Who is DGF
Doreen Gamboa Fernandez (1934–2002) was a professor of literature, journalism, creative writing, and composition. A culinary historian, food critic, and scholar, she specialized in Philippine theater and cuisine. Through her pioneering work in Philippine food anthropology, she became known as the dean of Philippine food writing.
She championed the talents of local chefs and celebrated creative cooks for their unique takes on local ingredients. She pored over old cookbooks, menus, and food texts, seeking to answer the question: “How does food become Filipino?”
Her work has inspired new research and writing over the last two decades. In her honor, the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award was established in 2002 to encourage a new generation of food writers to study and preserve traditional Philippine cuisine.
About the DGF Awards
Since 2002, the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez (DGF) Food Writing Award has been documenting Philippine food and culture in essay form. Initially launched as a food writing competition, it has remained rooted in storytelling through words.
In 2024, we are launching the DGF Food Video Award to embrace the era of online visual story telling.
We want to recognize video creators who celebrate Filipino food and share its stories.
Capture a recipe, document local cooks, showcase ingredients and techniques, explore the connections between food and culture, or your personal experiences, your community and beyond.
History of the DGF Food Writing Awards
By Felice Prudente-Sta. Maria
The yearly Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award is pleased to share that it is meeting its two principal goals:
Firstly, it is keeping alive awareness of an esteemed food writer whose body of work is essential reading for future food writers, researchers and advocates who believe that Filipino food matters to world cuisine.
Doreen Gamboa Fernandez was the long-time dean of Philippine food columnists aside from being an early restaurant critic and a proponent of food anthropology.
Secondly, Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award is nurturing a successor generation of food writers, content providers, researchers, home cooks, and chefs to not only the fundamental importance of excellent writing style but also to the worthiness of oral and written history, of field work and traditional stories corroborated by historical evidence to strengthen and enrich creative output.
The idea of starting the first food writing contest in the Philippines was born during a lunch in 2001 by some members of the Manila Ladies Branch of the International Wine and Food Society of which Doreen was founding vice-chairman.
Chef Myrna Segismundo, also a founding member, hosted that lunch which Doreen attended. With Felice Sta. Maria, Micky Fenix, and Norma Chikiamco in attendance, Doreen proceeded to give pointers on how to go about establishing the criteria for the contest, and these became the template for judging entries.
After Doreen passed away, Myrna began the Award in 2002 during Chef’s on Parade that she chaired at the time and named it in Doreen’s honor.
Nine years later, in 2011, Food Writers Association of the Philippines was founded to manage the contest.
Today it can count hundreds of writers on the roster of those who entered what is endearingly referred to as the DGF.
The Food Writers Association of the Philippines looks forward to a robust future for the writers who treasure the DGF as significant to their professional growth and success.
Food writing makes flavor deepen, brighten, and linger into timelessness.
Reflecting on the Legacy of Doreen Gamboa Fernandez
By Micky Fenix
To be a serious student of Philippine regional cooking and of Philippine cuisine in general, one must read about Doreen Gamboa Fernandez. Though not the first to delve into the field, she is credited with distilling research through readings and observation into articles, columns, and books.
Sarap: Essays on Philippine Food and Kinilaw: A Philippine Cuisine of Freshness were written in collaboration with Edilberto Alegre. She authored Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture, Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, On Site, and In the Pot, and Fruits of the Philippines.
She wrote a weekly column “In Good Taste” for the Philippine Daily Inquirer until her death in 2002, always advancing essays, many about restaurant reviews. For Food magazine, it was her monthly column “Foodscape” that examined dishes and discussed chefs and their ideas.
The prodigious output is surprising considering she had a day job at the Ateneo de Manila University as professor and chair of the departments of English and Communication and Interdisciplinary Studies. She also excelled in that field and so was awarded Most Outstanding Teacher by the Metrobank Foundation in 1998. And, of course, her output also included writings on Philippine Studies in the fields of art, literature, and drama.
With a background in academe, her culinary writings were disciplined works that cited research sources. Whatever conclusions she made were based on her readings and actual experiences. And yet she did not claim to know it all.
While definite in her observation in her essay “Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Philippine Food,” that even with all the foreign influences, [Philippine] cuisine has been “enriched rather than bastardized, its integrity kept, its dynamism that of judicious response to change,” Fernandez still had questions. In the same essay, she asked for “deeper exploration… of how eating is the ingestion of culture,” “further research on the linguistic factor… the change in them through indigenization.”
In a way, those challenges may well be answered in a food writing competition primarily founded to develop food writers, with her works serving as an excellent guide to those aspiring to follow in her footsteps, even if she is a hard act to follow. Her essays are examples of good writing style; her research well documented; her curiosity boundless. When the competition started, it was disheartening to get entries that didn’t go beyond personal taste and dish preferences and limited to the cooking of grandmothers.
When research was made mandatory and included in the scoring of judges, the entries became more serious reads. Now in its 15th year, the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award can boast winners who are culinary writers of note today whose output has contributed to Philippine food literature as the organizers intended.
Fernandez was one of the organizers of the competition and that first meeting had her writing down the mechanics. It showed us that she wasted no time getting down to brass tacks to get things done. No wonder she could be prolific in her writing and could balance teaching with her other commitments. However, she died before the debut of the contest. Consequently, it was named after her.
We met again as members of the International Wine and Food Society, Manila Ladies Branch, where she served as its first vice president. She was there to enjoy sustenance and drinks, and the company of the ladies who wanted to eat, drink, and learn. She was game for sometimes whimsical requests like wearing flowers during a summer merienda session. And she wasn’t too busy to do more work for the society’s pamphlet as writer and editor.
When she passed away, I retrieved an e-mail she sent on her last Christmas that included Christmas Poem 1990 by Kathleen Raine. I asked my Manila Ladies friends if she sent the same message to everyone. None of them received it. And so I reprinted it when I wrote about her in my column, understanding that she knew I would spread her chosen farewell message.