A Taste of Home, Memory, and Belonging, As Told at This Vogue Dinner

From Nakali to the Filipino dinner table, the cast of Forgotten Island and Vogue Philippines gather for an evening shaped by the film’s ideas of home, heritage, and memories.

In Forgotten Island, home is something worth finding, and memory is something worth holding on to. For an evening, the Taft Ballroom at Conrad Manila brought the film’s cast and creative team together with Vogue Philippines around another distinctly Filipino idea of home: the dinner table.

The film’s lead actors, H.E.R and Liza Soberano, found their own connections to the story in the ideas of memory and belonging. For Wilson, one of the memories from making the film that she expects to carry with her was recording with Soberano for the first time. “We just had so much fun, and I realized that day how similar our characters actually were. It was so organic,” Wilson recalls.

For Soberano, living away from the Philippines gave her a renewed curiosity about Filipino culture. The 28-year-old actress says she continues to crave the feeling of coming home to a Filipino household. She reflects, “One thing that I would never want to forget is what it feels like to come home to a Filipino household. It’s a different sense of relief and safety.” In that way, her experience mirrors her character Raissa’s journey, not just as a story about someone leaving, but about discovering what remains with you when you do.

The idea continued onto the table. SM Hotels and Conventions Corp. (SMHCC), through Conrad Manila, prepared a five-course Filipino-themed dinner that reinterpreted familiar flavors: lumpia ubod purse with crab and pickled green papaya; monggo soup with chilli leaves and chicharon; eggplant torta roll with pork sisig; baka at laing with braised short rib and coconut taro leaves; and a reimagined Turon de Saba with banana cake, salted banana mousse, and vanilla ice cream.

The evening also brought together Forgotten Island writer-directors Januel Mercado and Joel Crawford, who arrived in Manila with their families, producer Mark Swift, DreamWorks writer and filmmaker Jerry Schmitz, composer Nathan Matthew David, and members of the fashion and creative community. SMHCC executives Melissa Carlos, vice president for commercial, Nian Rigor, assistant vice president for public relations, Nils Rothbarth, general manager of Lanson Place Mall of Asia, and Sven Toune, general Manager of Taal Vista Hotel, were also in attendance, engaging with the filmmakers and cast throughout the evening.

While Conrad Manila hosted this collective homecoming, the hotel stands as just one of SMHCC’s 10 leasable, hospitality-driven destinations under SM Prime Holdings Inc. From staycation hotspots like the Taal Vista Hotel or the Radisson Blu Hotel in Cebu to large-scale event venues such as its SMX Convention Centers around the country, the company offers platforms for emerging and returning Filipino creatives to share their artistry across its combined 42,000 square meters of leasable convention spaces.

For Vogue Philippines editor-in-chief Trickie Lopa, the evening was an opportunity to celebrate Filipino stories, mythology, and the people who bring them to a wider audience. “At Vogue Philippines, we believe that our culture does not have to be less Filipino to speak to the world,” she says. “It is the things that are deeply rooted in who we are that travel the furthest.”

For more information, visit SM Hotels’ official website.