‘Food Roots’ keeps serving heritage, memory, and a very full plate on PBS

 

‘Food Roots’ keeps serving heritage, memory, and a very full plate on PBS

Some documentaries ask where we come from. “Food Roots” asks the same question, then wisely brings snacks.

The award-winning documentary from Emmy Award-winning restaurateur Billy Dec continues streaming on PBS.org and YouTube since its May launch on PBS and select PBS stations nationwide during Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Directed by Emmy winner Michele Josue, “Food Roots” follows Dec through his mother’s native Philippines — all 7,641 islands, give or take, including ones that seem to require a boat, motorcycle, jeepney, strong calves, or heroic appetite. His journey is part culinary excavation, part family reckoning, as he searches for his last living elders, ancestral recipes, and the stories that have seasoned his identity.

The film’s creative team comes with serious credentials: three-time Oscar-affiliated executive producer Doug Blush, Grammy winner apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Ronnie Del Carmen, and award-winning agency COACT.

However, the film’s power is not in its résumé. It is in the intimacy of Dec’s search — moving from bustling cities to remote islands and cloud-covered mountain villages, where food becomes less a meal than a map. One of its most striking moments comes when Dec meets a now 108-year-old tribal tattoo master, who blesses him with a traditional tattoo symbolizing ancestral connection and continuity.

Dec’s discoveries have also traveled back to his Sunda New Asian Restaurants in Chicago, Nashville, Tampa, and Detroit, where elements of the film’s culinary journey have inspired menu items and specials. Call it edible footnotes.

Since its festival premiere, “Food Roots” has won Audience Choice Awards at the Vero Beach Film Festival and Nashville Film Festival, and screened at festivals including Chicago, Newport Beach, Sunscreen, Cleveland, and Gasparilla.

At heart, “Food Roots” is about family, memory and belonging — proof that sometimes the shortest route to the soul is through the stomach.