Food recipes. It is without doubt the Filipinos’ most popular topic. Preparing food and enjoying a meal has always been the heart of any friends and family gathering. Be it inside a classy restaurant or at our own grandparent’s kitchen, we savor our meals with gusto. Our preferred meals are usually those cooked by our parents and grandparents, without any other food capable to rival it. Nonetheless, a frequently recurring topic is, “Precisely why no Filipino food crafted its mark within the international arena?”
Stephanie Zubiri, executive chef of The (MEK) Modern Epicurean Kitchen, says that the strength of Filipino recipes, that lies in the communal and informal sense, can also be its Weakness. “Filipino dishes isn’t concerned about serving courses-everything is brought to the family table at once. It’s offered without fresh new herb choices to flush the palate or perhaps to top the plate as garnish.”
Standard Filipino food also lacks in elegant delivery. “The trouble in promoting comes from the point that our meals seem to be simple. Keep in mind, we eat with our eyes!” This trait may be related to our country’s lack of royal history, says Stephanie, a History and Geography graduate from the Universite de Paris-Sorbonne. “Before any Spaniards arrived, everything we had were small kingdoms. If you have royal families, your dishes progress to delight the queen and king.” As an example, Thai cuisine has fancy carvings in their food of animals and flowers. The Japanese delicacies is renowned for spectacular presentation with fanned slices, sculptured fruit and vegetables, using the plate like a frame of a great picture.
Expertly educated at Le Cordon Bleu Paris in oenological and culinary arts, Stephanie takes this to be a challenge in her business, the MPK or Modern Epicurean Kitchen. “We must open up our dishes to become more delectable and fascinating. This allows us to get innovative and deconstruct the conventional dishes and fuse it with different flavors to enrich its classic taste.”
In the Modern Epicurean Kitchen Active demonstration class titled Updating The Filipino Classics, she cooked chicken thighs marinated from the flavours of the Southern Tagalog classic Bicol Express.





