Every Filipino feast, fire-cooked collab and ube-laced sweet worth booking at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
We’re living in a golden age of new wave Filipino cuisine, so it’s no surprise that the 2026 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is serving up a feast of Filipino events, from major star power of the Global Dining program to local innovators, sharing tables, tastes and tales together.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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JP Anglo: Taking ‘Filipino Food Forward’
A centrepiece of the Global Dining program is trailblazing Filipino chef, JP Anglo, who’ll be cooking with Ross Magnaye and Shane Stafford at Serai.
Originally from the Philippines, Anglo’s currently based in Dubai, running two concept restaurants, including Kooya. His Manila venue, Sarsa, recently scored a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
“To finally be recognised is such a great feeling,” he says.
For a world-renowned chef at the forefront of one of the most exciting cuisines, Anglo’s incredibly humble: he’d rather make sure everyone feels welcome and no one is disappointed at his table than talk up his own status and skill. While he “earned his stripes” in Sydney at cooking school, this will be his first time cooking for Melbourne. Anglo was supposed to cook at Serai in the 2020 MFWF (alas, COVID), so this has been a collaboration years in the making.
What can diners expect? For starters, it’ll be fun. Really fun.
“Not to oversell, but I think it’s going to be fucking good,” he says. “When I cook Filipino food, it’s really in your face.”
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Beyond that, he’s excited to incorporate Serai’s fire and smoke, but he’s approaching it like a team sport: he doesn’t know everyone’s role until they gather around and get into it. He foresees skewers, stew and soup, as a minimum, and he’s relishing the chance to “go all-out” for a communal feast and interactive experience.
He’s keen for it to be something creative and unique that intrigues the open-minded diner – which he’s confident he’ll find in Melbourne. It’ll be a mix of people for whom the flavours are entirely new, and the Filipino community who’ll pick up echoes of home cooking and familiar ingredients, as well as the twists.
“They will notice right away… but it’s all a balance of innovation and evolution,” he says. “That’s where the fun is.”
He’s found adjusting Filipino food for different diners – whether it’s Tokyo, New York or Dubai – is about striking the balance between making it understandable for new palates while keeping it rooted in the original tradition.
“It’s more refined. It’s not rushed,” he says. “So, in a sense, it’s elevated.”
It’s generally not possible, he says, to precisely replicate Filipino flavours overseas, so he calls his approach “Filipino food forward”: moving to the future, not being hamstrung by authenticity just because you can’t do it like mum did.
“It helps when you do all these collaborations in different parts of the world because you get to temper everything,” he says. “Once you get here you stand your ground, this is who we are. We’ll tweak it up a bit, but without losing our soul.”
His success is part of a “bigger picture”, proving to the Filipino community that this crossover can be done. The future of Filipino cuisine is, he says, “a collective effort” by the global community, such as venues like Serai or Sydney’s Takam. Anglo is especially looking forward to connecting with like-minded chefs at MFWF, as it’s rare to see this many Filipino chefs from all over the world in one place.
“I think it’s gonna be fun. I feel the rapport there.”
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Abi Balingit: Bright and beautiful baking
One of the most exciting names in diaspora Filipino cuisine is NYC dessert star Abi Balingit, the James Beard award-winning author of Mayumu.
“I do think it’s going to be a great opportunity to try so much amazing Filipino food from all over the world,” she says.
“And to meet a lot of these amazing chefs that are coming from all over, but also the local ones in Melbourne that have held down the fort in the Filipino food community… It’s going to be a really fun intermingling of different flavours and techniques.”
Balingit always loved Western-style baked goods, but it wasn’t until COVID time that she really figured out what flavours inspired her. While Filipino ingredients are prominent in her recipes, she pulls in other global influences: some miso here, pork floss there.
“[It’s taking] inspiration from other cuisines and make it your own and still have it inherently be Filipino at the end of the day,” she says. “Or Filipino Fusion… It’s kind of freeing.”
For MFWF, she’s extending herself over three big collaborative events, one being the massive Fed Square takeover, Baker’s Dozen.
For Mesa Filipino, Balingit will contribute to a five-course ‘supper club’ alongside Michael Pastrana and Morris Danzen Catanghal (Adobros), Da Bo Pamplona (Naimas), chef Nouel Catis (of the infamous Dubai chocolate) and Lau and Jac Laudico (Guevarra’s by Laudico).
Abi will be making a recipe from her cookbook, inspired by her mother’s maja blanca: a corn milk pudding, with her playful twist of malted milk and a toffee made of Fritos (if she can find the American snack here, if not she’ll adapt) as an “extra corny bite”.
“When I think about Filipino food, it’s so multi-dimensional in terms of both flavour and texture,” she says. “It’ll be sweet and salty, but also crunchy and soft, a fun take on a classic dessert.”
Musings and Merienda sees her cooking with Laurice Fajardo (Halaya), Con Buada (Dröm), Grace Guinto (Sweet Cora) and Kristina Náray (Malindang) for a long afternoon of eating and drinking. What’s a merienda? Balingit describes it as “afternoon snack vibes”, or like a hobbit’s “second breakfast”, just hanging out, chatting and sharing food like pandesal or small sweet bites of rice cake steamed in banana leaf.
Basically, this’ll be a big party based around “delicious new takes on Filipino food.”
Balingit’s baked goods are even delicious to look at, doubtless helping make her an Instagram sensation: lush pandan green, unreal ube purple, the rose petals sprinkled on a lychee madeline with hibiscus tea glaze (“it’s bite-sized, but it packs like a punch”), pink peppercorns cracked over her famous Adobo chocolate chip cookie – she says the last two will make an appearance at the merienda.
“I definitely lean towards colourful clothes… I’ve had every single hair colour under the sun,” she says. “It’s really fun to use food as the medium of your art.”
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It’s matched by a brightness of flavour, translating sour calamansi or vinegars traditionally used in savoury cooking to her suite of sweets.
“It’s really nice to use that to have a little bit more complexity in the dish,” she says.
She’s excited about Australia’s tropical fruits (not easy to access in a Brooklyn winter) and connecting with different diaspora food traditions.
“I think everyone just plays with it,” she says. “That’s what a lot of Filipinos have had to do outside of the Philippines.”
What else is on the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival menu?
Askal is hosting Lee Ho Fook for a delicious lesson in Chinese influence on Filipino cuisine, over six courses (Chinese wine pairing highly recommended).
Thirsty for fun new drinks? Inuman and Askal’s Ralph Libo-on will be joined at the bar by Roean Patawaran of Sydney’s 25 Hours Hotel, shaking things up with bold Filipino-inspired cocktail creations.
Childhood memories of Vietnamese and Filipino flavours mingle at Miss Mi when Duncan Lu and Migo Razon join forces for a nostalgic share-style feast.
At Nine Yards, Boodle Brunch will see diners digging into communal banana leaves piled with dishes from Filipino-Italian celebrity chef Morris Danzen Catanghal and Pinoy cuisine superstar Abi “Lumpia Queen” Marquez.
Those who managed to grab tickets to the sold-out Serai x La Siréne evening are in for a night of flame-cooking paired with wild ales.
For more information on Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
