What’s in secret foodie Cathy Feliciano-Chon’s pantry?
The chilli-loving Filipino-American founder of marketing consultancy CatchOn explains why food is so much more than something you eat
Cathy Feliciano-Chon is a self-professed “food mule”. On her travels, she has brought back everything from dried dates to canned sardines, once even carrying a clay pizza oven from Italy.
“I’m fearless,” she says.
“I didn’t realise I collected [chillies and chilli sauces] until I found all these,” she says, pointing to a range of pickles, sauces and powders. “I think it runs in the family. We used to have raw chilli eating contests, and we would hide chillies in food and see who would get one.”
Other Asian ingredients, such as calamansi (citrus) and tuyo, a Filipino dried fish, also feature, but in many ways her shelves are a direct reflection of her travels.
“Food can bring a place to you. It’s a memory of a time, and it provides cultural context. Context is important, and it’s something we try to provide when we do our Future of Food report,” she says, referring to her company’s annual summary on culinary trends.
Every Friday, in her North Point office, the company’s staff sit down together for lunch, often trying foods Feliciano-Chon has returned home with.
Almost every bottle, box or can in her kitchen seems to tell a story, whether it’s olives from a farm she had heard good things about, a coveted brand of jam or fruit from a friend’s orchard, preserved and given to her.
“Sometimes you meet someone while travelling and they tell you about a maker or grower in their region with such passion, it’s infectious. Usually these are simple people, doing things by hand.
“It’s not about the food itself. Food is the vehicle that brings people together.”