It looks like a paella. A great, flat iron pan filled with yellow rice dotted with circles of fried chorizo and pieces of chicken. Except it's not paella. It's bringhe, a special occasion Filipino dish made with sticky glutinous rice, coconut milk, raisins, coloured and flavoured with large amounts of fresh turmeric.
"Many people say this one dish represents the fusion between the traditional foods of the tropical Philippines and our Spanish colonial period," says young Manila chef Jose Antonio Miguel "Jam" Melchor. He's one of new breed of Filipino chefs across the republic who are re-embracing their rich culinary heritage and making traditional Filipino cooking cool.
"After the American colonial period of the 20th century we were left a legacy of junk food," says Manila chef Fernando Aracama, owner of one of the best places in town to try traditional Filipino food.
"In the Philippines we have a chain called Jollibee," says the chef with a hint of disdain. "There they have adopted our love of sweet food and serve spaghetti with traditional sweet sauces."
Turning their back on culinary cultural cringe, Manila's best chefs are looking to the past to regain a sense of self through food. They look to older people like Lillian Borromeo.
One of the matriarchs of Filipino cooking, this proud woman with a warm smile meets us in the Museum Ning in Angeles City in the province of Pampanga to the north of Manila.
"When the Spanish came in the 1500s they bought with them so many things," says the 77-year-old cook and author. As she speaks she kneads together the dough to make panecillos San Nicolas, short biscuits pressed into a mould to bear the image of the vegetarian saint. "The dough uses flour, bought by the Spanish, and coconut milk, native to the Philippines. We are a great melting pot of cultures."
To prove a point she makes an Opia, a beautiful little mounded cake. The pattern, she points out, is an adaptation of Chinese characters as the original moulds were Chinese and used to make something similar to Chinese moon cakes. The filling is candied melon, a dessert that is still common in pastries in Spain, made with melons originally from the Asia.
"Food is a culture that is often exchanged, " she says offering a plate of the freshly baked sweet panecillos, perfumed with the tropical notes of coconut. Next to them are served plantanillas, ultra sweet treats made from egg yolk gently cooked in sugar syrup then filled with reduced buffalo milk sweetened with coconut sugar. "So much of the food of the Philippines is about emotion," says Borromeo. "We have such a sweet tooth here, but it makes us feel happy."
"The food of the Philippines is dictated not only by sweet, but by sour, salty and savoury," says Claude Tayag. He is an artist and self-proclaimed "cook" although he is famous throughout the nation for his food and appearance with Anthony Bourdain when the US food TV star was filming here.
We are in his Bale Dutung (see baledutung.com), a house in Angeles City made of found objects in the shade of a sprawling fig. Built with five kitchens inside and out it is open strictly by reservation to paying customers in the open air dining area.
He is a great advocate of coconut palm vinegar, fermenting palm sap and ageing it in demijohns that form one wall of the dining room. "When the balance of the sweet, sour, salty and savoury are in balance," he says, "then we describe the food as having 'malinamnam', which translates roughly as 'delicious'."
The Bourdain legend lives at Bale Dutung, with the Anthony Bourdain degustation menu. It starts with the very refreshing fern frond salad and is followed by sisig. This is a lip-smacking and truly delicious pork dish made with slow cooked pork cheek enriched with pork liver.
Back in Manila, California-trained chef Bruce Ricketts is taking those fundamental traditional elements of Filipino cuisine and blending them with modern gastronomy. At his restaurant Mecha Uma, he takes tuna and serves it with foie gras and baked pineapple on a fine coconut biscuit.
At the recent international culinary conference Madrid Fusion Manila in April he served up a truly remarkable dish that was made of rice and pig's blood – like a risotto version of a blood pudding. He also takes elements of Japanese cuisine and blends them with local tradition such as seared cod with pear vinegar.
His contemporaries are chefs Rob and Sunshine Pengson from The Goose Station. The name is a play on the word "degustation", their restaurant a modern take of the traditional Filipino dining room with dark wood beams and bare walls in a warmly lit room in one of Manila's many towers. Here they cook an egg at 63C in the modernist style and serve it with smoked sweet potato and pickle made with unripe papaya.
Another dish is lechón, the classic Filipino roast suckling pig but served in a Mexican-style tortilla with hoisin sauce, coriander, aioli and cucumber – imagine Peking Duck meets Vietnamese pork roll.
Chef Melchor explains, "We are heading into an exciting time in Filipino food with an eye on the past and the ability to borrow from the cultures that have influenced us."
tourismphilippines.com.au
Philippine Airlines flies Sydney-Manila direct five times a week and Melbourne-Manila three times a week. Qantas flies Sydney-Manila direct four times a week and Cebu Pacific flies Sydney-Manila five times a week. philippineairlines.com 1 300 887 822, qantas.com.au 131313, cebupacificair.com (02) 9119 2956
Fairmont Makati, 1 Raffles Drive, Makati Avenue, Makati City, +63 2795 1888. fairmont.com. Five-star luxury in the modern high-rise neighbourhood of Makati opposite a centre based around a tropical garden. 9600 PHP ($284) a night
Mecha Uma, 25th street, between 5th & 6th Avenue, RCBC Savings Bank Corporate Center, Bonifacio South, Fort Bonifacio, +63 2801 2770 see mechauma.ph. The Goose Station, W Tower, 1117 39th Street, Bonifacio Global City, +63 917 854 6673. See thegoosestation.ph. For authentic Filipino cuisine visit Aracama, Fort Bonifacio Unit C, The Fort Entertainment Center 5th Ave. corner 26th St., Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, +63 2 519 6815, see aracamamanila.com.
SINIGANG
Clear sour and savoury soup
ADOBO
Pork or chicken cooked in vinegar
LECHÓN
Crisp-skinned suckling pig
BRINGHE
Coconut and turmeric paella
BUKO PIE
Fresh coconut pie
