Filipino food has spent years being described as the next big thing abroad, and it deserves the attention. It is a cuisine of sour, salty and sweet, of vinegar and calamansi, of pork done fifty ways, of rice at every meal and of eating together. It has Malay roots, Chinese and Spanish layers, American habits and strong regional personalities. And the best of it is rarely found in hotel restaurants.
Here is what to eat, and how.
The flavours
If French cooking builds on butter and Thai on balance, Filipino cooking builds on asim, sourness. Vinegar, calamansi (a small, fragrant citrus), tamarind, green mango and batuan fruit all play a role. Add patis (fish sauce), bagoong (fermented shrimp or fish paste), garlic, ginger and coconut, and you have the base of most dishes. Food tends to be savoury rather than chilli-hot, with heat added at the table, except in Bicol, where coconut and chilli rule.
The dishes to know
- Adobo: the unofficial national dish. Meat (usually chicken or pork) braised in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns. Every family has its own version, and every family thinks theirs is right.
- Sinigang: a sour soup, usually tamarind-based, with pork, prawns or fish and vegetables. The best comfort food in the country.
- Kare-kare: oxtail and vegetables in a peanut sauce, served with bagoong on the side. The bagoong is not optional.
- Lechon: whole roast pig. Cebu's version is seasoned inside with lemongrass and spices and needs no sauce; in Luzon it often comes with a liver-based sauce. Ask a Cebuano and a Manileño which is better and stand back.
- Sisig: chopped pork (traditionally parts of the head), grilled and served sizzling with onions, chilli and calamansi. Originally from Pampanga, now everywhere, often with a raw egg on top.
- Kinilaw: raw fish cured in vinegar or calamansi with ginger, onion and chilli. The Philippine cousin of ceviche, and best by the sea.
- Chicken inasal: grilled chicken marinated in calamansi, lemongrass and annatto, the pride of Bacolod. Eat it with garlic rice and chicken oil.
- Bicol Express: pork in coconut milk with plenty of chilli. Laing, taro leaves in coconut, is its vegetable sibling.
- Pancit: noodles, in dozens of regional versions. Served at birthdays for long life.
- Lumpia: spring rolls, fried (lumpiang shanghai) or fresh.
- La Paz batchoy: a rich noodle soup from Iloilo with pork, liver and crackling.
Breakfast is serious
The Filipino breakfast plate is a silog: garlic fried rice (sinangag) and a fried egg (itlog), plus a protein. Tapsilog comes with tapa (cured beef), longsilog with longganisa (sweet or garlicky sausage, different in every province), tocilog with sweet cured pork. Add a coffee and you are set until lunch. Many hotels serve them; small local places do them better.
Snacks and merienda
Filipinos eat between meals, and merienda, the afternoon snack, is a proper ritual. Look for:
- Kakanin: rice cakes such as bibingka, puto, suman and biko, often made with coconut.
- Turon: banana and jackfruit in a crisp spring-roll wrapper with caramelised sugar.
- Banana cue: fried bananas coated in brown sugar on a skewer.
- Taho: silken tofu with syrup and sago pearls, sold by morning vendors calling out on the street.
- Street barbecue: pork skewers and isaw (grilled intestines), with a choice of spiced vinegars.
Desserts
Halo-halo is the national dessert and a reason to visit in April: shaved ice, evaporated milk, sweet beans, jellies, fruit, leche flan and ube (purple yam), mixed before eating. Ube itself appears everywhere, as jam, ice cream and cake. Leche flan is denser and richer than its Spanish ancestor. In Dumaguete, try silvanas, frozen cashew-meringue cookies layered with buttercream.
Balut, briefly
Balut is a fertilised duck egg, boiled and eaten from the shell with salt or vinegar. It is a street snack, often sold in the evening. You do not have to try it. If you do, you will have earned a story.
How to eat like a local
- Eat with a spoon and fork. The spoon does the work; the fork pushes food onto it. Knives are rare.
- Kamayan means eating with your hands. A boodle fight is a communal feast served on banana leaves, eaten with hands, standing up.
- Rice comes with everything, including noodles.
- Look for the dipping sauces on the table: soy, vinegar, calamansi, chilli. Mix your own sawsawan.
- Carinderias and turo-turo ("point-point") canteens display the day's dishes in pots. Point at what you want. It is one of the best ways to eat cheaply and well.
Regional food worth travelling for
- Pampanga: often called the culinary capital of the country. Sisig, tocino and festive dishes.
- Cebu: lechon, puso (rice cooked in woven palm leaves) and dried mangoes.
- Iloilo and Bacolod: batchoy, inasal and some of the country's best pastries.
- Bicol: coconut milk and chilli in everything.
- Ilocos: empanada with longganisa, bagnet (crisp-fried pork belly) and pinakbet.
- Siargao and the coasts: kinilaw made with that morning's catch.
Practical notes
Street food is generally safe if it is cooked fresh and hot in front of you. Pick busy stalls, avoid ice of uncertain origin in very small places, and take it slowly with the bagoong in your first few days. Vegetarians will find it harder than in some Asian countries, since many vegetable dishes are cooked with pork or shrimp paste, but cities and tourist areas have plenty of options; ask for "walang karne" (no meat) and be specific about fish sauce and shrimp paste.
We do not name restaurants in our guides. When you travel with us, we will point you to the places our own team eats, in every island you visit.
