Erwan Heussaff is helping put Filipino food on the world map

Suave, American-accented and half-French, Erwan Heussaff stuck out in Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, just two of the places off the beaten track he's gone to explore the world of Philippine cuisine.

"I get frustrated sometimes with the monochromatic view that we have of Filipino food and culture," the food vlogger tells Howie Severino, explaining his travels to remote corners of the archipelago to experience unfamiliar flavors and meet locals who cook.

Unlike celebrated chefs who introduce Filipino food to international audiences through their fusion creations, Heussaff does it through stories.

From the "Erwan-centric" food vlogs typical of this personality-driven genre, his work has evolved to become deeply researched documentaries on such topics as the making of artisanal salt in Bohol, the subtle differences between varieties of ube, and the preparation of a wedding feast in a Cordillera mountain village.

His stories have informed legislation to preserve heirloom salts and created a so-called "Erwan effect" on local establishments he features.

The prestigious James Beard Foundation took notice of his approach to food stories and gave Heussaff its top award this year for social media, beating food content creators from around the world.

In a candid and wide-ranging conversation, Erwan and Howie talk about Christmas overeating, a myth about taho, and the three dishes he would recommend to a newbie to Filipino food.

And he shares how he feels when people on the street forget his name and refer to him simply as "asawa ni Anne Curtis."

HOWIE: Magandang araw, podmates! Howie Severino muli na nagpapaalala na nakakatalino ang mahabang attention span. Ang kasama natin ngayon ay kung saan-saan nang nakagala sa Pilipinas bilang isang food storyteller at enthusiast. Siya si Erwan Heussaff na kamakailan nagawaran ng prestihiyosong James Beard Foundation Award para sa kaniyang food content sa social media. Good morning, Erwan, and congratulations.

ERWAN: Good morning. Thanks very much.

HOWIE: Erwan, how big a deal is the James Beard Award?

ERWAN: The James Beard is an award that, I mean, he's an emblematic figure in the culinary scene in the US. And when you think about food awards in general, most of the time it's restaurants or it's chefs. And you have a few organizations worldwide that are really seen as kind of like the best of the best.

So you have 50 Best organization, which is mainly focused on chefs and restaurants. And then, you have the Michelin Guide as well, who is, again, based mostly on restaurants. James Beard is one of the only, I think, prestigious award bodies that recognizes not only restaurants, but also restaurateurs, food media people in terms of book writers and authors. And food media.

And so it is probably the biggest when it comes to food media and the food scene. And so it's a big deal. And so when I won it, I was kind of like freaking out. Even when I got nominated, I was freaking out. And I realized it's kind of like the Academy Awards where you say, 'Oh, Academy Award nominated actor.' Even if you haven't won, just being nominated is prestigious enough. And so that's the James Beard. And I was like, so yeah, it was a really great milestone for us to reach.

HOWIE: Well, your category, the one you won in was for your social media content. That must be one of the newer categories. Kasi, of course, restaurants have been honored by food awards forever but social media, that must be really new for them. So, you've been posting all kinds of food content. What in particular did they take note of?

ERWAN: Well, I think social media is such a new platform in general, and it was great to kind of see it included in more serious conversations. I think when YouTube first popped up and Instagram first popped up, a lot of the times it's seen as a hobby, it's seen as something that's amateurish. But then now you see these massive legacy media brands and brands, in general, all jumping on social media.

So it is a very kind of serious platform. And that's why I tend to use it. So for the longest time, obviously it's personality-driven and in the beginning and that's what I did in the beginning over the last couple of years is really build the persona and build a following online based on my personality
and my interests and passions.

And as I got older, you know, it started becoming less about me and more about kind of like the stories and the products and the people that we met. And so I think they took note of the fact that it wasn't Erwan-centric in any way. It was very much food-centric.

And James Beard and the conversation around food in the US in particular nowadays is all about foodways, is all about heirloom products, it's all about kind of like ancient agriculture and all these different things. And these are all verticals that we tell stories in. And I think that's what kind of like drew them to what we were doing.

HOWIE: What was your training? Did you get training in food science or art?

ERWAN: I always called myself just a home cook. In terms of my training, so I went to school for business management, and then I specialized in luxury brand management and in restaurant management, restaurant experience management. And then, after that, I did a few jobs, but all in the food and beverage industry for about a couple of years before coming back to the Philippines.

HOWIE: So this was in various countries in Europe?

ERWAN: Yup. So I worked in Paris, I worked in Greece, I worked in Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Russia before coming back to the Philippines.

HOWIE: And now you're almost exclusively focused on Philippine food and culture.

ERWAN: Yes, so Philippine food and culture. And the more we kind of sit with it, the more we think about it. I also would love to see how we can bridge the gap with Southeast Asian food culture in general. You look at most continents in the world, like Europe is very kind of connected. There's a lot of food events happening in different countries in Europe.

