National Food Showdown

Last year around October and November, Chef Myrna Segismundo gathered friends in the hospitality industry to be judges at her four- or five-leg National Food Showdown (NFS). The locations were Cagayan de Oro, Bacolod, Baguio and Lipa City (from where Myrna hails). I was able to join the Lipa City two-day leg and judged the coffee concoctions category for schools and universities.

Myrna has been doing this for the last 16 years and has probably produced most of today’s good chefs in hotels and restaurants because they won in an NFS event in their college years. It is a celebration of the best culinary, hotel and restaurant schools which compete in many categories of the food and beverage contests. For the schools, it is the Olympics of their course, and therefore an honor to take part in it.

Enablers are local government units (LGUs) of the different cities along with their tourism officers and other local executives who help the sponsor schools prepare for the grand events. There are no commercial sponsors for the NFS itself as it does not promote any commercial product. It promotes local food and is an advocacy I so love. Local food promotion is important for the young students as they may forget their heritage if not for events like this showdown.

As a judge, we also meet the tourism officers who become our personal tour guides, taking us to their city’s famous destinations like their public market, their local industries and we are served local delicacies at every instance. In Lipa, we always had breakfast of local breads, hot meals and rice cakes while waiting for our turn to judge. We also enjoyed a tour of a lambanog distillery that is world-class, as lambanog or spirits and wines from coconut are produced in Batangas.

Myrna takes pride in the fact that she finds ways to fund this project for almost two decades now. But it has to be more sustainable and local executives must replicate this for the idea to prosper and still continue beyond our time. It is not easy to do a one-woman show as Myrna has been doing the past years. But it is a good idea she can share with other LGUs to push for Locavorism or the appreciation of local food, while discovering potential chefs and cooks for the future.

The showdown demands creativity and perseverance from today’s youth. Schools and universities like the project because they are able to let their students compete locally and step up to other places such as the more professional culinary events in trade shows like WOFEX and MAFBEX.

It also helps grassroots movements like Slow Food, where appreciation of local food is promoted along with the use of locally-found ingredients so these local recipes will not be forgotten.

What can happen is for NFS to be part of the New Creative Industries Act (RA 11904), promoting gastronomy as part of our creative industries and therefore can get support from national government, not just LGUs. The Creative Industries Act provides for a fund intended for the creative pursuits of citizens. Thanks to the author Cong. Toff de Venecia and supported by Senator Loren Legarda.

The NFS can be promoted in every municipality, leading to the tilt where national champions can be recognized and rewarded for potential, and be supported to continue thinking creatively. After all, PISA or the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment says our youth need more creative thinking to rank among the world’s best. PISA measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges. We have ranked low and the NFS can be a tool to raise our PISA scores. Allow the youth to think creatively. And creative thinking should be as diverse as possible. Cooking, food preparation and gastronomy in general give the youth another choice to think creatively whilst preserving local food cultures.

Myrna can be the mentor or consultant for other LGUs, private schools and state universities and colleges (SUCs) to have a local NFS. It may follow the principles of Slow Food, our global grassroots movement which advocates for good, clean and fair food (www.slowfood.com) and also helps preserve endangered local species by listing them in the Ark of Taste (www.fondazioneslowfood.org) along with over 90 products we have already listed under Philippines.

So while we teach the young how to adopt trends in cooking procedures like sous vide, they can also look back to our ancestral practices like fermentation, foraging and using fire to grill, steam or bake.

I am looking forward to again joining the NFS in Batangas this November, and for the other food service folks who will be in Bacolod, Cagayan de Oro and Baguio starting this October.

Noted chefs and luminaries like Glenda Barretto of Via Mare and Lita Urbina of Laguna Café was in our group last year and I was a fangirl dining with them at the same table. I watched as they ate heartily as foodies always do. I also met younger foodies like chef Miko Aspiras and chocolatier Christian Valdes of CMV Chocolat. I do not mind giving time for these activities because I also learn much about local food culture. Imagine if I could go to places like Camiguin, Guimaras or Siargao when they start to have their own food showdowns.

Tourism will also grow with gastronomy at the center of it all. Think of how Thailand became such a tourist destination and the world is now familiar with pad thai and tom yum goong. It is through food that we can express our food culture and attract tourists to appreciate more than adobo or sinigang or lumpiang shanghai (was it Filipino in the first place?). Maybe soon we can discover our local fruits and vegetables, use nose-to-tail of animals and appreciate local food.

More power to Myrna!