Why isn't Filipino food popular in the world?

Shunichi Arai

 

Traveled to over 30 countries.

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Why isn't Filipino food popular in the world? It is in fact very delicious.

I've only traveled to Philipinnes a few times, and I’m not at all an expert on Filipino food, but I try to answer this legitimate question.

From my experiences at good restaurants in Manila, I think Filipino food is great, and it’s vastly underrated.

I can guess some of the reasons for that:

1. Philippines has one of the lowest numbers of foreign tourists in ASEAN countries.
   [1]
    Without tourists, who will gonna tell Filipino food’s charm to the world?
2. Filipinos are not proud enough of their cuisine. We, Japanese, are super proud of our cuisine, and we will become really furious if anyone says our food is the worst cuisine in the world.
   
   
   We want foreigners to try our cuisine. Sometimes we literally push Japanese foods to foreigners’ mouths. However, Filipinos seem reluctant to recommend their foods to tourists.
   
   
   Many Filipino restaurants overseas also cater to fellow Filipinos and do not try to attract locals.
3. Filipino food is not commercialized enough. As Eduardo mentioned, the dishes of the same name can be prepared very differently. The quality also varies. The menu must have a picture and an explanation for each dish.
4. Filipino food is delicious, but not special mostly. People will love or hate Thai food or Sichuan food. Those foods bring strong emotions. However Filipino food is not like those.

So, if Filipino people attract more foreign tourists, and serve great Filipino foods to them, it will be much popular soon.

By the way, it’s fun to see Anglophones say Filipino food is the worst food in the world. Because most Japanese people consider British food is the worst of all nations. I guess 90% of Japanese people will prefer Filipino food over British food.

Footnotes

[1] 

ASEAN: tourist arrivals 2018 by country | Statista