The US is not a continent, but obviously it's big enough to be one. There's a lot of cross-boundary sharing when it comes to the different states in the US. Same things for South America and Latin America. Southeast Asia has always felt very disconnected, even though our cultures are very similar. Our languages are very different, so that's probably one of the reasons why.

I'm personally seeing a shift now in terms of fashion and culture and music, where Southeast Asian countries are starting to come together, and I would love to kind of see that with food. So I wouldn't say exclusively to the Philippines, but currently, yes, our main focus is the Philippines. And eventually we want to see how we can kind of develop a stronger Southeast Asian food culture.

HOWIE: You've produced a wide variety of content on various platforms. But my own personal favorites are your long-form content, because I do the same kind of thing, but on television. And in particular, you do deep dives on what seem to be common food items or common aspects of our culture that have a lot more depths than what people assume.

For example, you did a series on tubers, in particular ube. And then, you did a really nice piece on artisanal salt. Food actually is a window for you to try to explain culture as well, right? I watched your piece on wedding rituals or a particular wedding ritual in the Mountain Province, which didn't have you as a host or narrator.

Anyway, my question is, what made you produce those? I mean, they're hard. I do long-form and I know how hard it is as opposed to a lot of the short stuff you do where you don't have to travel, you're kind of just in a kitchen doing kind of quickie videos.

A lot of your content now is you go out, you explore provinces and say a lot of things that maybe a lot of people don't know about yet.

ERWAN: Yes. So there's a book I read like decades ago and it's funny that there's one phrase stuck with me it was, 'Look around you. You're surrounded by billionaires.' And one of the examples that they had was, you know, the plastic wrap around your shoelace, the tip of your shoelace. They were saying I don't know what that guy's name is anymore but that guy was a billionaire.

And I found that so fascinating that all these little things around you, you think okay, you know you look at the shoe. The shoe is super interesting, there's a brand to it, you might be attracted to it but you don't think of the guy who invented the plastic wrap around the tip of the shoelace.

But once you know that fact it's like, 'Oh crazy.' Yeah, you know it makes you think about so many things and so that's why I kind of like to approach common things and the mundane because I think they're so interesting. I think we just take them for granted because we're so used to seeing them so something like salt sounds so boring to everyone because it's something you use every day, it's something you grew up with, it doesn't look like a luxury item.

But then once you kind of go into it, there's so many facets and varieties of salt and it becomes really interesting. So that's kind of like why I like that. I think it's just more of a, that's just a storytelling approach of usually when you teach something, when you educate someone about something that they know so intimately and that they've known their whole life and you completely change their perspective on it, it's just so much more powerful as a storytelling vehicle.

On the other aspect of things, I think food tells you so much about a culture in general. The first thing I do in any country I visit is eat and even if i'm not speaking the same language as the people in front of me, through the food and through the ingredients that are there and through the understanding of the environment that I think I can tell a lot about a culture, about its history, about its, you know, about its people.

You know, I'm currently reading Pigafetta's diary on Magellan coming into the Philippines again and I've reread it a few times and every interaction that Magellan had with local Filipinos was started with food. And it's just a way to start a conversation, right?

So we have certain videos like you mentioned the Bontoc wedding or we did also a wedding for the Sama-Bajaus or... Yeah, Sama-Bajaus in Basilan. We feature the food as a vehicle for the story but it's not the focus of the video. It's really just to kind of give context to where we are. And I think that's really powerful.

HOWIE: Going back to salt in particular, let's talk about that for a couple of minutes.

It's something that you don't really think about in a very deep way but you went to Bohol. And you told the story about a particular kind of artisanal salt, 'yung asin tibuok, which frankly I had not heard of before. I knew there was artisanal salt but this particular one, then you told the story of the family and I was just amazed by the process, you know, how long it is, how difficult.

And for the relatively little reward, right? So what do you want people to take away from seeing something like this?

ERWAN: The salt... I like salt because it's on everyone's table. And so it's such a great, it's such a great starting point. The reason why we took on this challenge to tell the stories of all Filipino artisanal salts is because it's so politically charged. There's such an underlying political issue around salt, around how we insisted in the 1950s to blindly follow a rule from the World Health Organization and just implement it stupidly in the country without thinking about the repercussions on the salt industry, without helping the salt farmers establish themselves enough to set up iodine factories or ways to iodize their salts.

And so it's kind of like a lot of frustrations that you have about the country and doing business in the country and it kind of how sometimes things are implemented really quickly. I thought telling that story through salt was just a soft way to kind of soft-land certain messages.

And what I liked about it, again, because anyone from someone that's extremely poor to someone that's extremely rich could find something like Asin tibuok really interesting, right? Because it's so striking and it's something you can understand because it's salt.

