Cooking show host, author and lecturer Father Leo Patalinghug filled one of Little Rock’s largest Catholic churches during the fall mission at Our Lady of the Holy Souls Church Sept. 15-17.
The event, which featured two nights of talks and culminated with a Wednesday evening talk, cooking demonstration and dinner prepared by Father Patalinghug, played to a combined three-day audience of more than 1,000.
“There’s always something unique about every diocese,” he said. “There’s just so many people from different walks of life, even many non-Catholics that were there, too. And the reason is that people want to have fun and that’s kind of what I bring to this table, I just want to have fun. I really do.”
Father Patalinghug’s visit was arranged by pastor Father Erik Pohlmeier. The two have been friends for decades going back to their seminary days.
Father Patalinghug’s schedule outside of the mission talks was as packed as the pews at Holy Souls. He filmed episodes of his cooking show “Savoring Our Faith” at the Little Rock House Formation on the grounds of nearby Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, shows which will appear on EWTN at an as-yet unannounced later date.
He also took time to visit Holy Souls School classrooms and several local Catholic-owned restaurants, including Fonda Mexican Cuisine and Tequila Bar, Silvek’s European Bakery and Whole Hog Cafe to get a sampling of the local flavor.
It’s like this 32 to 35 weeks a year as Father Patalinghug crisscrosses the country; even his interview with Arkansas Catholic happened simultaneously with preparing pasta with vodka sauce for about 300 diners in advance of the sold-out-for-weeks final night’s dinner at Holy Souls.
“I just don’t like being boring,” he said over the chocka-chocka-chocka of twin butcher knives reducing a bale of parsley to uniform green ash. “I don’t like being bored.”
Born in the Phillippines and raised in Baltimore from the age of 4, Father Patalinghug’s cooking ministry is a testament to staying open to possibilities. He founded Grace Before Meals, an international apostolate to help strengthen families and relationship through God’s gift of a family meal. In secular terminology, Grace Before Meals is the umbrella company for his varied ministries including books (he’s up to three), personal appearances, talks and missions and social media. Almost all of which sprang, or at least grew, thanks to his cooking show.
“Elevating the accessible. That’s my culinary perspective,” he said. “Making things that are very common and turning it into something that people can say, ‘Hey, this is something worth celebrating, this is really fun, this is different, this is unique.’”
Father Patalinghug chortles at the suggestion that there was some media wizardry that helped bring all of this about. He said while he always liked to cook for others and has in fact received culinary training, the idea of a cooking show started out as a joke about a dozen years ago.
“A producer got wind of the idea and wanted to film the pilot. I wasn’t even taking it all that seriously,” he said. “When we filmed the pilot, people took it so seriously. We got people’s attention.
“So we got a website going, then it started to grow. I was speaking all over the country by that point. People were excited, which led me to produce the (Grace Before Meals) book and the book became pretty much an instant hit. That’s when the Food Network heard about this crazy little priest who was doing a lot of crazy little things like this and that’s when it really grew.”
If the whirlwind ride from cooking for friends to cooking for the camera was already fantastic, things were about to get surreal. In 2008, Father Patalinghug accepted a cooking challenge from former altar boy and Iron Chef Bobby Flay and beat the Food Network stalwart in a head-to-head fajitas challenge. Things haven’t slowed down since.
Through all of his adventures, however, his disarming style and approachable message remains firmly rooted in Catholic theology and an underlying theme of finding the miraculous in what would be otherwise thought mundane.
“My job is to let people know that God is there in their midst,” he said. “I have to find ways to get them to see that and food becomes a real great way to be a sacramental reminder, something that brings out the memory and the mentality of the sacred.
“That’s why I do what I do; to encourage families to take a sacred moment in the day to celebrate their communion with one another. You can see ties to the eucharistic theology. It’s all very present there and all very present in a family meal. It’s a communion of the domestic church.”
Father Patalinghug has already plotted a course for the future of his ministry. Within the next 12 to 24 months, he plans to launch The Table Foundation, supporting a variety of initiatives and programs to combat hunger, serving and elevating the poor and continuing to accentuate the importance of family life “one meal at a time.”
“We’re going to try to show the Catholic Church is very much part of the world,” he said of the new venture, his voice zinging like red pepper-infused olive oil. “It’s going to be huge and it’s going to be fun.”
