I arrived in Singapore with an empty stomach and a curious heart — the kind of hunger only cooks understand. I wasn’t just chasing flavors; I was searching for a certain truth about their food culture. Why have the hawker stalls of Singapore and Malaysia become global symbols of culinary heritage, while the rich, diverse regional cuisines of the Philippines remain largely overlooked, even by our own people?
I headed straight to the Maxwell Hawker Centre. The morning air was thick with humidity and the scent of frying garlic, lemongrass and spice. Elderly aunties and uncles ran their stalls like clockwork, some having cooked the same dish for 40 years — one stall, one specialty, one legacy. A Chinese uncle expertly tossed char kway teow in a blackened wok, each flick of the noodles crisping them just enough, a whisper of wok hei clinging to every strand. That plate told a story — of immigrants, of adaptation, of deep, daily practice.
It reminded me of our pancit. I thought of the pancit from our provinces: pancit habhab from Lucban, eaten on a banana leaf without utensils; the lomi of Batangas, thick and earthy; pancit bato from Bicol, uniquely sun-dried. Each one is a map of the place it comes from. How many of our regional noodles have been celebrated beyond our borders? Why is the Philippines still seen as a culinary question mark, even to our neighbors?
I took a bus to Melaka in Malaysia, a food city whose very name makes chefs like me sigh with anticipation. Jonker Street at dusk was alive: the sizzle of grilled satay, the tang of fermented shrimp paste wafting through the air, teenagers slurping bowls of asam pedas next to men in business suits. The flavors here were bold, fearless. That asam pedas — sour, fishy, spicy, layered — felt like a kindred spirit to our sinigang na bangus, or even the kansi of Bacolod with its tangy batuan. But while asam pedas had a pedestal, ours remained in the quiet corners of wet markets and family kitchens.
As I traveled, I realized that hawker culture in Singapore and Malaysia didn’t survive by accident. It was protected — codified into policy, promoted through tourism, and, most importantly, sustained by a strong, discerning and proud middle class. A middle class that demands local food, eats it daily and recognizes it as a vital part of identity.
Food cannot thrive in a vacuum. It needs more than recipes and ingredients; it needs a society that allows its people to dream, to live with dignity, to choose. In Singapore and Malaysia, the hawker centers were not just born out of nostalgia or state planning. They are monuments to the power of a strong middle class — a class that has room to care. A class that has enough to eat, yes, but also enough to protect the things that feed the soul.
In the Philippines, we cannot speak of a proud, thriving food culture without speaking of the conditions that stunt it. The middle class — that great engine of local pride and preservation — remains fragile, flickering like a flame in the wind. Because its growth is not just about income. It is about imagination. About space — democratic space — where people can gather, argue, cook, sell and feed one another without fear of eviction, displacement or erasure.
The expansion of the middle class in our country is bound, inextricably, to the expansion of rights: of public space, of clean markets and fair wages and safe streets. Of policy shaped not by profit, but by memory and meaning. The carinderia owner can only pass on her craft if she still has a stall. The carinderia can only endure if the landlord does not sell the block to a supermarket chain. A grandmother’s recipe survives not by magic, but by protection.
And so we must ask: What kind of economy are we building? Who does it serve? Is it an economy that remembers, or one that forgets? Is it one that makes room for the hands that feed us — the wrinkled, calloused hands stirring biko, wrapping pancit molo, gutting bangus by lamplight?
Because food, like democracy, cannot grow where there is no ground to stand on. It needs freedom — not just on the plate, but in the plaza. Not just in the flavor, but in the forum.
In the Philippines, we’ve always had the flavors. What we lack is the system that supports them. We keep losing our palengkes to air-conditioned supermarkets. Our carinderias, once bursting with local pride, have been pushed aside by chain restaurants selling processed, pan-global comfort food. Our public spaces — where food was once shared, debated and celebrated — have been privatized, sterilized, gentrified. The places where regional food could have flourished have instead been overrun by convenience and conformity.
I think of the carinderia owner in Pampanga who has cooked kare-kare for decades, pounding her own peanuts, boiling ox tail until it melts. I think of the grandmother in Zamboanga who still makes satti, or the vendor in Ilocos folding and wrapping empanadas. They are our culinary ambassadors. They are the ones carrying the flame.
But they cannot carry it alone.
What Singapore and Malaysia have shown me is that culinary heritage thrives when it is nourished by policy, pride and people. Food needs infrastructure. It needs protection. And it needs a middle class that doesn’t just consume, but cares.
Because food, in the end, is not just about what’s eaten — it’s about what’s remembered. When hawker food in Singapore was inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage, it wasn’t because the food was better. It was because the people knew it mattered. They valued the auntie frying carrot cake as much as the chef in a Michelin kitchen. They understood that democracy lives in the food court, in the shared table, in the $5 bowl that feeds the taxi driver and the banker alike.
I return home into the thick of celebrations of Filipino Food Month, a recent phenomenon where we celebrate our local and regional dishes and bring them to the forefront of national consciousness. I carry with me more than new recipes or ideas for a menu. I carry the conviction that our food, our real food, deserves more. We need to elevate our food not by reinventing it for fine dining, but by giving it space — literal and cultural — to thrive. Let’s reclaim our carinderias, our palengkes, our culinary commons. Our food deserves to be cooked in the open, eaten by many, protected by all.
