Philippine Heirloom Rice from the Terraces

Sometime in the late 1990s, I received a call from a Filipino MBA student asking me whether I thought it was possible to develop a U.S. market for organic heirloom rice grown in the terraces of the Cordillera Mountains of the Philippines. I told her there was a dearth of high-quality ingredients from the Philippines available to restaurateurs like us who desperately wanted to promote our food in this country, and that we would definitely use these heirloom rice varieties in creating our menu.

She then told me about Mary Hensley, a former Peace Corps volunteer who spent two years working with the rice farmers in that area and returned to the Philippines after twenty years to set up Eighth Wonder. Since then, Mary has been bringing up to seventeen tons of grains into the United States annually. We use four of her rice varieties: Tinawon (a grain that is harvested only once a year), Ulikan Red, Kalinga Unoy, and the purple Diket (an Ifugao glutinous variety).