Filipino Food Guide: What to Eat, Where to Eat It and What It Costs

Prices below are for a carinderia or local eatery first, then a mid-range restaurant. Many restaurant dishes are sized for sharing between two or three.

Street barbecue sticks (pork, chicken, isaw intestines, chicken feet) cost PHP 15 to 40 each and are the backbone of every night market. Lechon is the one to plan around: eat it in Cebu at CnT, Rico’s or Zubuchon, or at the Carcar public market south of the city, where the lechon stalls and chicharon sellers share one roof.

The country eats differently island by island. Ilocos in the north is salty and bitter: bagnet, pinakbet with fermented fish bagoong, dinengdeng vegetable stews, empanadas with orange rice-flour crusts fried at Plaza Burgos in Vigan (PHP 60 to 90), and Vigan longganisa, garlicky and sour. Pampanga, an hour north of Manila around San Fernando, is the self-declared culinary capital: sisig was invented at Aling Lucing’s stall in Angeles, and the province gave the country tocino, buro (fermented rice) and the sweetest desserts. Bicol, in the southeast around Legazpi and Naga, is the only region that cooks hot: laing, Bicol express, pinangat and chilli ice cream, all built on coconut milk and the small sili chilli, plus pili nuts in everything sweet.

The Visayas are the pork and seafood islands. Cebu’s lechon is the country’s best, Bacolod grills chicken inasal, Iloilo makes La Paz batchoy (noodle soup with pork offal and crushed chicharon) and pancit Molo dumpling soup, Bohol around Tagbilaran grows the sweetest ube and makes calamay coconut caramel, and every coast serves kinilaw. Mindanao adds the Muslim south: Maranao palapa (scallion and ginger relish), chicken piyanggang blackened with burnt coconut, Tausug tiyula itum beef soup and satti skewers with rice cakes in Zamboanga, plus Davao’s durian and pomelo and General Santos’s tuna, the best sashimi-grade fish in the country at a fraction of Japanese prices. Food in Muslim Mindanao is halal by default (see below).

The cheapest and often best Filipino food is in a carinderia, a family eatery with a row of pots or trays behind glass; turo-turo means “point-point”, which is how you order. Rice is PHP 15 to 25 a cup, a viand (ulam) PHP 50 to 90, and a full lunch with soup runs PHP 100 to 150. Arrive between 11am and 1pm when everything is fresh and before the good dishes run out; the food sits warm, not hot, so a busy carinderia is a safer one. Market canteens, the inihaw (grill) stalls that open at dusk and the roadside “lutong bahay” (home-cooked) counters work the same way.

Sit-down restaurants divide into the Filipino chains found in every mall (Max’s for fried chicken, Gerry’s Grill and Mesa for sharing plates, Mang Inasal for inasal with unlimited rice, Chowking for Chinese-Filipino, Razon’s for halo-halo), where mains cost PHP 200 to 400, and the modern Filipino restaurants that have put Manila on the food map: Toyo Eatery in Makati (tasting menus around PHP 5,000 to 7,000), Hapag, Sarsa for Negrense food, Manam for classics with a twist, and Locavore. In between are the dampa seafood markets (below) and the kamayan or boodle fight restaurants that spread rice, grilled fish, pork, shrimp, mangoes and salted eggs on banana leaves down a long table to be eaten by hand, military-style; PHP 350 to 600 per person at places like Blackbeard’s Seafood Island in the malls, or any island resort that advertises one.

Jollibee is the national institution, with more branches than McDonald’s and a line out the door in every town. Order Chickenjoy (crisp fried chicken with gravy, PHP 100 to 120 with rice), Jolly Spaghetti (sweet sauce with hot dog slices, PHP 60 to 80), the Yumburger and a peach-mango pie; it is not refined, it is the taste of Filipino childhood and a reliable clean toilet.

Binondo in Manila’s Chinatown, the oldest in the world (1594), is the first food walk to do. Along Ongpin and Benavidez streets: fried chicken and kiampong rice at Sincerity, dumplings at Dong Bei, hopia (bean pastries) at Eng Bee Tin, noodle soup at the old panciterias and fresh lumpia at New Po-Heng in a 1920s apartment courtyard. Old Manila Walks’ Big Binondo Food Wok (about PHP 1,500 to 2,000 per person) covers a dozen stops in three hours. For a modern night, Poblacion in Makati has a restaurant for every cuisine between its bars, and Salcedo Saturday Market nearby (7am to 2pm) is the place to taste provincial specialities in one morning. In Quezon City, Maginhawa Street is the student food street of cheap cafes and sisig houses, and Quiapo’s Muslim quarter behind the Golden Mosque serves Maranao and Tausug food at Globo de Oro street stalls.

