Where did the Filipino Sweet Style Spaghetti Recipe come from?! Where?!
Interrobang‽
If you came from the article -” The thin spaghetti strand that separates Japanese and American influence on Filipino food” and have read the link on the last lines there, you will understand what I will be blabbing about in the next paragraphs.
The Filipino Sweet Style Spaghetti Recipe is most probably a Japanese influence in our cuisine rather than American. I really believe so. Because the first recorded account of a chef putting sausages in a Spaghetti while adding ketchup in its sauce happened in a hotel in Japan where Douglas Macarthur stayed during the final days of WWII. Wikipedia talks about it, clickety-click. If you don’t trust Wikipedia, I’ll help you look it up in Google, here.
As to how it arrived in the Philippines is still a question. In my 12 months of research about Filipino food history, I discovered that our forefathers have a knack of not recording stuff that relates to food. I really wish you can hear me speak the words I have just written. Everytime I want to know about how this or that Filipino dish came about my heart falls on the floor and I stomp on it until I give up looking for any history or information relating to that certain dish. I feel lazy and frustrated now. But, we have to press on Mr. Buzzer.
So, the first time we’ve heard, if not a recorded one about the Filipino sweet style spaghetti recipe was in Makati in one of the most visited sites before – Makati Supermarket. Go around the internet and you can see old people exclaiming and praising how the Spaghetti in the then Makati Supermarket can make a Jollibee mascot cry. They worship it and they say it is the quintessential recipe for a Filipino sweet style spaghetti. Here’s a picture of Makati’s commercial center and if you can pin-point where Makati Supermarket is, you my dear friend, are a dinosaur.
Makati Commercial Center 1972 by KuyaGeezer and Lou from skyscrapercity.com
If people in Manila rave about this Makati Supermarket Filipino sweet style spaghetti recipe, I know really old people who rave about the same Filipino sweet style spaghetti in the Visayas who said they had it even before the 70′s. They even say it is always available in the wet market, cooked and ready to eat inside small plastic bags so you can just bite the end off open and suck on the sweet, sausage infested, ketchup-drowned stringy pasta. So Makati Supermarket may not be the harbinger of the infamous Filipino sweet style spaghetti recipe. But then, no one is sure, because no one kept records you see!
Let me jump off this cliff for a moment.
If you have any ideas, let me know.
And for those of you who will talk about General Mcarthur and how he was delighted when he tasted the sweet style Filipino spaghetti, tell me where to find the information because I have scraped the scalp, broke the skull and sucked all the brain out of the internet and I still haven’t found it.
Come on, tell me something!!!
Interrobang me‽
And here I thought it was just the difference in food resources, like how the banana ketsup stemmed from lack of tomatoes due to stopped trade. Thanks for showing me there is actually more to it. And I’ve noticed the last time I was in the Philippines that a lot of foreign food actually tastes a lot sweeter (like the pizza…).
I’m not sure if she would know about the sweet style Filipino spaghetti but I know Chef Giney of Adarna restaurant is into research of Filipino food as well
Rachel, most of the dishes in the Philippines are leaning on the sweet side. I don’t know, it is already hard-wired to most cooks (or say food businesses) to add sugar to anything that they serve. As for the Spaghetti recipe, I am actually satisfied with the research that I made, I mean, I can stop at that but there is something more to it than “it might be this, it might be that”. Literally, who knows?!
Smarla, hey hey thanks for dropping by again! Any blog lectures coming soon? Thanks for the tip, I might get in contact with her.
wow..thanks for the sharing this..akala ko si jolibee nakaisip ng sweet style . at dahil jan nagugutom ako at kasalanan mo.
[...] If you knew where the Filipino Sweet Style Spaghetti came from, please click this to go to the post … [...]
[...] have written this and this because as far as my research goes; we don’t have a Filipino dish where the Japanese stamp of [...]
I am scouring people’s memories and the internet on this question, and then your article popped up. At least it feels good to know I’m not the only one left mystified! I grew up in the States, with a mother from Pangasinan and father from Bicol who immigrated to the US in the early 70′s. They both grew up without sweet spaghetti, and as a result, so did I. It was only in my early adulthood that I met young Fil/Ams with childhood memories “sweet spaghetti,” and cousins in the Philippines who surprised me by pouring white sugar into the homemade tomato sauce I cooked up for dinner. And then of course, Jollibee exploded in the US. If you ever find that McArthur article, I’d love to see it too! – @kitchenkwento
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