Another example is the tultul from Guimaras. Like, it's beautiful, it's square. And you put that in really rich people's houses. They grate it on top of a dulce de leche ice cream. But for people who are making them, they just press the salt down on rice and that's their ulam, right?

It has such a vastness in terms of the story that you can tell. And even that, it's because it's something that I think is really interesting because it's currently in process of being changed. You know, they're trying to amend the rules and all these things.

And so I knew when we were trying to tell the story, the number one thing we started off on is 96. I think it's 96% of all salts in the Philippines are imported. And you just think of a fact like that and you're like, how many islands do we have? I think every year we have like a few hundred more islands and you're telling me we can't produce any of our salt for local consumption? It's ridiculous.

And so we started digging and we realized there was all these stupid rules. And so we were like, okay, how do we do this? Do we focus on, you know, the salt beds of Pangasinan that everyone knows about? Do we go to Mindoro where they have the rock salt that everyone knows about? I'm like, no, we need to find something that's striking.

And so that's why we found these really small artisanal salts because we tell the story of the people, the environment, but they're also beautiful. And they're striking and they can... There's so much beauty to the hardship to make those salts. And a lot of people in the US and Australia would pay thousands of pesos per kilo to get those salts. So there's a real, you know, rag-to-riches story within that salt itself. And so I just thought it was really kind of diverse and really colorful.

HOWIE: Artisanal salt is not cheap in the Philippines when you compare it to the, you know, common table salt, which you pointed out was, I think, 80 pesos versus something like 400, 500 pesos. What unit of measurement were you talking about there? I mean, was that per kilo or what?

ERWAN: Per kilo.

HOWIE: Per kilo. Okay. Yeah. And then, you said that in other countries, which also have artisanal salt, it's kind of par for the course, but for a lot of your viewers, if it costs 80 pesos to buy salt in the grocery, why should they pay 400, 500 pesos for artisanal salt?

I mean, I understand the cultural value of, you know, heritage or heirloom salt. But in terms of someone who eats, right, I mean, what difference does it make in terms of flavor? I mean, this artisanal salt, how does it enhance food?

ERWAN: Yes. I mean, it's a great question because it's actually very different. So I'm not going to get into the technicalities of it, but there's a massive food science background to all of this, right? Something like iodized salt that's extremely fine, where you just salt your steak before cooking it would penetrate the steak really quickly, hence drying out the meat when you're cooking it.

Which is why when most restaurants cook with salt, they'll cook with two salts. There's a really fine, flat, flaked kosher salt, which coats the meat, but doesn't penetrate as fast. And then you sear it. And then, once you're done, you use what they call a finishing salt, which is really kind of remains, keeps its texture and crunchiness when you kind of eat it.

And so the salts that we have in the Philippines all have very different applications in that same matter, right? So something like asin tibuok or the tultul from Guimaras has to be grated with a microplane to be able to use it and you use it as a finishing salt.

The tultul from Guimaras is made with very highly selected driftwood. And then, they finish the salt with a smoky coconut cream and they cook that over live fires. All that enhances the flavor of it.

Asin tibuok is cooked in clay and is evaporated over hours. But their filtering process comes from coconut husks that are burnt over days and days and days. So all these little things have very subtle flavor differences. And why would you buy an 80-peso salt versus a let's say a 400-pesos salt?

Obviously, you wouldn't do that if you couldn't afford it, number one. But it just shows that we have products in the Philippines that could be considered, you know, of high value. So today I can go to any store and buy a Maldon sea salt here in the Philippines.

But why would I buy Maldon sea salt over asin tibuok, right? It's because I didn't know about asin tibuok. So our message was is to try to preserve these cultural heirloom ingredients. But at the same time, for those people who can afford it, to financially support them by buying their product and hopefully reviving that industry, right?

One of the reasons why it's so expensive. Yeah, because it is, it takes a long, long time to make. But also it's because there's most of these salts, there's one or two families making it, right? So obviously it's really expensive because there's, there's a scarcity to it.

But one of our hopes was to try to motivate more families within that region, within that barangay to revive their whole industry there. You know, and hopefully the videos that we've done have kind of helped and pushed things in that direction.

HOWIE: Yeah. Well, and speaking of which, there has been proposed legislation.

ERWAN: Correct.

HOWIE: To preserve heirloom or artisanal salt, right?

ERWAN: They're looking. So it's passed Congress, it's passed Senate on a third reading, I believe. I could be wrong. But it's basically an amendment to the Asin Law. And what they're amending is to carve out artisanal salts completely.

