Carly Dela Cruz - eating the world

I love the word: voracious.

Carly has a passion for life and culture and history and the world and people…. and how do you understand it all if not by eating it all?

This is a wonderful story full of light of a woman who once she had decided what she wanted to do with her time, went to make it happen.

Why food? 

I consider food to be much more than something that we eat. I consider food an ally or a teacher of sorts – to me, it’s something dynamic that I have a relationship with. My relationship with food has been an interesting journey and it’s existed for as long as I can remember. Like any relationship worth investing in, we’ve had our ups and downs, but I’ve become a stronger person for it. 

I grew up in Hawaii where we are blessed with a melting pot of cultures and food is the heart and soul that ties our local culture together – there’s a long history to it that we locals often take for granted. It was always a weekend family BBQ at the beach or a potluck for so and so’s birthday or graduation party. In Hawaii, there is no occasion too big or too small for a table full of food. While most people wonder who will be at the party, we locals always ask, what is there going to be to eat? Neither did I question the diversity of the enormous spread regardless of how many people there were to feed – Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese Hawaiian, Portuguese, you name it. 

You could also say food is in my blood, from growing it to selling it – my maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Japan and became fish and vegetable peddlers in the plantation camps while my paternal grandparents immigrated from the Philippines and worked on the pineapple plantations. 

But my earliest memory of exploring food on my own is when I would watch the Food Network instead of the Disney Channel. Ina Garden and Giada De Laurentis were my Power Puff Girls and Hannah Montana. It wasn’t long before my mom would leave ingredients out on the counter for me to cook dinner while she took my older siblings out to sports practice. I could barely see above the counter, I had to get a step stool to chop vegetables on the counter.

There was no real explanation for it at this age, it was just a natural affinity for it. Some kids like to play soccer, some like to play video games – I liked to eat and cook.

Then I grew older and with it my relationship to food – from exploring food in academic settings as the self-selected content for any school project to writing a food blog as a creative outlet focused on the emotions and psychology of comfort food, to round-ups of establishments for the fellow “foodie”.  I was exploring food in whatever way it presented itself – my intuitive pull towards food meant I didn’t have to try very hard to look. Opportunities to be curious and explore food were always just…there. 

Until my early 20’s food was for fun. It was how I enjoyed the world now that I had the time and money to eat, explore, and travel. I was working a boring job in corporate finance thinking I had made it in life – secure income, amazing benefits, great work-life balance, what more could I ask for? But there was something missing. I vividly remember the physical and emotional gut response I got walking into work every morning like the world wasn’t right. I would have knots in my stomach churning day and night whenever it came to work. I remember telling myself in the elevator one morning, “I can’t just be living for Fridays. What kind of existence is that?” 

On top of that, this is when I felt my self-esteem hit an all-time low, as I was going through a severe case of chronic cystic acne as an adult. It took about 2 years of trial and error before I discovered I had a sensitivity to dairy. Food was there for me, as medicine. This was the first time I’ve explored that concept and it’s stuck with me ever since. 

This is when my relationship with food really took hold. I started looking for ways to incorporate food into my life to compensate for the corporate hell that actually made my food explorations financially possible. I volunteered at a local cooking school, took food tours on my days off on a business trip, attended cookbook author talks, hung out at the neighbourhood cookbook store all the time, and spent more time in cafes than I did in my own apartment searching for my next job…this time, in food. 

I knew at this point, it was me and food for life. I needed to integrate it completely into my life, not just be an escape, in order to be happy. It was a gut feeling.

One job rejection after the next told me I didn’t have the experience to make a transition into the industry. So I turned to institutions that helped me get what I needed – hello, University of Gastronomic Sciences! It was a lot of soul-searching at the time, but it’s what I needed to eventually take the leap to go into something I was truly passionate about. I don’t think I knew how to truly believe in myself until I made the decision to attend UNISG.

Then from there - and I’m sure you’ve experienced it too - this whole new world just opens up! Food is literally, everywhere. 

Since UNISG, food has helped me explore, meet incredibly interesting people, focus on my health, and find my dream job, among so many other things. But the one thing that has continued to remain consistent in my relationship with food is an insatiable curiosity about the world I live in.  

So you cook and you write. What comes first?

Cooking comes first – or eating, or travelling, or all of the above. I experience the world first and writing is a way for me to process. Words are a way for me to reflect on what just happened to me, and find meaning in my experience however trivial or profound. 

