This April, in celebration of Filipino Food Month, Chef Tatung presents KitchiZen—not as a cookbook, but as an offering.
Before it became a book, KitchiZen was already a way of being.
A KitchiZen—a kitchen citizen—is not a culinary identity, but a civic one: a person shaped by the discipline of the stove, where fire must be watched, timing matters, and knowing when to stop is part of the craft. It is a practice of proportion—not the rejection of ambition, but the refusal of excess.
This figure anchors Chef Tatung’s most ambitious work to date—drawn not from imported philosophy, but from the Filipino back kitchen: from mothers at wet markets, from tinderas with dog-eared notebooks, from generations of cooks who fed the nation without recognition. The KitchiZen already exists. This book gives it a name.
KitchiZen: Slow Fire, Steady Heart in a World of Too Much, published by Vertikal Kreatives Inc., will be released this April as part of Filipino Food Month. It is Chef Michael Giovan “Tatung” Sarthou III’s first work of philosophy. It comes from the kitchen, but it is about life.
“My latest work is going to press—almost a lifetime of insights, gathered slowly and quietly, now held in one book. I wrote this from a place I know well: waking up already behind, giving more than I meant to give, and still feeling like it was never enough. For a long time, I thought that was life. The kitchen taught me otherwise.”
Structured around four foundations—Puso (heart), Galing (skill), Buhay (livelihood), and Bayan (community)—the book moves through Filipino history and lived experience to argue that the kitchen has always carried a philosophy the wider world is only beginning to articulate. At its center is kasapatan: enoughness. Not scarcity. Not retreat. But the point at which what you have built can hold.
“If you have been feeling tired, stretched, or quietly overwhelmed, I wrote this with you in mind. Not just a book to read, but something to return to—a way to steady yourself.”
KitchiZen expands the SIMPOL philosophy into new ground, introducing the KitchiZen as a distinctly Filipino civic identity—one who measures rice to the first knuckle, seasons by feel (tantiya), and understands that enough is not a concession, but a form of mastery.
The book advances a larger claim: that the Filipino kitchen is not a private space, but the first school of public life. When a household is governed by kasapatan, the habits it forms—restraint, attentiveness, proportion—extend outward into work, community, and citizenship. The KitchiZen is the Philippines’ answer to a question the world is now asking everywhere.
The book carries endorsements from leading voices in literature, history, and publishing. Historian Ambeth R. Ocampo calls it the first work to treat Philippine cooking as philosophy:
“A treatise on what it is to cook Filipino, centered on the kitchen as hearth, home, and heart.” Writer Merlie M. Alunan describes it as a work of mindfulness that honors those who quietly feed the nation. Editor Danton Remoto calls it “part philosophy, part memoir, and full-on cultural work—a book for the ages.”
Michael Giovan “Tatung” Sarthou III is a chef, author, and founder of the SIMPOL brand. His work in food media spans more than two decades, and his books have received multiple Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, including Best Celebrity Chef in the World. He is the founder and CEO of Vertikal Kreatives Inc. KitchiZen is his first work of philosophy.
As an offering for Filipino Food Month, Chef Tatung Sarthou’s KitchiZen: Slow Fire, Steady Heart in a World of Too Much is now available online and at bookstores nationwide.