So all artisanal salts will be allowed to be sold, will be made legal. So technically it's still illegal. And it will be supported by the government with certain subsidies, hopefully. And they will benefit from the geographical indication program of the government, which means Guimaras mangoes is a specific species that are grown in Guimaras that can only be harvested and made in Guimaras and sold as such.

So once you have that locality of asin tibuok is only from Barangay Albuquerque or Albuquerque, Bohol and can only be made and sold from there, it just uplifts that whole community that's based there.

HOWIE: So I guess we can look forward to one day being able to access, you know, these artisanal salts in other places aside from their place of origin.

ERWAN: Right. So hopefully, I mean, when once this is all legal, we'll try to figure out a way to kind of consolidate all the salt makers without involving middlemen or traders. And so that they have a storefront where they could kind of put their products forward.

HOWIE: You've been to several places which are off the beaten track. I'm thinking of Basilan. I mean, who goes there? I've been there as a journalist, right, to cover conflict, which is one big reason why outsiders would go to a place like that. But you went there, you hardly even mentioned security or conflict. You were really highlighting the local culture.

Were you given enough warning about the actual security risks in a place like that? Or is it really that safe now?

ERWAN: We don't do these things lightly, right? So from the conversations that we had and the local communities that we talked to, specifically in Isabela de Basilan, which is its own specific thing, right? And everyone we spoke to said, 'You know what, the last incident...' I don't remember the exact figure, but it was like 13 years ago or something like that. So it comes to a point where you kind of have to ask yourself, when can we start shedding that image?

After the conversation, I felt confident enough that all I had to say was just contact the local tourism office to organize your trip. Don't come in there as a tourist with no itinerary and everything like that. Make sure you talk to the local people first because they're the best ones to be able to tell you whether something is safe or not.

And, yeah, I felt confident in saying that. Same for Tawi-Tawi, because the last piece of conflict that they've seen is like decades ago also, right? Were I to go to Jolo or Marawi, I mean, we were planning to do Marawi recently, and then obviously the bombings happening at MSU. We would be a bit more delicate with, you know, telling people that maybe it's not necessarily something you travel to but we're there to still kind of document culture.

So it wouldn't stop like we're in a conflict zone or we're at a place that still had present issues. It wouldn't necessarily stop me from going there, but I wouldn't recommend like people to just blindly go there. I'd be like, if you really want to go, you know, be, be very wary and careful.

HOWIE: But why do you go to places like that? You've done Cavite, Negros. I mean, very safe places. You could easily just do that route, right? You know, do that established route. But why even go to places that I'm sure people were warning you about? you have a young family. Why even, you know, make that effort?

ERWAN: I get frustrated sometimes with kind of like the monochromatic view that we have of Filipino food and culture. The dishes... Any restaurants you go to in Manila, it's really always going to be Tagalog dishes. You have your kawali, you have your kare-kare, you have your embotidos, you have you have your sinigang, your bulalo, your tinola.

I could walk into a Filipino restaurant, not look at the menu and order, because I know exactly what they would probably have, right? And so one of the reasons we do what we do is because there's such beauty with all the dishes that we have from Benguet to the Mountain Provinces to Ifugao, all the way down to, you know, Maranao cooking to Zambasul style cooking and everything. Moro cuisine.

There's so much richness to our dish and to our food history and food culture. And the only way to kind of get those things out is by using the medium that is the most prevalent today, which is videos, right? So I feel like there's a need to do it because if someone puts out a book today, great. But it doesn't talk to the generation of people who are online, not reading cookbooks.

And so we feel it's important because it's a question of inclusivity, but it's also a question of our history and our culture as a people showcasing that diversity. And you can't tell the story of the Philippines without telling the story of the Moro people. It's such a huge part of our culture that for the longest time was very much kind of squashed and not spoken about.

HOWIE: Well, you know, in a previous generation, the people who did this kind of work were writers, as you mentioned. In one of your videos, it was the one on Silay, Negros. Now you mentioned Doreen Fernandez and her books in particular. I think you read Tikim, 'no? Which, you know, her treatment is similar to yours actually, which is, of course she loves food. She's a food enthusiast but food is just a window into understanding something much larger. You know, culture, people, how people interact, the history of a particular place.

I just ask you about your style of documentation because you mentioned earlier it was kind of Erwan-centric, right?

And you said you've kind of shifted away from that. I guess you don't want, of course you don't want to be stereotyped as just being that, right. I mentioned earlier this wedding ritual, this wedding in the Mountain Province. I found it fascinating.

You were highlighting, you know, in particular, mountain villages. They have their own unique practices. I think in that one, it was like the Ibayo, the Ibayo tribe or the Ibayo village. But there was no host there or no narrator, right? It was verite style.

ERWAN: Right.