It doesn’t surprise me that I like to both write stories and cook – they both follow a process, you see. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. The theme of processes and stories is one that continues to weave a golden thread throughout my life.

Do you think that your way of experiencing the world is by eating it?

Without a doubt - that’s a great way to put it.

It’s my language and connection to everything. It’s the context in which I can understand the world. If I want to learn another culture, I’m going to look at its food because it will tell me about its history, about its language, about its people, politics, attitudes, and values.  

I can digest context this way versus opening a history book or entering an art gallery or a news article. Somehow it clicks and makes sense for me – again, a subconscious thread I’ve always followed, but never really understood why. 

I love eating the world.

What would be your ideal job?

My ideal job would be to have an agriturismo in Hawaii. Agriturismos are not a thing even in the States. The first time I experienced it was when I was at UNISG. What is this amazing concept of a B&B but also a farm? Genius! 

The reason I love that is 1. It gets me away from a computer screen 8 hours a day and working with my hands – it’s tangible work I can feel and interact with the world around me with my senses. It’s multi-sensory, and for me, the use of all my senses is a way to stay present and feel like life is happening through me, not to me. 

And 2. It’s hospitality through food! It’s a great display of emotion and passion I can communicate to guests. One of my favourite quotes by Cesar Chavez says, “The people who give you their food give you their heart.” I am one of those people.

Is there any difference in terms of care that you put into cooking for others versus when you cook for yourself? 

I think the care level is equal but in different ways. 

I definitely put a lot of care into cooking for myself. When I cook for myself I take into consideration all the health and medicinal properties of food, but also I like to indulge sometimes. I ask myself if there’s anything I’m curious about eating, about cooking. How am I feeling and what does my body need to eat? I’ve been exploring a lot of Greek Herbalism and TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) cooking recently and this question comes up at quite literally, every meal. Cooking for myself checks a lot of boxes other than just putting a meal on the table. 

Whereas when I cook for others, my approach is empathetic. I take great interest in knowing their experience and what they might like to have or to try. I like to think about people in that way, through the lens of hospitality and wholeheartedly looking after others. 

Food is my love language.

I wonder what kind of hospitality you are drawn to… I don’t think you’re the type for those fast-paced restaurant kitchen environments. 

Absolutely, you’re hitting it right on the nose. The whole restaurant thing is a hard pass. Despite already knowing I didn’t want to work my butt off in a high-pressure kitchen 12 hours a day, I still got a part-time job back of house at a wine bar (while working a full-time job) to make sure it actually is not the kind of hospitality for me. I lasted 1 month.

I also don’t receive hospitality in that way either – I much prefer eating at a small trattoria with pasta made by a 100-year-old nonna than Michelin Star dining by an award-winning chef. I want to feel at home. 

I’m definitely for a slow pace. A slow life. Taking moments to appreciate what’s in front of us.

What’s Hawaiian food like?

In Hawaii, we have lots of different cultures, but the islands were originally settled by native Hawaiians. So Hawaiian is an ethnicity not just a descriptor of where you are from, like Californian. When I say to people I’m from Hawaii but I’m not Hawaiian, I respectfully make a clear distinction: I am Japanese-Filipino, I am from Hawaii, but I’m not Hawaiian. 

It’s kind of like that with the food. There are indigenous types of food and ingredients that are particular to the native Hawaiian gastronomy. Then I think it was the early 1800s, shortly after Western contact, a wave of immigrants came to Hawaii to work on sugar and pineapple plantations: Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Portuguese, and Korean. So a lot of folks that are my age and a couple of generations older are of those ethnicities or mixed. 

Therefore, you end up with “local food” or Hawaii-regional cuisine which is this big melting pot of all of those cuisines together. When everyone lived on the plantations they would share their food, so it got mixed up and they were resourceful. In short, all these new types of dishes came about and a lot of the Japanese and Filipino food that you find in Hawaii might not actually be found in Japan or in the Philippines. And of course, Hawaiian food inspires a lot of dishes that weren’t actually a part of the original food of the early settlers.

However, local food in Hawaii is one of those things you just don’t really find anywhere else in the world because it’s so unique to this mixture of cultures.

