Filipino Culinary Diplomacy and Diaspora Identity Explained Through Food and Memory

Apr 29
3 min read

Updated: May 2

Words By Mye Mulingtapang | Photos courtesy of Jacqueline Chio-Lauri

Jacqueline Chio-Lauri holding We Cook Filipino cookbook featuring Filipino recipes and diaspora food storytelling

Filipino food, says Jacqueline Chio-Lauri, is never just about eating. It’s identity, inheritance, and memory folded into flavor. Her books The New Filipino Kitchen and We Cook Filipino combine recipes with personal stories, insisting that cuisine cannot be detached from the people who craft it.

Food, in her view, is not just sustenance or enjoyment. It is a cultural, traditional, and learning experience. Personal stories make this experience more impactful and lasting—making the cuisine more memorable, relatable, and authentic. Because food is universal, it becomes a point of connection. Through it, people begin to understand that while cultures may look different on the surface, they are more similar at the core. Storytelling, she explains, promotes empathy—not just for the cuisine, but for the people behind it.

Food is not just what we eat for sustenance or enjoyment. Often it is also a cultural, traditional and learning experience.

Filipino Identity Through Food

In The New Filipino Kitchen, Chio-Lauri gathered stories from Filipinos across the diaspora. What emerged was not a fixed definition of identity, but a pattern.

Bayanihan spirit—community, generosity, and shared effort—remains strong among Filipinos abroad. So does resilience. Whether born in the Philippines or elsewhere, many feel a strong urge to share Filipino food culture with their host countries while maintaining a connection to their roots.

Cooking becomes more than practice. It becomes continuity.

Jacqueline Chio-Lauri Filipino cookbooks including We Cook Filipino, The New Filipino Kitchen, and Mami King on wooden table

Global Recognition

Filipino cuisine is beginning to gain global recognition. Dishes like adobo, sisig, ube, lumpia, and pancit are increasingly visible on international menus. But visibility alone, she suggests, is not enough.

She points to gastrodiplomacy—culinary diplomacy—as a critical factor in global food recognition. Thailand’s 2002 Global Thai campaign is a clear example. Through government support—loans, restaurant templates, supply chain access—the number of Thai restaurants worldwide expanded from roughly 5,500 to over 10,000 in a decade.

The Philippines has initiated its own efforts in gastrodiplomacy. Whether a similar model will succeed remains uncertain.

Time will tell.

Memory and the Personal Table

For Chio-Lauri, memory is not abstract. It is specific. It is sensory.

It tastes like tortang giniling.

She recalls:

“A fervent believer in the power of prayers, I spent more time praying than partaking of the gifts from His bounty. Meanwhile, on the table, the torta, golden and round, glowed like a halo. I was still deep in prayer when my cousin Bob helped himself to a big slice. As he cut into it, a billow of steam and flecks of browned meat with shards of veggies escaped the omelet. I swallowed. I could almost taste it: savory with a hint of sweetness, soft yet springy against the coarseness of its stuffing.

Bob reached for a bottle of banana catsup and squeezed a generous dollop on his plate. By then, the aroma of caramelized meat and veg was as tempting as sin. I sped up my prayers, worried that I might not get my fair share.”

The memory is not just about food. It is about anticipation, family, and belonging.

Expanding the Narrative Through Books

Her work continues to evolve—particularly through books written for younger audiences.

Her 2024 release, Mami King: How Ma Mon Luk Found Love, Riches, and the Perfect Bowl of Soup, tells the story of a Chinese immigrant in the Philippines who made mami a national staple.

Her upcoming 2027 book, Hunger Fighter, focuses on Maria Orosa—war hero, food scientist, and inventor of banana ketchup.

A third project, centered on a Filipino pastry, is currently in development.

These stories extend beyond recipes. They place Filipino food within larger narratives of migration, innovation, and survival.

Cooking as Cultural Preservation

Chio-Lauri’s relationship with Filipino food shifted when she moved abroad.

She grew up eating it—but not cooking it. Like many Filipinos raised in the Philippines, cooking was handled by older generations. Food was always present, always available, and often taken for granted.

Distance changed that.

Living abroad, she felt the absence—not just of the food, but of the knowledge behind it. She wanted to share Filipino cuisine with her multicultural community, but realized she did not fully know how to cook it or explain it.

Cookbooks became the bridge.

They meet both practical and cultural needs: the need to cook and the need to understand. In documenting recipes alongside stories, they preserve migrant experiences and reinforce a deeper truth—