Filipino cuisine is having its moment—a moment that now spans a couple of decades—wherein foreigners, particularly white people, are crowing about the curious tastes of our food.
The Filipino diaspora has fueled the global reach of our cuisine, which is now being showcased in numerous TikTok videos featuring different nationalities as they leverage Filipino content to increase their views, driven by our people’s deep-seated insecurity about our own culture.
Published by Anvil, Kulinarya is a definitive book of our culinary expressions. It was initially released at a time when the current Western adoration of Filipino cuisine was but a dream.
of the Philippines
Kulinarya has provided an elevated sense of presence through the beautiful photography by Neal Oshima and the book design by Ige Ramos (for the first volume), curating our food into more palatable imagery for a global audience. Much is written about the participation of notable Filipino chefs in this endeavor.
However, in the book Kulinarya, there are artworks created by Jose Honorato Lozano from the mid-1800s that demand our attention. These images, although scant on a page inside the book, serve as a gateway to understanding how the notions of “Filipino” and “cuisine” evolved into what we currently take pride in, in terms of gastronomical relevance, in a world still craving Western approval.
There is little information available about the life of Jose Honorato Lozano, who was reportedly born in Tondo, Manila, in the early 1800s. His works became de rigueur among the rising native and mestizo middle class, as well as among those who ran foreign businesses in Manila at the time when the colonial city was opened to global interests. This occurred after 1810, when Spain lost Mexico to independence and the shift from Bourbon rule in Spain took place. This opened Manila to globalization at that time.
That is an essential note because it made Manila an even more exciting point of contact for different regions across the planet. It also enabled non-Spanish people in the Philippines to attain wealth and give rise to what eventually became the ilustrado class, such as the families of Jose Rizal and Juan Luna. The artist came before the ilustrados, but he is a precursor of what is to come: that is, a local or native who gained the capacity to depict his people’s own stories and images.
In one of the illustrations, done in watercolor on paper, is the very Filipino hapagkainan, where there is a sense of community cohesion in the joy of eating. Even though the image is from the mid-1800s, with its colorful traditional attire, it resonates with the present day, where food truly binds us Filipinos.
Jose Honorato Lozano, I argue, painted the nascent images of a “Filipino identity” at a time when “Filipino” was not yet ours but rather belonged to the Spaniards born in the archipelago. The image is a precursor to what Filipinos will be in the ordinariness of acting, simply eating, and basking in the senses brought about by the tapestry of cuisines from a time when Manila was open to the world.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
