Dreaming of an Iloilo Food Conference

By Noel Galon de Leon

I have always been an admirer of Doreen G. Fernandez. Over the past few years, one of my rituals has been visiting the Facebook page lovingly maintained by her family and close friends. It feels less like scrolling through social media and more like wandering into a library, where every photograph, every excerpt from her essays, and every shared memory reminds us that there are scholars who devoted their lives to studying what many of us take for granted. Her page has become a gathering place for those deeply interested in gastronomy, food history, and food criticism.

This morning, while the rain lingered over the city and slowed the rhythm of the day, I found myself rereading one of her old columns, “A Food Conference Like No Other,” published in 1995. At first glance, it appears to be a straightforward account of her experience at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. But the more I read, the more I realized that it was not really about a conference. It was about the many ways food allows us to understand the world.

At Oxford, food was never treated as something merely to be eaten. It was studied, debated, written about, and examined through the lenses of history, art, literature, science, religion, and culture. Ice cream became a subject of scientific inquiry. Cookbooks were read as historical documents. Paintings by Velázquez revealed the foodways of another era. Scholars from different countries gathered not simply to celebrate cuisine but to understand how food shapes civilizations.

And there was Doreen Fernandez, carrying the Philippines with confidence. She presented a paper on Etang David Perez’s Recipes of the Philippines, arguing for its significance beyond the kitchen. She even brought shrimp ukoy for the symposium’s communal tasting table, introducing Filipino flavors to an international audience. She did not travel to Oxford merely to learn from others. She went there to show that Philippine cuisine deserved to stand alongside the world’s great culinary traditions as a subject worthy of scholarship.

As I finished reading her column, one question refused to leave my mind.

Why don’t we have an Iloilo Food Conference?

After all, ours is the city proudly recognized as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. We mention that distinction in speeches, brochures, tourism campaigns, and social media posts. Yet if we asked ordinary Ilonggos what gastronomy truly means, why Iloilo received that recognition, and what responsibilities come with it, many would probably struggle to answer. We have become familiar with the title, but not always with its deeper meaning.

Perhaps it is time to rethink how we understand food.

It is not enough to take pride in batchoy, pancit Molo, KBL, or the many delicacies passed down through generations. It is not enough to post beautiful photographs of them online. Food is not only something we taste. It is something we interpret. Every dish has its own geography, history, economy, politics, and memory. Every ingredient tells a story of trade, migration, agriculture, and adaptation. Some recipes survive because communities continue to prepare them. Others quietly disappear as lifestyles change. Gastronomy begins with curiosity.

This is where I imagine the value of an annual Iloilo Food Conference.

Imagine historians sitting beside chefs. Imagine anthropologists sharing conversations with fishermen. Imagine farmers speaking alongside restaurateurs. Imagine teachers, students, artisans, nutritionists, writers, and food entrepreneurs gathered in one room — not to compete over who prepares the best dish or to celebrate celebrity chefs, but to ask meaningful questions about the food that defines us.

We could revisit the history of batchoy beyond the familiar legends surrounding its origin. We could examine how the Iloilo River and the old port shaped our culinary identity. We could discuss how centuries of exchange with Guimaras, Negros, China, Spain, and neighboring islands influenced our kitchens. We could document ingredients that are slowly disappearing from our markets, recipes that now survive only in the memories of grandparents, and cooking techniques that deserve preservation before they vanish forever.

Alongside the conference, I also dream of an annual food writing competition open to works in Hiligaynon, Filipino, Kinaray-a, English, and other Philippine languages. Food is prepared in many languages, but it is also remembered through them. A personal essay about a grandmother’s linupak, a poem inspired by tablea, a feature on market vendors, or a critical essay on the transformation of Iloilo’s food culture can be just as valuable as a new recipe. If chefs preserve our culinary heritage through cooking, writers preserve it through stories.

In the age of social media, images travel faster than understanding. A short video of batchoy may attract millions of views, yet it rarely explains why that bowl of noodles became part of Iloilo’s identity. We eagerly celebrate lists of the country’s best food destinations, but we seldom ask who planted the onions, who went fishing before dawn, who preserved the recipes, or who first wrote their histories. Too often, the dish remains visible while the people behind it disappear.

This, perhaps, is Doreen Fernandez’s greatest lesson.

She never wrote about food merely to recommend where to eat. She wrote because food reveals the character of a society. To study a single dish is to study a people’s history. To write down a recipe is to preserve generations of memory carried by countless hands that prepared it long before us.

If Iloilo truly wishes to honor its place as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, festivals, culinary tours, and food fairs are only the beginning. We also need researchers who ask difficult questions, teachers who inspire inquiry, students who document traditions, archives that safeguard our culinary memory, books that deepen public understanding, and writers who continue telling the stories behind every meal.

A city does not become great simply because it serves excellent food. It becomes great when it knows how to remember, understand, and write about its own table.

As I closed my laptop and listened to the rain continue outside my window, I realized that perhaps this is the next tradition Iloilo should begin cooking into existence — not another signature dish, but a culture of conversation. It could be a gathering where food is not only tasted but also studied, written about, debated, and cherished.

Perhaps then, every Ilonggo will come to understand that gastronomy is not merely a title bestowed upon a city. It is a responsibility we renew every day, around every table, and through every story we choose to tell.

***

Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He is also the secretary of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.