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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Wednesday, January 20, 2021

entry arrow8:33 PM | Reading 'The Gullet'



Finally finished the late Clinton Palanca's last book, The Gullet: Dispatches on Philippine Food, and I couldn't help but consider my reading of it a bittersweet valedictory: I enjoyed very much the elegant nimbleness and richness of the prose [in Philippine literary circles, Clinton was in a class all his own], while at the same time commiserating that we would no longer have more of the same from the author who suddenly passed away in May 2019. That we could no longer look forward to another book was what gave me the saddest pause. Much of The Gullet—a collection of his columns and short musings on food and his travels for the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Esquire—begets an anticipation for more; it feels like an audition, a launching pad, a beautiful brainstorm for a longer, more comprehensive, more organically conceptualized book. As such, these are exquisitely written missives—which range from a historical consideration of Philippine cuisine to culinary finds in places as exotic as Rajastan, India and London—unfortunately marred by the fits and starts inherent in its editorial design. It left me hungering for more.

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