For seafood, go to a dampa: a wet market with restaurants attached, where you buy the fish, crabs or shrimp by weight from the stalls (prawns PHP 500 to 800 a kilo, crabs PHP 600 to 1,000), hand them to a restaurant and pay a paluto cooking fee of PHP 150 to 350 per dish. Seaside Dampa on Macapagal Boulevard in Pasay, near Mall of Asia, is the Manila original; Roxas City on Panay calls itself the seafood capital for a reason, and Dagupan is the bangus (milkfish) capital. In Cebu, Larsian sa Fuente near Fuente Osmeña is an open-air barbecue court where dozens of grills serve pork, chicken and chorizo sticks with puso hanging rice from late afternoon to late night, PHP 150 to 250 for a full plate, and Sugbo Mercado in IT Park (Thursday to Sunday evenings) is the street-food market for lechon belly and grilled squid. In Tagaytay, the Mahogany Market’s bulalo stalls serve the soup with a view of Taal; in Los Baños stop for buko pie (coconut custard pie, PHP 200 to 300 whole); in Lucban eat pancit habhab off a banana leaf with no utensils and Lucban longganisa; in Antipolo buy suman rice cakes and cashews. Puerto Princesa’s KaLui on Rizal Avenue and Kinabuchs (crocodile sisig and tamilok woodworm for the brave) are Palawan’s two famous tables, and Bacolod’s Manokan Country behind SM City is a block of inasal stalls that is worth the trip alone.

Filipinos drink coffee strong and sweet: 3-in-1 sachets everywhere, and in Batangas and Tagaytay the local kapeng barako, a smoky Liberica brewed black and served with brown sugar (PHP 60 to 120 a cup in cafes, PHP 20 at a market stall). The Cordillera around Baguio and Sagada grows arabica worth a specialty cafe stop. Cold drinks are buko (young coconut water drunk from the shell, PHP 30 to 60 at any roadside stand), fresh calamansi juice, sago’t gulaman (brown-sugar drink with tapioca and jelly, PHP 20 to 30) and the local sodas, Royal Tru-Orange and Sarsi root beer. Restaurants bring free “service water”, which is purified; the tap is not for drinking.

San Miguel Pale Pilsen has been brewed in Manila since 1890 and is the beer, PHP 55 to 70 in a shop and PHP 100 to 180 in a bar; Red Horse is its 6.9 per cent big brother and the national party fuel, and San Mig Light is what everyone orders in the heat. Craft beer has grown fast, with Engkanto, Crazy Carabao, Nipa Brew and Baguio Craft Brewery on tap in Manila, Cebu, Siargao and Boracay for PHP 180 to 300 a glass. The spirits are Tanduay rum (the world’s bestselling rum by volume, PHP 130 to 200 for 750 ml), Ginebra San Miguel gin, drunk neat from the round “bilog” bottle with a pulutan snack, Emperador brandy, and the premium bottles to take home, Don Papa rum and Destileria Limtuaco’s aged spirits. Lambanog is coconut-sap vodka from Quezon and Laguna, 40 to 45 per cent and dangerous when home-distilled: a run of methanol poisonings in 2019 killed dozens, so drink only sealed bottles from registered brands such as Lakan or Vuqo. Tuba (fresh palm toddy) and basi (Ilocos sugarcane wine) are worth a sip where you find them.

Prices are current as of 2026 at roughly PHP 57 to the dollar and include the 12 per cent VAT, which is built into menu prices. Most sit-down restaurants add a 10 per cent service charge; check the bill before adding more. Mall food courts (PHP 150 to 250 a meal) and the 24-hour convenience stores (7-Eleven, Ministop, with hot siopao and rice meals) fill the gaps. On the islands, prices run 20 to 50 per cent higher than on the mainland: a plate of rice and grilled fish on Boracay or in El Nido costs PHP 250 to 400, and a beer PHP 100 to 150.

