Food in the Philippines

I came to the Philippines with high expectations about the food. It was all because of Anthony Bourdain's episode, which I religiously watched as part of my pre-departure research. He tried to redeem the Filipino cuisine and show the rest of the world that it's got great food, despite not being known internationally for having great food. Well, if you're Anthony Bourdain, it's probably easy to find the best sisig or lechon kawali in the country, but if you're Anne and Monica on a budget and tight schedule, it may not go so easy.

We found a few dishes that we enjoyed, but overall, Filipino food was underwhelming. With the caveat that we didn't eat any home-cooked meals, our judgement is based solely on eating out at restaurants. I apologize in advance if my statement offends any of my Filipino friends back home. I myself would get very offended if someone told me Romanian food sucked. But I also know that in my country, home-cooked dishes often taste way better than their restaurant counterparts. So, I'm totally willing to give Filipino cuisine another try and maybe then I'll feel just as elated as Anthony Bourdain did.

Briefly said, Filipinos eat a lot of fried pork. Like HELLA. They even eat it for breakfast with sausages and rice. I mean, the entire Filipino breakfast consists of: a bowl of plain boiled white rice, a fried sausage or two and a fried egg. No wonder that a lot of people are a bit overweight. Fish and vegetables are not as prevalent in their diet as I'd have expected from a tropical insular country.


 Fresh fish for sale at the big produce market in Baguio.

Above: chicken inasal. Barbeque chicken, marinated in native herbs and spices and grilled on a stick. The word "inasal" comes from the Spanish word "asar." The locals had a hard time pronouncing the "r", so in time the word changed to "asal" > "inasal"

Above: lechon kawali. Cubes of pork meat with crunchy skin on top of soft and tender meat with a lot of fat. This was served with bagoong (salted shrimp paste) and talangka rice (rice topped with crab fat.)

Similar to its neighboring countries, the Philippines is big on sugarcane juice. You can find it almost everywhere, in malls and markets. Anne got me into trying it first in Thailand and I've been hooked on it ever since. Every tine I see a stand on the street that sells sugarcane juice, I always get me some. Sugar cane is extremely good for your health:  it hydrates the body quicky when exposed to prolonged heat and physical activity. It has low glycemic index and does not contain simple sugars, so it can be consumed by people with diabetes. It detoxifies the body and lowers cholesterol. It cures sore throat and helps prevent colds. It helps fight breast and prostate cancer due to its alkaline nature. It strengthens the heart, kindneys, lover, brain and the overall immune system.

The food we ate in the north of the country (north Luzon area) was not very tasty, I think mostly because the guesthouses and restaurants catering to tourists either wanted to maximize their profits by putting bad quality ingredients and charging a lot or because they just didn't know how to cook better. Above: chicken adobo, somewhat the national dish in the Philippines. Here's some background info on what adobo is and where it comes from, via Wikipedia:

Adobo (marinade in Spanish) refers to the immersion of raw meat in a  sauce made of paprika, oregano, salt, garlic, and vinegar to preserve and enhance its flavor. In antiquity, meat and fish were difficult to conserve. Cold facilitated the conservation of food, but the weather often did not provide low temperatures ideal for preservation, so it was necessary to apply other techniques, such as adobo. Animals were usually slaughtered in the coldest months of winter, but surplus meat had to be preserved in the warmer months. This was facilitated through the use of adobos (marinades) along with paprika (a substance with antibacterial properties). Adobo was employed initially as a method of food preservation, but in time, with the advent of refrigeration methods, it came to be used primarily as a method of flavoring foods before cooking.

However, the Filipino adobo is a completely different thing: "In Filipino cuisine, adobo refers to a common cooking process indigenous to the Philippines. It should not be confused with the Spanish and Latin American adobo, as they have different origins and refer to different dishes despite sharing the same name. When the Spanish invaded the Philippines in the late 16th century, they encountered a cooking process that involved stewing with vinegar. The Spanish referred to this method as adobo due to its superficial similarity to the Spanish adobo. Nevertheless, the Filipino adobo is an entirely separate method of preparing food and is distinct from the Spanish marinade."

Above: glass noodle salad with seafood. This is actually more of a Thai dish, which I ate at a restaurant on Alona beach. Nevertheless, I'm showing it here because I really liked it. It had the perfect ratio of spiciness and crunchiness. The salad contained cold glass noodles, green onion, squid, shrimp, bell pepper, roasted peanuts, shallots and other veggies. It was refreshing and absolutely delicious.

Another Philippines favorite: green mango shake. Anne and I loved it so much, that we got one every day. It's a shake made of green, unripe mangoes, therefore it's tart and refreshing. Shakes here tend to be too sweet, because they always add a lot of sugar. You always have to tell the waiter to add less sugar or no sugar at all, depending on what type of fruit you're getting. But with green mango shake, they can add sugar as they please and it's still tart and perfect. Quite refreshing on a hot day on the beach.

Healthy dinner with Jake: chicken adobo, chop-suey stir-fried vegetables and shredded green mango salad.


In the photo above is my favorite Filipino dish and as of now one of my all-time favorite dishes: sinigang. Sinigang is a clear-broth soup with an intense sour flavor. The sourness comes from tamarind (sampalok). The soup can be made with either fish, shrimp, pork or chicken. I had it twice, once with milkfish and another time with shrimp. It's seriously delicious. In terms of sour soups, I rank it high up there with the likes of Tom Yum (Thai) and Ciorba de vacuta (Romania). The three best sour soups of the world.