HOWIE: You're just letting the action unfold. And then, you had interviews with, you know, the resource people. And then the couple that was about to get married and, you know, their whole courtship and how the man had to give firewood to the family. And if they didn't offer to pay for it, then that means the woman was interested.

I found that really fascinating. But what was your influence in doing that style? That's kind of a classic documentary style. it's different from the personality-centered vlogging culture and world that we have now where it's all about the personality brand. But that had none of your presence at all. Not even your voice. Yeah.

ERWAN: So I think even when I used to do hosted things, a lot of the times I was just there as a guide, right? It was never about me. It was always about the experience. And you just need a voice to kind of guide you in the right direction.

And I always tell people it's so easy for me to do a travel video. Because then the cameras just follow me and I can just narrate. I can just talk about my experience. I'm eloquent enough to carry, you know, to explain what's happening, what I'm doing and how things taste.

The ultimate challenge is to be able to tell a story without a narrator, right? It's always very difficult. And previously, we never really were able to do that because we didn't have enough people to interview. So it was a challenge for us because one, I don't want to be in every video. Because I don't think I shouldn't be in every video because they're not my stories.

And if I feel like if I'm in the video all the time, it takes away from the subject and the nature of what we're trying to talk about. When we started doing them, it was always very scary. Because for the longest time, you know, people would be like, 'Yeah. But you know, you, you're Erwan Heussaff, you're the face of the video, people watch because of you.' And that kind of ticked me off in a sense.

And I was like, I hope people watch it because of the meat of the story and not me, right? Especially in the Philippines, because it's such a celebrity-driven culture. And so when we started doing them, we were freaked out and then, we saw that people actually watched and I was like, 'Okay, cool. So they're here for the... they're here for the actual subject. They're here for the actual story.'

For the Ibayo, I just love that area. I love the Mountain Province, I love Ifugao. You know, it was a place that was never fully colonized by the Spanish yet. They've, you know, adopted the religious culture of most of the Philippines yet they've kept their traditional ways of kind of approaching.

So a lot of times you see people kind of praying to God, but they're also praying to like their local gods and amigo and all of that, which is it's really cool to see that. And so, yeah. The style is really... even when we were shooting just my stuff as much as possible, you would always try to get as much interviews as possible, but sometimes it wasn't possible.

So the style of how we tell stories is still there, but without me in the equation. Earlier this year, we also did a video on Pakaskas, which is a nipa sugar that's virtually extinct. It's only from one island in Batangas. It's called Isla Verde. And when we shot that, the guy was very good at what he did. He just couldn't explain it. So we decided to just shoot it in silence. And if you watch that video, not one word is spoken and it's not even voiced over. It's all subtitles. And the video did extremely well. So we're like, 'Okay, cool.'

Because it's online, because we don't have formats to follow, we can be as creative as possible. But what's important is at the end of the day, you're telling a story that has value.

HOWIE: Okay. Erwan, you're a product of two cultures, French culture and Filipino culture. Of course, France as particular Paris, you know, you said you went to school in Paris, you worked in Paris. It's the culinary capital of the world. Everyone knows French food. It's had a huge impact on world, culinary cultures, etcetera, as opposed to Filipino food, for the longest time, it was one of the more obscure culinary traditions. And when you talk about it, and how interesting and great it is, you wonder why not more people around the world are into it and why there aren't more Filipino restaurants overseas? You worked in Paris, you might have a perspective on this. Why is Filipino food comparatively underappreciated?

ERWAN: I think it comes down to information. You look at French cuisine in general. I could name you hundreds of books or even just one book that you could read that could tell you the full culinary history of France. You can communicate that information so easily, it's very understand... It's very easy for people who are outside your culture to understand your food and then, want to consume it and want to try it, right?

Filipino food in general is just very confusing even for Filipinos who are in the Philippines. There's always a lot of fights about what is the proper terminology, what are the proper ingredients, who can claim, what provinces can claim what.

One of the reasons why we do what we do, I've had so many conversations with people and I asked them, 'Have you ever tried a beef sinina?' And they're like, 'What is that?' 'Have you ever tried buk buk?' 'What is that?' And these are people who when I asked them, 'Do you love Filipino food?' They say, 'Yeah, I love Filipino food. I eat it every day.'

But there's certain aspects of it you have no idea about. Whereas if you're in France and you ask someone, 'Have you tried a cassoulet, a confit canard, canard a l'orange?' Everyone knows these dishes like the back of their head, right? So it really comes down to education and information. And I think we're slowly now figuring that out.

Like you brought up Tikim. I can walk the street today and ask 50 people how many of them actually read Tikim. I'd be surprised if it were more than two or three people. Because we haven't really studied Filipino food that much. And it's not common to kind of study it in length.

