At Terra Madre Bacolod, where farmers and foodworkers gather to defend the future of Filipino food, Chef Don Baldosano—the chef behind Linamnam MNL and one of the country’s newly Michelin-recognized talents—asked a provocative question: What were Filipinos eating before colonizers arrived?
This idea drives his work on Chef Don Baldosano’s pre-colonial food, a mission to help Filipinos remember a culinary identity that existed long before the world tried to define us.
A Young Chef Rooted in Research
Before Linamnam became one of Manila’s most talked-about dining rooms, Baldosano was already deep in the archives. He trained in modern kitchens, but his curiosity kept returning to history—old manuscripts, travel diaries, seed stories, and the living knowledge of rural communities across the Philippines.
Linamnam opened as a small experiment in documenting Filipino flavor. Over time, it evolved into a research-driven restaurant that treats Filipino food with both rigor and heart. The space is intimate. The team is young. The menu shifts constantly. Yet the intention never changes: to cook food grounded in memory and shaped by evidence.
Today, Linamnam is regarded as one of the country’s most original restaurants. It is modern in form but Filipino in essence—an approach that earned Baldosano a place in the Michelin guide. And even with that recognition, he remains committed to a single question: How do we honor our earliest flavors?
Reframing Pigafetta: The Feast That Changes Everything
At Terra Madre Bacolod, Baldosano revisited Antonio Pigafetta’s chronicles of Magellan’s arrival—one of the richest written sources on pre-colonial Filipino food. In those pages, Pigafetta described a lavish Humonhon feast: china laid on tables, gold displayed openly, and Filipinos adorned in jewelry. These details challenge long-held assumptions. They reveal sophistication, abundance, and ceremony long before colonization.
Coconut appears repeatedly in Pigafetta’s notes. He called it kochos or kochi, noting that Filipinos ate coconut the way Europeans ate bread. Baldosano turned this detail into his opening dish—a fresh coconut bite with sukang niyog and alagao. It reminded the audience that Filipino abundance did not begin with the Spanish. It existed centuries earlier.
Ancient Techniques Modern Chefs Chase Today
From there, Baldosano shifted to technique—one of the strongest proofs of pre-colonial culinary intelligence.
Early Filipinos practiced sutokil—sugba (grilling), tinoa (boiling), and kilao (vinegar curing). These were not basic steps. They were systems of balance and intention.
Pigafetta even documented fish grilled halfway—charred outside, raw inside. Modern chefs spend years chasing this effect. Pre-colonial Filipinos mastered it naturally.
Spices filled the chronicles. Fresh ginger was everywhere. Cinnamon and peppercorns signaled wide trade networks and a confident palate.
Baldosano translated these observations into his Sutukil Two-Bite—not fusion, not reinvention, but continuity.
The Story of Sharing and Intent
As he traveled across the Philippines to understand early foodways, Baldosano discovered something deeper than ingredients. He discovered generosity. “One of the biggest discoveries is not necessarily the ingredients or dishes,” he explained. “It’s actually how we love sharing our food.”
He knows communities often hesitate with outsiders. But once they understand his purpose—to learn, not to take—they open their kitchens, their stories, and their memories. “Once they understand that I’m there to learn, they’re always so hospitable and open,” he said.
For him, this instinct to share is the heart of Filipino cuisine.
The Filipino Palate at the Center of Innovation
At Linamnam, the goal isn’t to look modern. The goal is to taste Filipino. “For me, it’s knowing how their palates are, how they eat, how they balance things,” he said.
This is why he travels constantly. He eats in coastal homes, upland kitchens, carinderias, markets, and fishing villages. He studies how flavor shifts from island to island. “Our food in the restaurant is quote-unquote modern,” he said, “but what it tastes is Filipino food.”
Respect begins there. “I try not to fuck it up by trying to make it modern. With the flavors, we try to respect everything.”
Millet, Lechon, and the Path Forward
His closing dish paired steamed lechon with millet, a grain noted in the Humonhon feast and overlooked in mainstream Filipino dining. Baldosano believes millet is “overlooked as an entire country,” despite its early significance.
Serving millet at Terra Madre Bacolod was a clear argument: progress doesn’t always come from invention. Sometimes it comes from remembering.
And in a moment that drew laughter and agreement, he reminded the room that early Filipinos didn’t just know how to cook—they had taste. “We actually had good fucking palates back then,” he said.
The Taste Workshop That Looked Inward
The Terra Madre Bacolod program closed with Baldosano’s taste workshop, a session that felt more reflective than demonstrative. Instead of looking outward for validation, he asked the room to look inward—toward instinct, memory, and the Filipino palate that has shaped our food for centuries.
He does the same in his own practice. He keeps his palate as Filipino as possible by traveling throughout the Philippines rather than abroad, tasting how communities season, balance, and build flavor. Every island becomes a classroom. Every kitchen becomes a baseline for truth.
And when he returns to Linamnam, he takes those flavors home. He cooks from the memory of what he has eaten across the archipelago, not from foreign trends or borrowed techniques. For him, this is the only way to innovate with honesty. The food may look modern, but the taste remains Filipino—rooted, confident, and unafraid of its own history.
The Youth Leading a Movement Forward
At Terra Madre Bacolod, Baldosano’s voice carried weight. He was young, bold, and deeply informed. More importantly, he connected the past to the present with clarity.
And perhaps this is Terra Madre’s greatest promise: the youth taking us back to our roots so that a food movement can move forward. Surrounded by farmers, seed keepers, and communities safeguarding our foodways, that future no longer feels theoretical. It feels inevitable—already taking shape in the hands, minds, and palates of a new generation ready to carry Filipino food forward by going back to where it began.
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