BACOLOD SAVES THE FUTURE

Terra Madre marks its historic debut outside Italy to prove that a Philippine island holds the recipe for survival

- AA PATAWARAN

Bacolod wakes up with a lingering taste on its tongue. It is a flavor profile shaped by the garlic-laden richness of Aboy’s KBL (kadyos, baka, langka), the sour, comforting heat of Sharyn’s cansi, the soft and buttery give of a Felicia’s cheese roll dipped in strong local coffee, and the humid, sugar-scented air that seems to promise that no one here will ever go hungry. Silence has returned to the Provincial Capitol Lagoon but the ground still hums with the energy of the week that was.

We have just witnessed history.

Terra Madre Asia Pacific (TMAP) has wrapped up its first appearance outside Turin, Italy. Since 2004, Terra Madre has been the global biennale for food communities, a pilgrimage for those who believe that what we eat defines how we live. The Slow Food movement founded it to bring together producers, chefs, academics, and the heroes who keep traditional food systems alive. It is fitting that it landed here in Negros with the theme “From Soil to Sea: A Slow Food Journey through Tastes and Traditions.” Few places carry that geography in their bones the way this island does.

This story began in 1986, when the Slow Food movement was born not from a grand manifesto but from a bowl of warm penne pasta shared among strangers in Rome. It was a playful rebuttal to the encroachment of fast food on the Spanish Steps, a stand against culinary imperialism and the homogenization of taste that threatens to replace labors of love with labors of profit. Years later, activist and author Carlo Petrini and his circle understood that preserving flavors meant nothing if the farmers vanished. You cannot save a cuisine without saving the hands that cultivate the earth. Terra Madre rose from that shift in perspective. The story moved from the plate to the soil.

Bacolod carried that spirit well in mid-November.