And that's one of the reasons why we put up Featr was to really try not to fix that but try to kind of, you know, be part of the conversation or start the conversation about Filipino food and show people the variety. Hopefully, inspire certain chefs, restaurateurs to look into certain facets of the Filipino food more and start serving that in their restaurants and their bars and have the consumers be educated to be able to choose those things when they see it on menus, right?

That's how you start kind of this snowball thing. You need people who make it, you need people who eat it. And that only happens if both of them understand it. And I think through the videos that we do or through all the work that's done by other food historians or food, you know, food writers and things like that, eventually we will get there.

But as a country, we first have to know our food a bit more intimately and not fight about it all the time. And I feel like people here fight about food all the time.

'Oh you know, we have tamales'. And then, Cavite is like, 'Well, we have tamales too.' Samar has tamales and then, Quezon has tamales and they're all fighting on who makes the right one, where you have to kind of come to a point and be like, 'Hey, can we all agree that we're right? It's just that this is the tamales of Pampanga and that's the tamales of Cavite. This is the adobo of Bicol.' This is, you know, and it has to come to that.

One of my favorite accounts to follows is an Instagram account called Localpedia. And he does like, he takes pictures of really heirloom ingredients and processes all over the Philippines and does a lot of good on-ground work. And he was in Western Visayas. He took a picture of a dish called puso, which is similar to the Cebuano puso, except the puso in where he was, I think it was Capiz, was steamed or boiled in tuba or nipa wine, something like that.

Whereas if you look at it, it looks exactly the same as the puso from Cebu, which is the rice that's wrapped, right, in leaves. And it looks exactly the same. And when he posted about the puso in Capiz, all the Cebuanos came to his page and said, 'That is not puso. That's not how you make it, everything.' And we're like, 'Can we just agree that it's the puso from that area, right?'

And the Cebuanos, they're not at fault either because it was the first time they heard about this other place making it, right? So it's people really need to get educated about Filipino food and ourselves included, right? And that's why we do these videos.

HOWIE: Well, you know, speaking of fighting over food and actually getting emotional, I mean, you mentioned this puso but you did a piece on taho once, and it elicited strong emotions, which I found a bit hilarious. But people were really serious about this.

I found it kind of absurd but at the same time, it was revealing about how people take this stuff seriously, right? But anyway, I wanted to hear your perspective on this, just in a nutshell, what was that about?

ERWAN: I don't know if they're really invested in what taho is, right? Because there have been other, there's recipes in the internet that tell you to make taho using tofu bought in the supermarket, which is not taho.

Taho is not made from tofu. It's a whole other thing. It has its own process. It's kind of like tofu, but it's a soybean curd, but it's not tofu, right? No one would ever get mad about that, right?

So me, people got mad because we basically undercooked the sago pearls. But I think it wasn't about the dish, I think people were looking for an excuse to hate me. Back then, it kind of, yeah, got under my skin. But now because, you know, I'm 36, and I'm a bit more mature...

And this actually really affected how I told stories because I am half-French like you mentioned, I'm half-Filipino even though I've lived the majority of my life in the Philippines. I do come from a place of privilege, you know. My dad did very well for himself. He came from a very, you know, a very tough background in France.

So did my mom. My mom came from a very tough background in the Philippines. But my dad was a self-made man. He did a really great job in kind of uplifting himself and our family as well. But I was born with that silver spoon in my mouth and I think people don't like that. They don't like the fact that, you know, I'm dating Anne Curtis, I'm privileged, and all that.

It's a social media culture, you want someone that you see that's popular, and you kind of want to bring them down a few pegs. So I think when taho kind of hit, it's just people didn't like me, and they wanted to put me down, which was fine, I took it in strides. But it really helped me in terms of my storytelling and making sure that when we approach stories, I try to remove as much of my biases as possible. And we look at the story plainly. And then, we figure out how to attack it.

HOWIE: Okay. So it was more than just taho. Okay, I understand that too. It's the whole social media culture we have now.

But another champion of Filipino cuisine, Anthony Bourdain, when he was asked what Filipino dish he would recommend to like a newbie, to someone who doesn't really know Filipino food, never tasted it, a non-Filipino, he said sisig.

Doreen Fernandez, the author whom we also talked about, she would recommend sinigang as kind of the classic Filipino dish and flavor.

I don't want to put you on the spot here. But maybe you've also thought about this. What would you answer to that? Like somebody from a province in France, what should be their first taste of Filipino food?

ERWAN: It would be three things. I can't give you one. It would be three things that are usually eaten together, and that's why I kind of put them together.

I think kinilaw would be one. In today's environment, crudo, raw fish, is very trendy. Kinilaw has a huge backstory. It's actually said that kinilaw predates ceviche, apparently. Ceviche is obviously raw fish cured in citrus. Kinilaw is cured in vinegar.

