are really great examples of these contrasts. And we want to get more people to like appreciate it than to taste it.
I want to ask you actually, what's your favorite Filipino food or experience? This is a hard question because it can have very many answers. But if I were to ask, if you had to narrow it down to like one or two experiences that best encapsulate like your relationship with Filipino cuisine, what would it be?
Favourite food
Luisa: Okay, there's nothing more amazing than to talk about home. And no matter what, I feel that our experience with food, the one that we always remember and the one that we always talk about would be our mom’s sinigang. There is no doubt about that. We would go to our mom because that is home to us. And it doesn't matter where you are in the Philippines, as long as there's sinigang on the table, you are home. It's game over. It's a fucking home run. At the end of the day, what do we choose? The comforts of home. But like, the soul of sinigang is the sourness. There has to be something in there. I'm gonna write it down. The sourness, what is it about the sourness that maybe it goes back to perhaps…
Nastasha: We should go back to Doreen Fernandez's ‘Why indeed sinigang’.
Luisa: Yeah, I've got her book.
Nastasha: Because that to me was one of the turning points for me, at least, to get into food writing, because I did not know anything about Doreen Fernandez. But that essay, the Why Indeed Sinigang essay, I first read it in a PDF document because it was included as part of a syllabus for some, Filipino American Studies course somewhere. And I think in like 2012, 13, when I first started doing this research, that was one of the only available, like, documents that you can find online, like, easily searchable, that was that deep, you know, and that really, like, talked about, kind of the cultural context, the food, and why, indeed, do we love sinigang so much, and a lot of that, kind of, same underlying principles.
Luisa: There has to be something about sour because sour is so predominant in, Filipino cuisine. Maybe to balance everything we use sour. Yep.
Home and away
Luisa: So, here's the thing. I just finished an essay. It's going to be called Home and Away. Home being Philippines and Away being Diaspora. So this is about authenticity. And how each place, of home the Philippines, and the diaspora will have a totally different way of thinking about authenticity.
Now, home, we being the Philippines, you don't question authenticity in the food. Because wherever you are, this turuturo, this karenderya, this restaurant. Wherever you are, Filipino food is present. Okay, so there is no need to ask for validation. There is no need to ask for recognition because people live and breathe Filipino food at home in the Philippines.
Okay, so think about that. Diaspora, on the other hand. They don't see a lot of Filipino food wherever they are. So they question the authenticity in themselves, right? I need validation of Filipino food because it's not around me, okay? And one other thing is the diaspora is hanging on to home, they're holding on to home so tightly because it's the only thing they know.
Nastasha: I was gonna say so tightly.
Luisa: So, in the meantime, the Philippines, because authenticity is deeply rooted wherever they are. You know, they are able to move on. They are innovating. They are thinking about, you know, where the food is going. All these OFWs that come back home and root themselves at home is able to create food, on a trajectory. In the meantime, the people in the diaspora, Australia, Toronto, New York, you know, they are trying to find their base, their home. So they're trying to define Filipino food in their own way, and it's still holding onto home and they're still questioning themselves. Am I doing it right? Is this authentic? Like, you're always gonna try.
Nastasha: I'm so affected by this.
Luisa: Yeah. So, so that's where the disconnect is.
Nastasha: Yeah.
Luisa: With authenticity and there is a clash. So here you go, there's a contrast home and away and they clash.
Nastasha: I feel that.
Luisa: That's a big contrast in itself. That's just not in food, but in the way of living ingrained in the Filipino. So wherever you are away, you're always going to look for home and wherever you're home, you're going to look for away.
Nastasha: Can I tell you personally one of the things that I realized for sure, like, as I grew older, is that, I mean, to be completely honest, when my family first moved to Canada, I did not like it. I was in my early 20s. And I mean, I could say a lot of things to like justify how I felt at the time, you know, other people have gone through worse things, and why couldn't I deal with this?
All of these are, you know, things that go through my head, and all, these are all things I talk about in therapy. And it's really helped me, you know, better understand why I feel the way I do, and it's helped me understand that I shouldn't feel bad about certain things because it's the ingrained colonial, you know, mindset, a lot of learning and unlearning over time.
But that just when you're talking about like home, so I felt really homesick those first couple of years and then as kind of time went on, I was kind of like, okay, I realized that I can feel less homesick through the food, through cooking it at home or making it for other people. That made a very big difference in terms of, like, how you deal with, with homesickness. But when you were describing that difference in terms of authenticity of, like, people in the Philippines who live there, who, the food that they’re eating at the turo turo or kainan every day, they don't even think about authenticity, you're right, because it's just there. It's their truth, right? It's their reality and they don't have to, like, you know, um, defend it or anything to anyone.
Luisa: You got it. You articulated well. Yeah.