Perhaps you find ideas of Hawaiian food…

Exactly. Like you find poke everywhere and that’s a fascinating experience. You find poke in so many parts of the world that are so far away and where there’s not even a Hawaiian diaspora. It feels like it’s there kind of out of nowhere. I’m still not sure how I feel about it – but that’s not unique to Hawaiian food or poke. So many dishes and food cultures have sprouted up around the world like this, seemingly baseless without its gastronomic stewards – I attribute a lot of this to technology and social media – but I wonder if they will take root without a diaspora there to uphold the integrity of the dish or food culture.

Are your parents born in Hawaii?

My parents were both born in Hawaii, my mom is third generation so her grandparents are the ones who immigrated from Toyama, Japan. And my dad is the second generation, so my grandma immigrated from Ilocos Nortes in the Philippines. 

I’ve been to Japan and always had a pull to that culture as well. We were more exposed to it growing up because we spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents for a longer period of our lives. I’ve visited Japan, lived there, studied there, and worked there. Another one of those affinities that continues to weave throughout my life.

I don’t dismiss being Filipino, rather I’m quite proud of it. I just need to put more work into getting to know that side of me. I’ve never been to the Philippines. In fact, the only connection I really feel to the culture is through the food. It is the food of celebration for me – birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving – it was always Filipino food because that was the side of the family that gathered. I don’t think I’ve ever bought or eaten at a Filipino restaurant in my life. No one makes Filipino food better than the aunties and uncles.

So you speak Japanese?

Enough to get by, and then some. I can’t express my heart and soul in Japanese but I can connect with the local people and get to know them. It’s one reason I love travelling to Japan – because I can talk with people on deeper levels than I can in any other foreign country. 

This always inspires me to learn new languages before I travel. 

Languages, like food, break down barriers.

Do you feel at home in Hawaii? Or do you have a longing for something else, somewhere else maybe?

I think having the feeling of being at home and having a longing for somewhere else can coexist. 

I definitely feel at home here. I was one of those kids growing up who was always told ‘You’re gonna leave the island, you can’t stay home…you're gonna have experiences outside of the islands.”

My mom really wanted us to get out and see the world. That was the expectation, so when I turned 18 I left and said ‘I’m never coming back!’

For the longest time, I had this negative perception of Hawaii being so small, that there was nothing here for us, whereas the world is out there. Success and everything else is out there but not here. If I came back, I’d be a failure. 

I was away for almost a decade, and when I got back after the Master’s program in 2019 I chose to stay here. It took me 10 years and exploring thousands of miles around the world to realise how beautiful and unique Hawaii is as a place and a culture – and that it has everything to offer.

You just need to leave it to appreciate it. Had I not left this would just be my status quo, I wouldn’t have this perspective. 

That said, my curiosity is insatiable and the global exposure I’ve had hasn’t left my system. It was so life-changing, I don’t think it ever will. There’s something about exploring the foreign and unknown that widens perspectives and shifts our cognition – and I find that tremendously invaluable.

We call it “island fever.” Sometimes I just feel the need to be in places where I don’t speak the same language as the people, I need to be confused, lost in translation and left to observe something I’ve never seen before. 

Occasionally I feel the need to be elsewhere and get out of my comfort zone but I’m always happy and ready to return home to Hawaii.

Obviously, we don’t hear it in the news anymore, so I’d love to know what’s the situation now post-fire.

Thank you for asking. I also feel like we don’t hear it in the news anymore and I live right here.

I think for a lot of folks who weren’t directly impacted by the fire, thankfully like my family, life kinda has to go on. At a micro level things feel normal: we don’t hear the sirens and helicopters anymore or don’t see the shelters giving out food. Social media has even moved on from reporting on clean-up efforts. The immediate emotional weight, especially compared to that in August, has lightened a bit for some, but not all. 

But on a macro level, Maui will never be the same: the tourists haven’t returned and opening up to visitors is a controversial topic, local businesses are hurting, and the people who were directly impacted are still hopping from one temporary shelter to another. Some parts of the towns of Lahaina and Kula still don’t have clean drinking water. It’s been two months…

While the obvious news and events have toned down and life continues to go on, that doesn’t mean the pain, struggle, or grieving has subsided. I’m sure there’s not a day that goes by where a Maui resident doesn’t think about the impacts of the fires. I’m not sure there ever will be. 

Read Carly’s articles here. And if you’d like to know more about Hawaiian food here.