And so they say curing in vinegar was a process that was available way before Spanish colonization and all that, which is why I like it. It shows off the bounty of the sea and everything that we have, which a lot of countries don't have, tropical fish. So I think that's great.

Usually, that's had with a lato salad. So when people talk about Filipino food being brown and boring, something like a seaweed salad with some type that's texturized with, I've seen it done with toasted rice, pinipig, I've seen it done with like peanuts and ground peanuts, and it can be absolutely beautiful. And that would be very kind of, and it tastes, and it doesn't taste weird, you know, cooking seaweed. It doesn't taste weird at all. And it usually has a nice citrus dressing.

And third would be kulawo. So usually when you're at the beach, right, you have your grilled eggplants, or you have like an ensaladang talong, you have an eggplant salad that's served with your boodle fight. And so kulawo for me is one of those things, again, that showcases subtlety and diversity.

And it's a dish from Laguna and Quezon mostly, where your ensaladang talong is made with a coconut milk. But the coconut milk was toasted before being made. So you have a really nice smokiness to the coconut milk that's served cold with the mashed eggplants and it's beautiful.

So yeah, it's three dishes, but they are usually served together. And they're usually served at the beach, which is our best showcase.

HOWIE: Wow, great recommendations. It gives me ideas too about what to group together in a meal, right?

Anyway, I just want to pivot a little bit, since you did mention our celebrity-driven culture and I'm sure you're kind of sick of being asked about this, but you have actually addressed this in a previous interview where you travel around and sometimes people point to you or refer to you as 'asawa ni Anne, Anne Curtis.' And you're kind of delighted in one place, I think it was Baler, Aurora, where people actually knew your name. But how do you handle that fame and how do you feel about that?

ERWAN: So strangely enough, it becomes your new normal, right? Because I've been doing this for 12 years, so you kind of get used to it because you're so exposed to it. And I think it's always a great thing for people to know who you are.

What we try to convince people is not just to know who we are, but also what we do. For the longest time, people who knew me because one, I was Anne's husband, but also people would say, 'Oh, you're an artista, you're an actor, you're a singer, you're a model.' And I'd be like, 'I'm actually none of those things.'

When people kind of take pictures of me, we always kind of make fun of it. We're like, 'Oh, how do you know me?' And if it's like 'asawa ni Anne', I find that hilarious because I'm like, okay, I totally get that.

But if it's someone saying, 'Oh, I saw you in a movie once,' we kind of chuckle and we're like, 'Yeah, sure. Yeah, that one movie I made.' And so we always try to kind of tell people, we're like, 'Yeah, have a look at what we do online' because at the end of the day, we try to create videos for everyone, right? So we hope that aside from taking pictures of me, people kind of watch the videos and kind of see the value that we're trying to create as well.

HOWIE: Okay. You've also mentioned that sometimes your name is misspelled or mispronounced. I searched Erwan and you're the only Erwan that comes up. I know there might be others in the world but you're like in the first hundred search items. where did Erwan, your first name come from?

ERWAN: So Erwan, funnily enough is a very, it's not a 'used name.' It's like a very rare name, but it's a traditional Breton name. So my dad's from the west coast of France, which is called Brittany. It is a Gaelic-influenced area. For the longest time, they had a huge separatist movement. So they've always wanted to break away from Paris. And Erwan is a Celtic name. Its French translation is Yves. So Yves Ives would be the actual name. Erwan is the Celtic way of saying it. And it basically means 'the just man'. That's what it means.

But strangely enough, it's also really popular in Indonesia with a lot of Muslim people down there. I've met a few Erwans down there. And I've probably met more Erwans in Indonesia than I did in France. But I do know that Erwan is a French name in its basis. So I actually don't know why it became so popular in Indonesia. Maybe that's a documentary to do because it's captivating.

And yeah. So even like my last name Heussaff. Heussaff is the French translation of a Gaelic term, which is Wesson. Wesson is a tiny island off the coast of Brittany where my family is traditionally from. So our last names means 'from the Island of Wesson.' Heussaff.

HOWIE: Well, you know, in a previous interview you mentioned that when you're moving around sometimes people are confused about not just who you are but what you are because of how you look and speak.

And I noticed in your one of your bios, you listed as the languages that you're proficient in French, Russian, Spanish, English, of course, but you didn't mention Filipino. Am I assuming that you don't speak Filipino? I've heard you kind of converse a little bit with market vendors but you didn't bother to list that down as one of your languages.

ERWAN: I think because I'm not going to claim to speak Filipino because then people will jump at me and say, 'You don't speak Tagalog.' So I had to learn Russian before when I was based in Russia. So I spoke enough Russian to kind of get me around the workplace. My Russian now is quite rusty. My Spanish is still fairly good. And obviously my English and my French.

