Growing up as a first-generation Filipino from immigrant parents, food has always symbolized something more than sustenance and necessity for my household.
My family was never one for communication. Fights and dismissed feelings were always left to linger in the air, more often than needed. It took a while for my relationship with my parents to get better because of that.
Instead, hours of yelling at each other and days without talking would come to an end thanks to food my mom knew I loved.
A warm, hearty bowl of sinigang, a Filipino soup that consists of onions, tomato, tamarind, vegetables, and a protein of your choice. For me, it was always pork.
The way pork shoulder would tenderize from the slow cook and melt in your mouth, alongside a sour soup and a spoonful of rice to cut through the acidity and fat was a swirl of flavour that would somehow always wash the bitterness inside of me away.
Food wasn’t just a symbol of mending in my family, though. It was also a symbol of celebration and love.
After giving up eating out at restaurants for birthdays and graduations, my mom settled on cooking giant feasts at home instead. Filipino stir-fried noodles called pancit, giant chocolate cake, and somehow more would fill up the space on our dinner table.
Alongside these, my latest birthday welcomed kare-kare, a Filipino beef curry cooked in a peanut-shrimp paste sauce. It was something I gave up making for myself when I moved out, as my partner is allergic to peanuts. She packed me extra to take home, before immediately teasing my partner.
It took me a long time to realize it, but these symbolic gestures were probably why I became so infatuated with the culinary industry in the first place.
For me, food was more than just cooking. It was a form of art. It was a way to understand people’s upbringings and cultures better. It was a way to explore yourself better. This love for cooking and food was why I ended up diving into the culinary industry in the first place.
Before the journalism program, I was a private chef and line cook for more than two years. Two positions that consist of a large skill gap, but something that only happened with me due to my deteriorating mental health.
I remember at one job my chef had pulled me aside to talk about my performance. For a reason I still don’t understand, we were sitting in a somewhat empty dining hall with one or two guests within earshot.
“I know you can be better, but you’re dragging everyone else down with how you are right now,” he said.
Having always harboured such an intense love of food, this statement felt like a bullet to me. I knew he was right, though.
Drug dependency and a lack of care for my mental well-being was something I suffered from, something almost everyone in the industry suffers from. I just didn’t realize it led me to become a hollowed-out version of myself.
I ended up taking a break from work altogether, before eventually resigning after several months. At this point, food felt like nothing to me.
That was until I met my partner, and the reason I loved cooking became clear to me once again. The acts of service my mom did through cooking seemed to become hereditary to me.
Nowadays, I find myself missing the feeling of sweat on my skin as I dance around my co-workers pushing out meals in the kitchen.
Whether that chapter ever re-opens will be up to my future. For now, I’m happy seeing the smile on my partner’s face when I place a warm, hearty bowl of sinigang in front of them.
