According to Nick Joaquin, there are two crucial documents in the birth of the Filipino nation: the Malolos Constitution and the printed menu for the Malolos banquet on Sept. 29, 1898.
The “high-style” banquet was for 200 select diners, and the menu was written in French, then the language of diplomacy and haute cuisine.
The sole surviving copy of the printed menu—which bore the words Libertad, Fraternidad y Igualidad (Liberty, Fraternity and Equality, the rallying cry of the 1789 French Revolution)—has been preserved in the museum of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro.
And it has been reinterpreted and reconstructed several times and in several ways by some of the country’s renowned chefs and restaurants.
According to public historian Ambeth Ocampo, he found a review of this “Fiesta Nacional” in the Oct. 2, 1898 issue of the anti-Filipino Spanish newspaper La Cometa as well as in the Oct. 1 and 2, 1898 issues of La Republica Filipina, the official newspaper of the Malolos government.
Ocampo quoted the Oct. 2 issue of La Republica Filipina: “The ample dining room was well adorned, seals and flags on each stretch and on the windows colored tulle to impede the harsh sunlight. Tables, arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, were set with about 200 cubiertos (utensils), set with the finest vajillas (serving plates) with exquisite sweets, different bottles of wine were served… Toasts were made after the meal on themes of independence, greatness of our future, the President, our heroes and martyrs. Champagne was emptied in profusion. After the succession of toasts the marcha nacional was played. Banquet ended at 2.30 p.m.”
Based on the original menu, members of the Malolos convention were served seven kinds of appetizers, followed by main courses and choices of cheese and desserts, and capped by a progression of red wine, champagne, sherry, and cognac—and to end all meals—a choice between coffee or tea.
The appetizers included oysters, shrimps, radish with butter, olives, Lyon sausages, sardines in tomato sauce, and salmon with Hollandaise sauce.
As for the main courses, there was stuffed crab shell a la financière, Tagalog-style chicken giblets, mutton chops en papillote with potato straws, Manila-style truffled turkey, beef fillet a la chateaubriand, and cold ham with asparagus stalks.
Joaquin described described the menu as a “culmination, like Malolos itself,” and that the dishes served to the republic’s Founding Fathers reinforce Filipinos’ sense of identity.