So Tagalog, I understand maybe 90% of what is said to me. I just have a very hard time putting words and sentences together simply because I was never taught the language. So I was formally taught French, I was formally taught English, I was formally taught Russian, I was formally taught Spanish. But for some reason I was never formally taught Tagalog.

And I always tell my mom, 'Why?' Like, that's the bane of my existence. And that's something that I know with my daughter, I'm not going to make that mistake to put her in like at least have her take Tagalog classes.

I hire a lot of kids from some of the biggest universities in the Philippines and a lot of their Tagalog isn't what we would consider deep Tagalog. I actually find it funny that there's two types, right? There's a regular Tagalog and deep Tagalog. So yeah, so I think it's a thing here in the country where you're kind of you're supposed to learn on the go. But, you know, as a kid, if I was already learning Spanish, French, and English, how do you add another language to that?

So it is something I'm consciously making an effort on right now. I am taking classes. Everyone in my team knows that they should talk to me in Tagalog. And as much as possible, I try to express myself in Tagalog to them as well. So hopefully, I don't know, I'm kind of old now. But hopefully, in a couple of I don't know, a year or two, I should be a bit more fluent when it comes to talking to people.

HOWIE: So the world is now full of people of mixed races like yourself or third culture kids. How do you identify now? Because in your spiels, your narration, you use the word 'we' and then, which assumes that 'we Filipinos', right? But how would you answer that question? How do you identify?

ERWAN: Very Filipino. I lived in France for a total of three and a half years. And even in that time, I would leave a lot. So, I mean, my dad's French. Obviously, I speak the language. I went to French school in the Philippines. But in terms of who I am, my passions, my beliefs and everything, I do think I'm very, very Filipino.

So that's why I use the word 'we'. Good catch. Even when I was doing videos alone, I would always use the word 'we' because I never felt that I was doing something alone. Even when it was just me and a videographer, I would always use the word 'we' because I would always think me and the videographer today, both of us, we are here.

And I remember working in the US and they told me, 'Stop using the word 'we'. Start using the word 'I' because no one sees the videographer or the cameraman." But I'm like, 'No, it doesn't make sense to me.' So I stuck to it. But then now when I talk about it, yeah, I talk when I say it, I assume it's 'we, the Filipinos'.

And so, yeah, that's where I place myself. And I think that's, I mean, this is where I married, you know, I fell in love with my wife. This is where we're making our child grow up. And so I really do see myself as mostly Filipino.

HOWIE: I need to ask you because this is an issue for a lot of people as well. You've been quite open about your weight and diet journey. Let's put it that way.

You've said that you used to be 240 pounds. Obviously, that was a long time ago, it seems. It's now Christmas season. It's eating season, so many parties, so much eating,

And weight gain and then, weight loss will be on everyone's mind. What can you share about this? Obviously, you've been quite successful at transforming yourself physically, achieving certain goals there. So what would you share in terms of what to eat, what not to eat? I mean, how can you enjoy the season without eating all you want to eat?

I try not to give health, food and health advice anymore. But I try to kind of ask people to come up with those solutions themselves because most of the time when you're doing something wrong, you know you're doing something wrong.

So it's just, I always tell people, 'You know, do you technically need to eat cake?' 'No.' 'Can you survive without cake?' 'Yes.' 'Does cake make you happy?' 'Maybe.' So each time you're about to eat something, ask yourself, 'Is this truly worth it? Will I truly enjoy this? Or can I skip this and save calories for something else?'

There are always times in the year where people need to be able to relax and eat and be with their friends and drink alcohol if they want to. And if you want to do that just during the holidays and that's fine, just know that when you hit the week after, you have to kind of get back on track. And you know, the best way nowadays especially is food has become entertainment. We're a huge contributor to that, you know. That's kind of like the dichotomy that I live in all the time. We contribute to food entertainment.

But when people eat at home, I always tell them to look at food as sustenance. So only eat the amount that you need to go through your day, go through your activities. And a lot of us are all, most of us are overeating. I mean, if you're eating regularly and you can afford to eat properly three meals a day, a lot of the times we tend to overeat.

So it's kind of looking at that food and saying, 'Do I know exactly what I'm putting in my body and in what quantities should I have it?' And try to eat food you can understand. When you eat a bag of chips and you look at ingredients in the bag of chips, do you understand those ingredients? Probably not.

But if you were to eat a banana, do you understand the banana? Yes. So I always tell people, like, 'Your ingredients should have one name. If they have more than one name, a lot of times it's complicated.'

HOWIE: That's a great way to end. We want to thank you for opening our eyes and our world to the cultural riches of the Philippines. Mabuhay ka, Erwan Heussaff, food documentarist extraordinaire and 2023 James Beard Awardee. Maraming-maraming salamat.

ERWAN: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time.