On a steamy Friday night, the patios of Fort Bonifacio are overflowing with the young and well dressed. Inside, the beef is cooked sous-vide. The cheese is artisanal. The cocktails are mixed with craft-distilled rum and the appetizers are playful, tongue-in-cheek takes on street food.
None of which would be noteworthy in New York, London or Tokyo. But this is Metro Manila. And the menu at Aracama is boldly, proudly Filipino. Unlike its cousin cuisines in Thailand or Japan, Filipino β or Pinoy β food does not enjoy a sterling global reputation. All it takes is for people to give Pinoy food a chance.
Tonight, Aracama is filling up fast. The restaurant is surrounded by glades of new skyscrapers and expansive pedestrian malls. Hummers and Ferraris prowl streets lined with international luxury boutiques like Gucci and Prada. The server steers me to a house specialty, kare-kare. Stewed oxtail β a darling of global foodies β is flavored with peanut sauce and bagoong, a fermented shrimp or fish paste ubiquitous in Filipino cooking.
Banana hearts wrapped in cabbage leaves, served on the side, offer a splash of color. The result is unexpected, complex and exquisite. To better understand where Filipino food is going, it helps to know where it has been. On a hot, cloudless morning, I catch a cab that takes me far from posh Fort Bonifacio to Intramuros, the walled compound in downtown Manila where the city was born.
The Spanish claimed the Philippines in , ruling nearly uninter- rupted for the next years before ceding control to the Americans. The distant outpost of Manila grew into the Pearl of the Orient, a vibrant center of commerce with grand boulevards, ornate cathedrals and a cosmopolitan sensibility unlike any city in Asia. While almost all of the old city was reduced to rubble during World War II, a few traces of the past do survive.
