A Taste for the Lost: How John Sherwin Felix Revives Filipino Food Heritage

The salt came wrapped in brown paper, coarse and heavy. John Sherwin Felix opened the bundle in his Mindoro kitchen—and everything shifted.

It wasn’t trendy Himalayan pink salt or imported fleur de sel. It was Asin Tibuok, a dome-shaped, wood ash-infused heritage salt from Alburquerque, Bohol. Often called “the dinosaur egg of Philippine salt,” it’s made by filtering seawater through ashes and boiling it until it hardens inside clay pots.

“It felt like a national treasure to me,” Felix recalls. “I called everyone in the house to see it. I took photos and posted it online.”

That post went viral. News outlets followed. While the broader revival of Asin Tibuok involved saltmakers, cultural advocates, and institutions, Felix’s post helped spotlight the tradition for a wider public. But for him, it wasn’t about going viral. It was about the power of story.

“That lit the fire within me—not because it went viral, but because it showed the power of stories. A single post can revive an industry and awaken our national consciousness about our heritage ingredients.”

Soon after, he left a steady job in PR to pursue Lokalpedia full-time—a digital archive documenting native, endemic, and culturally significant Filipino ingredients. Through long fieldwork trips, interviews, and self-funded research, he’s become one of the country’s most dedicated food heritage workers.

At a time when food content often chases trends, Felix’s work is a quiet act of resistance—slow, grounded, and rooted in people and place.

Roots in a Lost Garden

Felix grew up in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro, in a home where food was sacred. His mother was a meticulous cook—choosing natural souring agents over instant mixes, real pandan over bottled extracts. One memory still humbles him: a childhood helper named Nanay Beth once scolded him for getting angry over a meal.

“Pagkain lang ’yan. Ilalabas mo din,” she told him.

That moment taught him that food is to be shared, not fought over. Even the way his mother corrected his technique—telling him that unripe tamarind must be handled carefully to avoid bitterness—left a mark. These lessons, he says, shaped how he now sees food: as memory, meaning, and inheritance.

From PR to Preservation

Before Lokalpedia, Felix worked in corporate PR. But the pull of documentation grew stronger than the stability of a paycheck.

“It was a huge sacrifice,” he admits. “I left a stable corporate career to follow a path where I often give more than I receive. But I’ve never regretted it.”

Most of his trips are self-funded. He hikes, interviews elders, takes notes—often with no guarantee anyone will read what he writes. That tension between passion and precarity follows him to every far-flung province. But the work, he says, is worth it.

“I’m not just documenting recipes. I’m documenting pain, memory, survival.”

Critics have called him too emotional. Others accuse him of pushing a political agenda. But Felix is clear: food is political. It’s about land, labor, and dignity.

Even his corrections have become part of the work. In one widely shared incident, Felix spotted a misidentified photo of the Batad Rice Terraces posted by a Mexican government archive. Using reverse image search, he traced the image to Longsheng, China, and publicly pointed out the error. Though initially dismissed, his correction eventually led to a revised post with the accurate image. The moment underscored the risks of documenting culture in public—and the quiet persistence it takes to insist on accuracy.

Cooking First, Research Always

Felix is not a scientist or a chef, but his method blends both. He begins by cooking with an ingredient, tasting and understanding it. Then comes the journey: traveling to where it grows, is foraged, or sold. He interviews the farmers, vendors, and elders who know it best.

He insists on documenting food in the places where it still lives—forests, gardens, kitchens, palengkes.

“Food heritage cannot be understood without engaging the landscapes and communities where it continues to evolve,” he says.

One misty afternoon in the Cordilleras, Felix hiked into the forest to meet an old woman who still cooked with sabidukong blossoms. She asked him why he cared.
“I said, because no one else is asking anymore.”

The Ingredient Is Never Alone

Felix doesn’t just archive ingredients—he traces the people who keep them alive. He chooses ingredients embedded in a community’s identity, not just those deemed rare.

Alukon, saluyot, sabidukong, and itlog ti abuos are among the ingredients he traces in Ilocos. Further south in Palawan, there’s the red-fleshed durian known as dugyan. Across regions, he pieces together stories that reveal how food systems, landscapes, and memory are deeply intertwined.

“Documenting ingredients is like solving a puzzle,” he says. “You gather pieces from different people, places, and experiences. And slowly, a bigger picture emerges.”

The Stories That Hurt to Tell

Not every story ends in celebration. Some are elegies.

“I feel deeply saddened when I document a food tradition that seems destined to disappear,” Felix says.

He remembers a saltmaker who told him she didn’t want her children to inherit the craft—too difficult, too neglected, too invisible. Others quietly end the lineage themselves.

Worse still are the larger forces: land grabbing, environmental loss, and overdevelopment. When land disappears, so does the food it once nurtured.

Still, Felix continues. “Because if no one does it, we lose even more.”

Reclaiming What Was Ours

Felix believes Filipino identity is layered, not fixed.

“We were never a single landmass. With over 182 ethnolinguistic groups, our food reflects that richness.”

That’s why he sees Lokalpedia not just as an archive, but as a reclamation.

“Food carries our history, memory, and identity. By documenting ingredients, practices, and traditions, we’re protecting a way of life that reflects who we are.”

What We Can Do

Felix doesn’t ask for fanfare. He believes rediscovery starts at home.

“Ask your elders. Visit your palengke. Choose local. Be curious.”

Even simple acts matter: cooking a family recipe, researching an heirloom vegetable, or learning the history behind a fermented paste.

“Eating bagoong means using a fermented paste shaped by hundreds of years of culture. Eating adlai or kabog means consuming pre-colonial grains. Eating pako connects me to the wild ferns that Filipinos have foraged for generations.”

Because every recipe we revive, every ingredient we remember—that’s one more story saved, one more thread rewoven in the fabric of who we are.

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Which Filipino ingredient do you think deserves a comeback? Share your story in the comments. Start the conversation.