Editor’s Note: The writer is an internationally-recognized chef and serves as a member of the Sangguniang Bayan of Hinigaran, Negros Occidental. He owns the Berbeza Bistro in Bacolod City that specializes in Southeast Asian flavors.
Writing about food can be a very fun and exciting prospect. It was very easy for me to say yes to the offer to write a column about food because it is an important part of my life. But as I sat down to write my very first article, I found myself stuck and staring at the whiteness of the paper, wondering what I should write about first.
There is so much to write about food. I have always loved to cook even as a little boy. When we used to eat at a relative’s restaurant, I would disappear from the table my family and I were seated at and be found in the kitchen watching the cooks prepare the food. I was only 6 years old then. At 8, I asked my mom to enroll me at Reming’s summer cooking lessons, where I had, as the saying goes, my baptism of fire. I was the youngest student because the rest all seemed like titas to me.
I decided to pursue my love for the culinary arts after a year taking up Political Science in college. I realized I would rather slice potatoes and spend time over a stove than write “whereases” and memorize laws. I ended up graduating from Enderun Colleges with a degree in International Hospitality Management with a Culinary Arts major.
My love for cooking and food has brought me to places I would only imagine I would go to. My first internship in the middle of nowhere was an experience I will never forget as I spent close to six months in Amanpulo, a very high-end and exclusive resort in a small, remote island in Palawan, where its motto was, “If the item you requested is not on the island, give us a day and we will have it ready.”
I also learned how to speak French fluently, because everyone else didn’t speak in English when I had my next internship in Limoges, a village four hours away from Paris. There, I learned how to process a live rabbit in one fluid movement of the knife and how our chef sourced everything he needed for the restaurant just within a 5-km radius.
All these learnings are ingrained in my head as I have decided to stay put in my hometown and continue cooking from the heart. I can see myself cooking for the rest of my life. Food is sustenance, aside from being an inspiration. As to writing, this is really a new thing for me. Please let me know what your idea of a food column should be in these very disturbing times of the COVID-19 pandemic when restaurants and food service establishments have been greatly limited in their scope and capacities to serve what they have to offer.*
“Kaon Ta?”, a Hiligaynon expression which means, “Shall we eat?”