Filipinos eat with a spoon and fork, spoon in the right hand doing the cutting and scooping and fork in the left pushing food onto it; knives rarely appear and chopsticks only in Chinese restaurants. Dishes are shared, each with its own sawsawan dipping sauce (vinegar with garlic and chilli, soy with calamansi, bagoong), which you mix to taste. Kamayan, eating with the hands, is for boodle fights and provincial feasts: use the right hand, press rice and meat together with your fingertips and push it into your mouth with the thumb. If someone says “kain tayo” (let’s eat) it is an invitation you should at least acknowledge, with a bite or a polite “busog pa po” (I’m still full). Merienda, the snack at mid-morning and again around 3pm, is a meal in its own right, and declining food repeatedly reads as cold.

Finish your rice (leaving it is wasteful), take leftovers home (“take-out” or “balot” is normal), and call the waiter with a raised hand or eye contact rather than snapping. To pay, ask for the “bill, please” or make a small writing gesture in the air. Tipping: if the bill has a 10 per cent service charge, nothing more is expected; if not, 5 to 10 per cent or rounding up is kind, PHP 20 to 50 for a carinderia is generous, and boat crews and guides who feed you on a tour appreciate PHP 100 to 200. Meals start late by Western standards only at parties; restaurants fill from noon and from 7pm, and many close by 10pm outside the bar districts.

Vegetarians have a harder time here than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Pork is in most things, and the vegetable dishes are usually finished with shrimp paste or fish sauce: pinakbet has bagoong, laing has dried shrimp, lumpiang gulay often has pork. Order in detail: “walang karne, walang bagoong, walang patis, walang hipon” (no meat, no shrimp paste, no fish sauce, no shrimp). The reliable dishes are ginataang gulay (vegetables in coconut milk, ask about shrimp), tortang talong (eggplant omelette), adobong kangkong (water spinach), ensaladang talong, pancit ordered plain, fresh lumpia, and rice with eggs. Manila has a real vegetarian scene in Poblacion, BGC and around UP Diliman, including Corner Tree Cafe in Makati and the Bodhi vegetarian counters in SM food courts, Siargao and El Nido are full of vegan cafes, and every Chinese restaurant in Binondo has a tofu and vegetable page. Vegans should carry snacks for provincial bus days.

Halal food is the norm across Muslim Mindanao (Zamboanga, Cotabato, Lanao, the Sulu islands) and easy to find in Davao, which has a halal certification programme and a Muslim quarter, and in Manila’s Quiapo Muslim town around the Golden Mosque, where Maranao and Tausug restaurants serve beef rendang, satti and chicken piyanggang. Elsewhere, several Jollibee, Chowking and Mang Inasal branches carry halal certification (ask or look for the sign), Indian and Middle Eastern restaurants in Makati and BGC are halal, and seafood is the fallback. Gluten-free eaters do well: rice is the staple, and soy sauce is the main hidden wheat.

Tap water is not safe anywhere; drink bottled, refilled or the purified “service water” restaurants serve, and brush your teeth with it on the islands. Commercial ice in cities and tourist towns comes from purified water plants and is fine; crushed ice from a roadside sari-sari store is the one to skip. Street food cooked in front of you and eaten hot (barbecue, kwek-kwek, fish balls, balut, turon) is low risk; the risks are buffets and carinderia trays that have sat for hours, raw kinilaw from a stall without a cold chain, and shellfish during a red tide, which the Bureau of Fisheries announces by province (Bataan, Bicol and parts of the Visayas most often) and which bans mussels and oysters locally for weeks. Never eat pufferfish (butete); it kills a few people a year here. Carry oral rehydration salts and loperamide from any Mercury Drug or Watsons; pharmacies are on every mall floor.

Cooking classes are easier to find than they were. In Manila, half-day market-to-table classes in Makati and Quezon City cost PHP 2,500 to 4,500 and usually cover adobo, sinigang and lumpia; Cebu, Bohol and El Nido resorts run shorter kitchen sessions for PHP 1,500 to 3,000, and the Binondo and Poblacion food walks are the better value for understanding the cuisine. Book through your hotel or the usual tour platforms, and ask for a class that starts with a wet-market visit; learning to pick a milkfish and a bundle of kangkong is half the lesson.

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