To the delight of advocates, producers, environmentalists, and policy makers, the slow food movement continues to flourish in the Philippines and the world
A few years back, it was rare to find ingredients such as brown rice, quinoa, or edible flowers in the supermarkets and restaurant menus around the metro. Often, one could only get these in speciality stores with high mark-ups. But the scene has changed through the years as the Philippines, slowly but surely, began to embrace the slow food movement.
“The signs are all around!” says an excited Chit Juan, Slow Food Councilor for Southeast Asia and co-founder of ECHOstore, the sustainably sourced natural product outlet. “The number of farm-to-table restaurants is increasing, more and more chefs are using homegrown ingredients; and Philippine produce is drawing the interest of renowned chefs whenever presented in international food festivals.” An exciting revolution is happening in the food world, and the Philippines, with its wealth of indigenous products, is playing a major role. Indeed, homegrown ingredients are more accessible now than they were in the past.
The slow food movement started in the 1980s in Italy as perhaps a kneejerk reaction against fast food. To date, it has more than 100,000 members worldwide. Espousing natural and organic produce, the movement attracted many proponents of healthy eating. Its influence reached the Philippines sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, when a few food advocates like Mara Pardo de Tavera and Ipat Luna began speaking about it. At that time as well, Baguio farmers were already holding a slow food festival under the movement’s Terra Madre project. A network of food communities that practice small-scale and sustainable production of quality food, Terra Madre counts about 2,400 units worldwide. On one of her sourcing trips for ECHOstore, Juan stumbled onto the Baguio Terra Madre Festival and the slow food movement. She signed up for membership (“There were 104 others from the Philippines who were already members then”) and remains today a staunch advocate. “We learned that there were slow food pioneers who have written books on the subject in the early 90s like Mara Pardo de Tavera, Felice Prudente Sta Maria, and the chef Beth Romualdez. In 2012, Reena Francisco [one of the three co-founders of ECHOstore] and I went to Turin, Italy where we met other slow food advocates from the Philippines. They started the Slow Food Manila chapter and soon after, Reena and I went to Salone del Gusto Terra Madre in the following years,” shares Juan.