Generations of good taste

MANILA, Philippines - In a culture where everyone is extended family  tito and tita, kuya and ate, pare and mare  no one can be more “feeling close” than the woman affectionately known by all Filipinos as Mama Sita.

From her birth into culinary royalty to her forays into the city as she built her own food enterprise to becoming a well-known suki of Divisoria, Mama Sita – the woman and the brand – has truly become a Manila icon.

Teresita Reyes – who would later become the famed Mama Sita – was never a stranger to the culinary business. Her mother, Engracia Reyes, is the great Aling Asiang behind the iconic Aristocrat restaurants.

Mama Sita grew up helping in the kitchen and accompanying her mother to the market. At a young age, she already started to learn the ins and outs of running a food enterprise.

Aside from cooking skills, “Mama Sita inherited from her mother a passion for cooking,” says information officer Ces Nepomuceno, a passion that obviously infused her food. “She did not believe in shortcuts but respected the flavors of her ingredients by allowing them to cook slowly to bring out their natural delicious goodness.”

Married to Fidel Reyes, Mama Sita helped support her brood of 11 with her own food business. She started selling fresh fruits and kakanin to students of St. Theresa’s College, her alma mater. She also sold turon at the Ateneo canteen when the campus was still on Padre Faura, and at De La Salle College on Taft Avenue, both in Manila. Even when the Ateneo moved its campus to Loyola Heights in Quezon City, Mama Sita would make the long commute from Manila to sell her banana fritters there.

To this day, Mama Sita’s legacy continues with the company’s variety of sauces and mixes. With today’s fast-paced lifestyle, few have the time or patience to cook, let alone let dishes simmer and flavors slowly develop over a long period of time. But, with Mama Sita still looking after her “extended” family, the company offers mixes and sauces that bring the full flavor and comfort of a homemade meal without the hours slaving over a hot stove.

MAMA KNOWS BEST: Guests on a Mama Sita food trip enjoy a ride on the iconic kalesa.

Among these are fresh and chunky sauces for well-loved lutong bahay dishes like menudo, sinigang sa sampalok, caldereta, and kare-kare.

Reaching out even further, the Mama Sita Foundation extends care to the very source of its ingredients – the farmers.

The foundation collaborates constantly with scientists and different organizations to come up with ways to grow better produce. Among their projects that have had positive results is the “Luz Calamansi.” Done in partnership with UP Los Baños, the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), the Department of Agriculture, and the office of former senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., the project involves introducing new cultivation techniques, resulting in fruit that, according to their conclusion, “has 20 percent more juice” and therefore “has high potential especially for the juice extraction industry.”

A woman sells her wares at Divisoria, where Teresita Reyes was once a famous suki.

The foundation, together with its partners, has also studied the benefits of introducing and transplanting a dwarf banana plant, observing how it fared on local soil. The results yielded a new dwarf banana that produces more than the ordinary saba and takes less time from transplant to harvest. The group dubbed it the “Mama Sita Banana.”

Similar positive results have been observed from the foundation’s research on the “Mama Sita Makopa,” a variety that is comparable to Thai-grown makopa. With the plant being easy to propagate, the group reports that it is something that can be developed in the Philippines with excellent results and that flowering of the plant can be managed to make makopa available all year round.

From carrying on the legacy of the “aristocrats” of Filipino restaurants, to the care she put into cooking her delicious food, to trying to improve the livelihood of farmers who produce the ingredients she uses, Mama Sita has surely become a mother figure for many. She will continue to tickle the taste buds of many more Filipinos, fostering generations of good taste for many, many years to come.

Mama Sita’s products include various types of vinegar.