Each dish speaks of who we are, one story rooted in home and another unfolding in the life we build, tied together by our heritage.
Taste is shaped by memory and migration, reflecting both where we began and where we are now. In understanding this, we are reminded to judge food with openness, to appreciate it on its own merits, and to approach every dish with kindness and respect for the story it carries.
When Filipinos judge food, it is rarely a neutral act. We do not just taste; we compare. Every bite is measured against the memory of how it was cooked at home, the way our mother simmered adobo until the sauce clung to the meat, or how our lola’s sinigang carried just the right tartness that made us close our eyes in delight.
Our palate is not shaped by culinary schooling or food trends. It is an inheritance, passed down through family kitchens, migration, and memory.
What sets our standards
For many Filipinos, authenticity is personal. Ask ten people how adobo should taste and you will get ten answers, all correct within their own memories. Some want it tangy and dry, others prefer it sweet, rich, or swimming in sauce. The same goes for kare-kare, menudo, or pancit.
That is why we often react strongly to restaurant versions of Filipino food. “It does not taste right,” we say, not because the dish is wrong, but because it is not ours. What we are really missing is the story that came with the flavor, the laughter in the kitchen, the smell of garlic in the air, the taste of home.
Taste, migration, and nostalgia
For Filipino Americans, taste becomes a bridge between worlds. Many discover that food cooked in restaurants abroad does not exactly match what they remember from childhood. Ingredients differ, recipes adapt, and methods evolve to fit the local palate.
But perhaps that is not something to resist, but to understand. Filipino food, like the Filipino people, travels. It changes and absorbs influences, yet carries the same desire to connect, to belong, to hold on to home, even when it exists in two places.
Learning to taste with grace
Maybe the wiser approach is gentler, to recognize that what tastes unfamiliar to us might taste like home to someone else. Every Filipino household is its own culinary universe.
Instead of asking whether a restaurant’s adobo tastes right, we might ask, whose story does this flavor tell? Because food deserves to be met with curiosity, not comparison.
We have to be open-minded and kind. A dish should be judged on its own merits – its balance of flavor, the care with which it is made, and the honesty of its ingredients – not merely by whether it reminds us of how it was cooked at home. To taste with grace is to appreciate, to honor each cook’s effort and the story their dish tells.
In that openness, we allow the Filipino diaspora’s diversity to breathe, from the Ilocano kitchen that treasures salt and simplicity, to the Kapampangan table that celebrates depth and indulgence, to the Filipino chef abroad who folds childhood memories into every dish, seasoned with the discoveries from this new land.
Authenticity is not sameness. It is sincerity, the honesty of flavor that carries one’s story.
The flavor that stays with us
Our standards are born from memory. Our taste is defined by love, for the people who fed us, the places that raised us, and the comfort that food still brings wherever we find ourselves.
And when a dish does not taste like our own, perhaps it is simply reminding us of something beautiful: that the Filipino story, like its cuisine, was never meant to have just one recipe.
