Chef Tatung Sarthou: At the heart of Philippine cuisine

MANILA, Philippines – Chef Myke “Tatung” Sarthou is one of the most sought-after chefs in the Philippines today – but he doesn’t know it. The celebrity chef and cultural heritage advocate refuses to read reviews on his cooking, whether positive or negative. He says he doesn’t even read or watch features done on him in print or on TV.

“I don’t want anything or anyone to influence what I do. I just want to be honest with what I believe and what I want to do,” he says.

”Being unattached to achievement allows me to keep moving forward. To be a good chef you should be used to failure and it always goes together – you can never be great without failure. You cannot be too emotional about both sides of the spectrum.”

Growing up in Cebu, Sarthou learned to cook in the kitchen with his grandmother and mother. “When I began to cook the food of my childhood, the food that I truly love, I found myself again,” the chef writes in his newly launched book, Philippine Cookery: From Heart to Platter.

“I’m really taking the responsibility of sharing the story of our cuisine and also deepen the discourse of our cuisine in the global context,” says the chef. “I would like to go deeper into our indigenous and pre-hispanic cuisine because I think if we want to really understand who the Filipino is, we have to look deeper into that,” he adds, pointing out that when we talk about heritage, it’s not just about going back a couple of years, but much further back in our history.

Sarthou’s journey to discovering Philippine cuisine brought him to the south of the country. “I think there is a deeper culture, a deeper cuisine that is undiscovered yet,” he says of the food of Mindanao. “I’m so passionate about discovering the little nooks and crannies around the country, the isolated cultures, the indigenous people, and what they have.”

At the recently-concluded Madrid Fusion 2016, Sarthou presented dishes from two indigenous groups – the Maranao and the Tausug.

For his first dish, the chef introduced to an international audience a Maranao-inspired fish dish made with palapa – caramelized sakurab (shallots). His Tausug dish was called pianggang manuk, a chicken dish with pampa itum, – blackened coconut meat that is mixed with herbs and spices, giving the dish a distinct smokey flavor.

“I think the role of a Filipino chef of today is not merely to look beyond our shores in the context of global cuisine, but to look inward into our own heritage, to be able to define what Philippine cuisine really is,” says Sarthou, noting that many Filipinos, especially culinary students, are more familiar with European and American cuisine and culture than with the cuisines within our shores.

“We have this impression that we are more European or American than Southeast Asian,” he says. The chef reminds us that we are really part of the Southeast Asian community, which is most evident in coastal communities of Mindanao close to Borneo, Malaysia, Indonesia.

“There are a lot of similarities. We really have to look deeper into that, especially since the ASEAN is a very important region to the world,” referring tot he Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 10-member regional grouping to which the Philippines belongs.

As an advocate, Sarthou supports sustainable fishing and small famers and producers around the country. “It’s so sad to note that our farmers are dying of hunger,” he said on stage at Madrid Fusion. “I think the role of a chef is to be able to change our mindset, to be able to appreciate the simple things, to appreciate what really matters to our lives.”

Expounding further, Sarthou says, “It really pains me to think that the first people who are going hungry in the country are the farmers. That is the reality that we are facing in the country… I think there’s a need to interact more with the farmers and I think there’s a need for government to really put support into developing local agriculture. Let’s get real and really address the issue of food security in the country.”

What makes Filipino food special is the honesty in the cooking,” Sarthou says. “It’s not actually the chefs that really brought recognition to Filipino cuisine. It’s the OFWs who cook for the families they work for, who love the adobo, the pancit, the lumpia. It’s not the fancy things – it’s not the adobo with foie gras, it’s not the sisig with truffles. It’s the simple things. And if we continue to cook this kind of food simply, elegantly and with excellence, Filipino food will shine. It’s going back to basics that will make Filipino food shine globally.”

It’s this back-to-basics approach that Sarthou employs in his newest restaurant, Alab, located in Tomas Morato, Quezon City. “Alab serves Filipino food with burning passion. The restaurant attempts to express a clear narrative of what Filipino cuisine is amidst all the noise and confusion of the Filipino Fusion food trend,” says the restaurant description on its website. “It combs through the fibers of our diverse culinary roots, and weaves it into a cohesive tapestry of flavors.”

As a Filipino chef, as well as a culinary teacher, Sarthou has long been trying to define Filipino cuisine. “Even a chef like me has difficulty in defining it.”

He challenges all chefs, especially those from the younger generation, to help define what Filipino food really is. He says, “It should be a cuisine that defines our generation.”

Sarthou’s book Philippine Cookery: From Heart to Platter is the chef’s way of contributing to the definition of true Filipino cuisine. The book concentrates on Philippine cooking methods. “We tried to trace indigenous cooking up to modern techniques,” he says, which will hopefully make Philippine cooking easier to teach.

The chef adds, “I’ve worked on the book for around seven years and this isn’t even half of my research,” hinting that there will be more culinary heritage books to come.

On modern Filipino cuisine, he writes: “I envision a cuisine that addresses the needs of Filipinos, that liberates from hunger, and that heals a broken spirit.”

Chef Tatung says, “I agree that we have to look back. But we also have to look forward.”

As we move forward, he says, we must put into context the elements of the generations passed, and synthesize these to come up with “not only a better cuisine, but a better people.”