Such exorbitant bounties for such humble condiments—sawsawan, as they’re known in Tagalog—underscore their importance to the diaspora. A 2023 study in the Journal of Ethnic Foods puts it plainly: “[Sawsawan] protect historic flavors and local customs that give communities and families so much pride and pleasure.” But with mass production and shelf-stable formulations, these ready-made condiments may seem at odds with tradition. Do they truly belong to Filipino foodways as much as the heritage recipes they evolved from?

“What’s nostalgic to you is also what’s authentic to you,” says Carlo Lamagna, chef-owner of Magna Kusina in Portland, Oregon, and Magna Kainan in Denver, who gave a 2020 TED Talk on authenticity in cuisine. “For many Filipinos, these condiments are benchmarks because they grew up with them.” Considering kimchi, miso, and harissa are also industrially produced cultural foods that bring comfort to diasporic communities, sawsawan are in good company.

“Our condiments connect Filipinos [living abroad] to the Philippines—sometimes even more than actually going to the Philippines,” says Richard Rebollido, an international business manager at Manila-based NutriAsia, the manufacturer of Jufran, Mang Tomas, and UFC products. “They provide a whole gastronomic experience that gives our dishes third and fourth dimensions.” Sawsawan are very versatile that way: Sautéing garlic and onions with bagoong mellows its funk and deepens its umami. Mixing Sprite, patis (fish sauce), and garlic into banana sauce—a lush and tangy, glossy-red “ketchup,” as it’s more often called, born from bananas as a stand-in for tomatoes—creates a barbecue glaze that caramelizes beautifully over hot coals. A spritz of calamansi juice brightens a mixture of toyo (Filipino soy sauce) and Mang Tomas, making a tasty, tenderizing marinade for pork or chicken.

An early example of the diaspora’s deep hankering for sawsawan dates back to Philippine national hero José Rizal, whose writings fueled the country’s late-19th-century revolution against Spain. Legend has it that in 1883, his family in Manila sent him a jar of bagoong by boat to Madrid, where he was a medical student longing for the familiar flavors of home. But according to The New York Times, “it broke on the ship, releasing its pungent scent and, reportedly, terrifying the passengers.”

More than 150 years later, much of the Filipino diaspora in America is experiencing a similar yearning, waiting for the bottlenecked supply chain to ease. Rebollido confirms that NutriAsia’s reformulated products, which swap potassium iodate for plain table salt without any apparent change in flavor, are gradually clearing customs. But for specialty shops like Manila Mart, a popular grocery-café in Beltsville, Maryland, shipments are irregular at best. Owner Toni-Rose Bioc says, “Two weeks ago, we had banana ketchup, and now we don’t—it’s already sold out.”

Naturally, the current limbo between shortage and supply has inspired newfound creativity in the kitchen. Bioc has been making her own all-purpose sauce with a recipe from Bulacan, her mother’s home province in the Philippines, using roasted kabocha squash, brown sugar, and Sukang Iloco cane vinegar. The original 1950s recipe for Mang Tomas—created by Tomas De Los Reyes, a lechonero in Quezon City who wanted a signature sawsawan to set his business apart from other lechonerías around town—owed its unctuousness to pork liver. As Bioc cheekily points out in an Instagram reel where she pits her velvety vegetarian house sauce, with its honeyed notes and gentle acidity, against today’s breadcrumb-thickened Mang Tomas, “there’s no liver in there either.” She’s right—NutriAsia removed liver from its international products in 2017.

When it comes to Lamagna’s scratch-made banana ketchup, certain omitted ingredients align with the condiment’s sustainability roots. His version, made from roasted bananas, gets the trademark hue from annatto powder—not tomato paste or industrial food dyes. At his restaurants, the chef pairs Filipino chicken barbecue or tortang talong, a grilled eggplant omelet, with his DIY sauce, an ode to food chemist Maria Orosa’s original banana ketchup recipe from the 1930s. Created as a solution to food shortages in the Philippines, a tropical archipelago where bananas thrive but tomatoes do not, banana ketchup became especially important during World War II.

For Chris Mauricio, chef and co-owner of Filipino restaurant Harana Market in the Hudson Valley, honoring that history is essential. “When I dive into recipes, I love understanding where they came from, their purpose, and their original ingredients. Bringing that knowledge into the present is a way of sharing culture,” says Mauricio, who had been rationing the restaurant’s stockpiled Jufran Hot & Spicy Banana Sauce since the import alert. Earlier this year, they emptied the last bottles into a special batch of Super Sarap Spaghetti—a “bolognese” spin on the uniquely sweet-and-savory, hot dog-studded Filipino pasta dish. If any singular sawsawan has the potential to reach the global acclaim of Sriracha or Kewpie mayo, Mauricio believes it could be banana ketchup: “It’s great with fries and chicken tenders, and makes a killer burger sauce.” Say no more.

If banana ketchup represents reinvention, then bagoong is pure preservation, with the penetrating pungency and briny, salty funk to prove it. Oakland-based chef Yana Gilbuena, author of No Forks Given: Recipes + Memories of a Traveling Filipino Chef (2019), once described bagoong as “the X-factor in our food.” 

In lowland regions of the Philippines, bagoong ingredients vary from shrimp to anchovies to oysters, but in the highlands, a fermented pork version called pinayt serves a similar role. “My palate recognizes that gamey, salty, umami in soup,” wrote culinary historian Raymond A. Macapagal in his 2018 essay, “Is This the Bagoong of the Mountains?” By any name, bagoong easily cuts through rich dishes like kare-kare, an oxtail stew thickened with peanut butter; or Bicol express, a spicy coconut milk-braised pork dish.

Since traditionally making bagoong at home would require salted fermentation to take place in sun-warmed earthen jars for up to 90 days—grounds for a potential NIMBY protest—some cooks and food influencers have attempted workarounds to tide over wanton cravings. For instance, Instagram and TikTok creator @NinongRy crafted a wok-simmered dupe using more accessible Thai shrimp paste, which is denser, chalkier, and saltier than its Filipino counterpart. He adds a jar of the grayish spackle to a couple of pounds of sizzling pork jowl, palmfuls of sugar and minced garlic, some chicken schmaltz, plus a bag of desiccated coconut for texture, cooking the mixture down until it’s dark, pulpy, and verging on umami overload—a satisfactory backup for bagoong proper.

If this disruption in the Filipino condiment continuum has proven anything, it’s that the bottled standards reign over heart and home. James Beard Award-winner Lord Maynard Llera, of Kuya Lord, also attests to their lasting rule. “I grew up with them. You can’t remove those flavors from me,” he says. From closely guarded recipes, Llera prepares banana-berry ketchup and an all-purpose sauce from chicken livers and date vinegar at his Los Angeles eatery, but he still hopes that family and friends visiting from the Philippines will arrive bearing the elusive store-bought condiments. “Even though I make my own sauces, customers still ask for Mang Tomas.”

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