They’re stealing
our dulce gatas

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Somebody do something, and do it quickly! Some upstart of a bakeshop in Manila is selling “dulce gatas”,  arrogating unto itself the name of one of our most revered icons of a food.

Of course this Manila “dulce gatas” is horrendously not our kind. It is actually bread, loaded with, I think, condensed milk that was slowly-cooked until it coagulated like jelly but not as thick as the one used in banoffee. It tastes, in fact, like that emergency sandwich somebody I know served her children in the past:  two slices of bread slathered with condensed milk straight from the can. I like sweets and I like milk, but for the life of me, I hate condensed milk  and I winced, way back in the past, watching my playmates stuff their mouths with condensed milk sandwich, the gooey white overflowing from the sides of their lips.

I also winced when I took a bite of this “dulce gatas.” There ought to be a law! There ought to be a law against people callously playing with the names of our culinary icons. There ought to be a law in fact against bad-tasting food, although well, with bad tasting food, we always have the option to ignore them.

But really, now. While there is no law protecting the name “dulce gatas,” to mean the sexy, curdly, milky, sweet dish made from carabao’s milk, and only carabao’s milk, as only the true-blue Negrense can make, we can do something to protect it ourselves.

We don’t need to go to court. What we can do is promote our dulce gatas fast, spead the word where in comes from and who makes it, and establish our stamp on it in the market.

We’ve already lost the chicken inasal to Mang Inasal, which systematically and successfully took this food icon from our kitchens, put its stamp into it and laughed all the way to the bank with over P3 billion.

The same thing is happening to the piaya, in case you haven’t realized it yet. In fact, right here in Bacolod and Negros Occidental, there is already the problem of what exactly is the real piaya.

You have piaya that is actually flattened hopia, piaya that is flavored beyond recognition – pandan variant, anyone? – piaya that is crusty, piaya that is smooth and almost without texture.

At least in the case of piaya, even if we scream some people have prostituted the original recipe, it is happening right here in Bacolod. At least this food, and oh, yes, cultural, icon, continues to make money for Bacolenos and Negrenses. It doesn’t sound too bad as well to see all these piaya variants getting to the market here, because after all, we are the piaya capital of the Philippines. It’s just right that we have different  and even disparate types of this pastry.

But what do you know? A television executive recently noted how shocked she was to discover that the piaya she bought from a mall in Quezon city was made in Bulacan and not in Negros.

That is not illegal nor immoral of course. It is not the Bulakenos’ problem if they are faster and more enterprising than us. It is not Mang Inasal’s problen if it was more dynamic, and forward-looking than the rest of our food entrepreneurs.

More people will attempt to “steal” our dulce gatas from us, not only its name, but eventually its actual recipe. That is the reality in this world that has really become one small village.

It is up to us to keep it, and we can only keep it if we  make sure the world knows that the authentic dulce gatas comes from us and that the rest are just copycats.*

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