Underrated Filipino cuisine has been featured again in American media, but not in a “savoury” way.
WatchCut, the prominent Facebook page behind the “100 Years of Beauty” videos, recently produced a video of its “American Kids Try” episode featuring Filipino dishes on Wednesday.
The kids, most of them from Filipino heritage, tried out dishes such as tuyo, dinuguan, balut, crispy pata, and taho, and later expressed their feedback to each dish.
One child said, whose mother is a Filipino, said, “It reminds me of something my mom usually likes.
“Apparently, negative reactions highlighted the episode as the children felt queasy with the dishes served to them, describing the food as “gross” and “disgusting”.
The video, which has been viewed 6 million times as of this writing, spurred outrage from Filipino netizens.
Most of them felt that Filipino food was “misrepresented,” making the children feel discouraged to taste Filipino cuisine when they grow up.
“If you’re gonna serve dishes wherein you need to have acquired taste in order to appreciate it, at least present it accurately.
Especially when serving children,” one user said. Others opined that WatchCut should have cooked other dishes, such as adobo, sinigang and lechon.
Another netizen shared the same views with other Filipinos, who believed that the kids disliked taho because it was served with milk and not with arnibal, or caramelized syrup.
“The taho was just very wrongly served. It has arnibal with it. How can you guys do this to these kids?” the user sermoned.
Due to overflowing negative comments about the video, WatchCut accepted its mistakes and pledged “to do better.”
“I’m not going to argue with you. As a Filipino, I’m disappointed with it too. I should’ve just made it myself.
Next time, I’ll do better,” the WatchCut administrator said. “To be fair three of those kids are some mix of Filipino. Including my son (the youngest). So, they’ve had adobo, pancit, and lumpia.” Gianna Francesca Catolico
