A Filipino Foodie’s Culinary Adventures In Boston
When I learned that I made it to graduate school in Boston six years ago, food was the last thing on my mind. It was not something I immediately associated with the city, unlike Singapore or Bangkok. It was also not the primary goal of my visit — I was going there to study — and was more focused on last-minute fundraising, immunizations and the agonizing search for affordable housing.
What I discovered after living there for two years was how intimate my relationship with food really is, as a bootstrapping home cooker, fanatical diner, soup kitchen volunteer and dinner hostess. I was lucky to be living in a city that cared about its food. New England is nothing like the Philippines, but its seaside delicacies resembled and paired well with flavors from home. I was about to grow in the perfect milieu.
Bootstrapping home cooker
I lived in an apartment on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, my first taste of first-world living. It was always pristine, I can buzz people in, I had a dishwasher and the AC and heating were centralized. The rows of Manila shanties I would see in my daily commute were replaced with runners getting some cardio in along the Charles River. I was walking to school in a walkable city and smelling the fresh morning air. Motorists firmly stopped at STOP signs and new pedestrians such as myself…