Nastasha: Whereas when you have the diaspora, it is always like we're constantly having to, like, defend, yes, but also kind of like justify, like, why we're doing it. And that seeps into, again, so many things, right? Like, we touched base a little bit earlier on what Gordon Ramsey said about, you know, Filipino cooking being the sleeping giant and all that stuff, and to be perfectly honest, my initial reaction to all of this as I was, like, reading, you know, comments and stuff online was that, When are we going to wake up from not thinking this anymore?
Luisa: Yeah.
Nastasha: But that's a whole thing, right? Like, it's a process we're trying to articulate. Yeah.
Luisa: We are articulating it and it's here and it's Doreen Fernandez and it’s Clinton Palanca. It's like they opened the door for us to talk about Filipino food and we, our generation gets to take it. Gets to take it gets to define it. They opened the door for us. Felice Santa Maria, Claude Tayag, you know, Ige Ramos, like, these are the incredible people that is like, opening the door for the conversation, they go, this is what Filipino is. The extreme contrast and like, look at the life in between. It's like that particular duality is in us, we freaking live and breathe it. We only need to look within, not just in each of us, but within. But, you know, there has to be something about sour Tash.
Nastasha: It's a gut feeling,
Luisa: Sour is our reset. Sour is our home. So wherever you are, you know how we said the soul of sinigang is in the sour, because it doesn't matter where you are, you can find freaking sour. The moment that hits your mouth, you're home.
Cooking from balikbayans to the diaspora
Nastasha: I have to say some of my favorite places, the most surprising places I would say that I ate at while I was in the Philippines were those places that were opened by people who decided to come back and took their training from like Italy and opened up, this is one of the places I visited in Leyte…it was an Italian restaurant, but then he also featured his mom's home cooking. And so, that's where I had one of these, really amazing seafood dishes. And I'm, like, when you're talking earlier about, like, the human capital that's, like, coming back in, and, like, how are we framing that in terms of, like, the food conversation?
Well, if you really think about it, like, all those Balikbayans who have so much experience in the food service industry coming from all of these places across the world when they all eventually come back to the Philippines or the kids or whatever, taking those traditions from wherever they like spent a lot of their time and fusing it then with whatever is in the Philippines and that opens up a whole other kind of like, you know, genre.
Luisa: Again. Yeah. The food keeps moving. It keeps, you know, creating new things. So here's how I explain, how you experience Filipino food at home, outside, and in the hands of those who shape them, right? At home, I think, at home, okay, if you are new to Filipino food, I would suggest that you find Filipino friends.
Nastasha: Yeah, that's the best way.
Luisa: Ask them to cook for you. Okay. And then if not, then go and experience karenderyas in the diaspora, a restaurant, whatever. But like, I feel that the home will set the foundation of how you get to experience Filipino food. So this is when you get to experience the contrast, the sour or the sweet or the crispy and the soft and, you know, the asim and all of that extreme contrast and in the hands of those who shaped them are the people who are shaping Filipino food. like, you know, Kasama in Chicago, Serai in Melbourne, or Takam in Sydney.
Nastasha: Because they're the ones who, like, they're your mediator. The ones who allow you to, like, taste that and, like, have a sense of..
Luisa: From home, experience it from the current area, and have a really good foundation of how you understand Filipino food and then experience it in those people who shapes Filipino food, like the chefs and stuff like that. And then you can understand why the beautiful plating, you know, is what it is.
Nastasha: Yeah. And that goes back to, again, the community part of it. Even if it's at a, you know, a restaurant where you're dining with just like one other person, it still kind of gives you that sense of being around, the warmth and the hospitality and that kind of thing.
Broaden through contrast
Nastasha: I would say, maybe that's something we can kind of like, end the conversation on is like, what would you recommend for people to do, to broaden their experience of Filipino cuisine. I mean, you already said earlier, get invited to a Filipino friend's house and have them cook for you.
Luisa: How do you broaden it? It's like, go out there, experience Filipino food, but see it in a, have a look at it another way. Don't attach the baggage of colonization with the food, not just for non Filipinos, but Filipinos. And think about how contrasts plays a huge part in Filipino food because Filipino food will take you to the extreme. Will take you all the way to the push and will take you all the way to the pull, because they want you to experience the deepest satisfaction in freaking life, the deliciousness of life because in the middle where you meet…
Nastasha: You get extreme pleasure.
Luisa: 100%. Ate, extreme pleasure in life.
Nastasha: Yeah.
Luisa: Wherever you are, there is sour.
Nastasha: Yeah.
Luisa: It’s home.
Nastasha: Sour is home. That's the second takeaway. Extreme pleasure. And sour is our reset and our home.
Luisa: Yeah. This is freaking therapy, mate.
Thank you Luisa, for sharing your time with us. I really love that we could get the talk finally from Canada to Australia and appreciate working through our time zones there to record the call.
I really recommend subscribing to Luisa's Substack newsletter. It's called In the Foreground, and you can visit her website at lbrimble.com for links to her work and portfolio, theme music for this episode is by David Szeztay with segment music by Blue Dot Sessions and Podington Bear.
Until next time, maraming salamat, thank you for listening.