SANTA CRUZ, Laguna—The exhibition hall of Sa Pantalan 2025 at the back of Ted’s Kitchen was bustling and festive on the morning of Oct. 25, with Philippine folk songs playing in the background. At the forum at the end of the hall, a member of the audience has just asked guest speaker Socorro “Corito” Llamas which of Laguna’s many famous delicacies should be preserved.

“Aside from espasol and buko pie, there are nata de piña, nata de mansi, lambanog, and bibingka made from brown rice,” replied Llamas, co-founding editor of Food, the Philippines’ first “magazine of good cooking.”

The forum was part of the program of Sa Pantalan 2025, a yearly food and heritage festival of Laguna. In her talk titled “Food as an Epicurean Journey,” Llamas spoke of how stories about food protect the local culinary heritage and uplift local cooks. Organized by the sibling-chefs Day Salonga and Gel Salonga-Datu, Sa Pantalan has convened farmers, gourmands, and skilled craftsmen under one venue since 2020 in promoting Laguna’s products and industries. 

Spotting a Filipino

According to Llamas, food is intertwined with identity, in the way apple pie is associated with Americans and balut is undoubtedly Filipino. The boiled duck embryo makes it easy to identify Filipinos in a crowd, she said, citing her friend, the late activist and film-theater director Behn Cervantes who, when in a crowd in New York, would shout balut “to find out if anyone was a Filipino.”

Balut is unique to the Philippines, said Llamas, recalling that Chef Glenda Barretto used to serve balut soufflé at her restaurant Via Mare. It is still sold by both street and ambulant vendors who, Llamas pointed out, were the precursors of food delivery services. She said that before the advent of Grab and Food Panda, “vendors were going around shouting ‘ice cream’” or whatever they were selling, like espasol and balut. She said a vendor regularly came to their family home to sell balut at 5:30 p.m. because it was supper time.

She added: “Balut saves the peso-strapped consumer. For ₱20, using only your bare hands, your hunger can be satiated nutritionally on the street with a sip and quick gulp.”

Curious, she asked her audience, “How many still know and eat balut?”—and was met with vague murmurs.

Bringing everyone together

Llamas said her childhood in Pagsanjan, Laguna, was filled with food, particularly her grandmother Josefa Francis’ potato salad, cheese pimiento, and pan de sal. “People who came to the house were always given something to eat, and the helpers were instructed to prepare food for the workers,” she said.

In the household, food gathered everyone together, blurring social classes momentarily. “Everyone was included in the meals, including the farmers, workers, and drivers. My lola said to give merienda to those nasa lupa (on the ground), as she put it,” Llamas said.

The everyday food consisted of nilagang manok at baka (boiled chicken and beef), puchero (meat stew), adobong munggo at isda (mongo beans and fish in soy sauce and vinegar), and escabecheng baboy (sweet and sour pork), she said. They also ate kamaksi (crickets), palakang bukid (rice field frog), dagang bukid (rice field mice), and sawa (snake), and, she said, never fell sick or poisoned.

But cake was a rarity and, unlike today, was not part of the meals because it “was made by hand,” she said. “We had cake during our birthday and were lucky to have it.”

Llamas also spoke of food as softener of political differences. One anecdote she narrated was about her cousin-in-law giving “food and drinks to the demonstrators” at the People Power Revolution in February 1986 that toppled the Marcos dictatorship. In another anecdote, she was advising the caretaker of her farm in Montalban, Rizal, to give food to anyone who asks. “The result was there was no fighting in the area, and the farm grew fruits abundantly,” she said.

Business opportunities 

Food is a source of livelihood, Llamas pointed out: “Every corner of the Philippines has a food stall, whether selling hamburger or siomai. Malls are filled with restaurants and old houses are converted into restaurants. Who will fail in the food business? If the day’s sales are low, the family members and staff can always eat the leftovers.”

But Llamas’ own food business was different, and signaled a continuation of her journalism career that, she thought, ended in 1994 when the magazine to which she regularly contributed was shuttered. A year later, she and fellow foodie and baker Norma “Omay” Chikiamco launched Food magazine.

“My own story of founding Food magazine brought not only critical, artistic, and cultural success but also money,” she said. “There was no other satisfactory magazine which tested recipes that were affordable and with easy-to-find ingredients. We appealed to the women readers, being women ourselves, and the fact that women have a say in buying food.” (On a personal note, I was among the contributors to the magazine.)

To make the magazine successful, Llamas said, color photos were used and a food stylist was employed. “Its first issue was quickly bought by Filipinos (men and women), and British, too. It was a hit!” she quipped. 

Food magazine was eventually sold to the Lopez Group. 

Proudly Laguna-made 

That food is a crowd drawer was obvious in Sa Pantalan’s festival hall, with the interaction of sellers and buyers proceeding at a hectic pace. Some of Llamas’ guests, like herself journalism  practitioners who travelled from Manila, happily went home with such goodies as sinukmani, sinaing na bangus, nata de mansi, macapuno, rambutan and lanzones—even footwear and dangling earrings. 

As part of the program, weavers from Malikhaing Maria (MM) of Cavinti, Laguna, took center stage to demonstrate their pandan leaf weaving. With skillful ease, the Marias turned the leaves into bayong (bag) and sambalilo (hat). Per the leaflet I received from proprietor Marisol R. Miras, MM holds weaving tutorials and sets up event souvenir booths apart from making modern pandan handicraft (tampipi box mats, hats, bottle baskets, cellphone holders, and home decor).

I watched a wood carver chisel a figure of a horse from a block of wood near the hall entrance. A few tables from the carver was Mang Ed Handicraft, a small family business from San Pablo City selling handicraft fashioned from coconut shell, bamboo, yarn, and other raw materials. On their table were kitchen and home equipment, lamps, back scratchers, personal accessories including earrings, and even halayang ube. Next to Mang Ed Handicraft was the Pandin Lake Fisherfolks and Bangkeras Livelihood Association, also from San Pablo, selling preserved santol and sayote, peanuts, and assorted kakanin.

Across them, EFF Footwear was offering slippers for men and women (with reduced prices from ₱100 to ₱50) and women’s footwear. The proprietor, Elizabeth F. Consebido, was kept busy looking for sizes for a sudden rush of customers. Their actual base is Liliw, a 45-minute drive from Santa Cruz. 

Laguna luncheon

A food festival wouldn’t be complete without lunch; ours was pre-reserved at the Aurora Dining Hall for a six-course Hapag Tagalog. Starters included Minanok (banana heart cooked in burnt coconut cream served with plantain fritters); Itik Crostini (shredded Victoria duck) and chicken liver pâté on Melba toast; and my fave, Tinapang Tilapia Croquetas (smoked Cavinti tilapia with carp egg and cream cheese). 

The soup was a piquant Sinigang na kanduli sa bayabas (Laguna Lake catfish in broth soured by ripe guava—a departure from the tamarind-based milkfish sinigang to which I am accustomed). 

The main courses were not commonplace: Inadobong laman loob ng itik (Victoria duck offal cooked adobo-style); Kalabaw sa sinunog na gata (Nagcarlan carabeef shank braised in burnt coconut cream); and Inalamangang hornong lechon (brick oven-roasted pork belly tossed in sautéed fermented shrimp). Not a meat eater, I had the hipon sa itlog na maalat (butterflied shrimp with Victoria salted duck egg sauce) and rice.

The dessert selections were Pili torte (meringue with Santa Maria pili nuts and buttercream); Sagobe (sago, jackfruit, and sweet potato in coconut cream); Heirloom rice biko (Victoria heirloom rice cooked in coconut cream); Cassava macapuno custard; and Mama’s Royal Bibingka with white cheese and salted egg. I enjoyed the pili torte and bibingka.

Food advocacy

A festival celebrating food is more than welcome, but Llamas expressed apprehension about the disappearance of local food with, as she put it, the “hamburgerization” of the Filipino palate as society further develops. When she was growing up in the 1950s, “the population was less and so were the cars,” she said. “There were no convenience stores—only sari-sari stores and roaming vendors—and healthier children who played outdoors.”

She also raised the more urgent issue of the preservation of food as an industry and a source of livelihood. “We must help people in the food industry because they aren’t paid well,” she said. 

Llamas suggested giving food workers with membership in the Social Security System, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG a monthly sum of ₱10,000 each from the insurance and government-managed savings programs, so “they can live comfortably.”

She broke down the amounts thus: “₱10,000 can be for housing allowance, ₱10,000 for medicines, and the last ₱10,000 for farming and planting needs.” She emphasized that the sum is not unreasonable considering the vast amounts allocated to the Department of Public Works and Highways in the national budget.

“Food is the first [basic] need of humans, and its production and consumption are most important in our society, so this issue must be addressed,” she declared.

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