Cheap breakfast at a joint where local people eat. Basically, there's a lot of locals on the beach that cater to tourists: drive tour boats, offer massages, etc. They all need to eat, but can't afford to eat at the overpriced tourist restaurants. So they have this little shack on the beach that sells food just for them at a cheap price. For breakfast we had one fried fish, boiled rice and sauteed string beans. The fish turned out to be mackerel, my favorite fish in the world, so that morning I was one happy camper. For all this, a coffee and a big bottle of water I paid $2.


 Above: a sea urchin, ready to be eaten. You only eat the teeny tiny yellow roe at the bottom.

Above: smoked sardines for sale at the local market in Baguio. I didn't try them, as we were about to get on a 6h bus, but I was very tempted.

Fresh fish for sale at the local market in Baguio. 115 pesos per kg means around 3 USD/kg. To compare, fish at restaurants on the beach was sold at 200 pesos per 100 grams. Tourist prices are astronomical compared to what food actually costs in local markets. I'd be really happy to pay more and know that the money goes into the pockets of local people, but sadly the money ends up in the full pockets of a rich resort owner. If only the locals had the business know-how to open up their own tourist joints and cash in the profit themselves.

 1 USD for one coconut.

Fresh tropical fruit shakes are the best thing about Southeast asian countries.

I may have found the most disgusting dish ever: pork liver and intestines blended with mayonaise. Triple ew!

We finished our Philippines extravaganza with ice cream from Bohol Bee Farm. The cone was made of deep-fried rice flour, it was crispy and tasted like a tortilla chip. They even had durian flavor, but we didn't try that one.

Why Are Jeepneys So Cool?

Jeepneys are quite possibly my favorite thing about the Philippines. They're colorful, creative, useful, and full of life. Originally, they were used in WWII as US military jeeps, but now they are the most popular means of public transportation in the Philippines.



The American troops left and the jeeps remained. Filipinos stripped them down, decorated and customized them--they added metal roofs for sun and rain protection and stretched out the cabin to transport more people.



Eventually, the Philippine government acknowledged the Jeepney's use in society and created regulations for them, such as specialized licenses, regular routes and reasonably fixed fares. [Wikipedia]

Some are original and others are modern (retaining the same old style), manufactured by independently owned Philippine factories.

Many have chrome hood ornaments and themes. For example, Snow White...



 ... Superman



... ships



 ... trains



... and just plain colorful.

 



Cali in da house!



If the Jeepney is full, passengers (only males) will sometimes cling outside or sit on the roof instead (referred to colloquially as sabit in Tagalog and kabit or kapyot in Cebuano; both meaning 'to hang on with your fingertips'). This practice is dangerous and illegal. [Wikipedia]  <----Whoops. I didn't know this before I road on the top of three of them. It didn't seem dangerous to me...

Here are a few photos I took while sitting on top of Jeepneys:

A fellow roof-rider.

Jeepneys represent the Filipino way of life--in their style, individuality, colors, themes, passengers, drivers, and the roads they drive on. They're friendly, charismatic, and most of all, fun!

North Luzon

Since Anne did such a great job at describing our week in the north of Philippines in her blog post, and to avoid being repetitive, I will resume this post to a few of my favorite photos and some captions. In one week in the north of Luzon we went to the following places: Banaue, Batad, Sagada, Baguio and Vigan, traveling either by jeepney, by bus or hiking.


The tricycle is the equivalent of a taxi in small villages in the north of Philippines. All the locals use it and it's pretty cheap. It was however quite hard for both of us to fit inside this thing at once, because we're much taller and bigger than most of the locals here.


Our tricycle driver and us on the way to the vista point in Banaue. From there we hiked for about 2 hours through rice terraces and jungle forest.


A breakfast with a view. This is what we saw in the morning from our breakfast nook at the guesthouse we stayed at in Banaue.

There was a wedding in town and all the villagers were invited. Apparently, a wedding like this costs about $1,500 and about 10 pigs are slaughtered to prepare enough food for all the guests.

Villagers line up to get a plate of food from the wedding party. As soon as they finished eating, they all left and the place suddenly became empty. The wedding took place on the sports court of the local school and at the end of the festivities the ground was covered up in red betel nut spit and food leftovers. The smell was quite gnarly.

Anne and I were warmly invited to join the festivities. We were asked to go dance, were offered rice wine (which doesn't taste very good, btw.) and were asked to join the line to get food. Which we did. We didn't really like the food (there was a lot of bad smelling pork meat, fat and pieces of pork stomach and intestines which looked like they hadn't been properly washed before being cooked), but we enjoyed being part of this experience. People were being very warm and welcoming towards us. After leaving Manila, this was our first taste of the hospitality and warmheartedness of Filipino people.

 An old Ifugao woman from a village in the mountains wearing her traditional attire. She lets tourists take photos of her in exchange for some small change. Next to her is a jar in which she spits all the momma she chews up all day long.

During our hike through the rice terraces around Banaue.

Anne and our lovely guide during our hike through rice terraces.

Across the suspended bridge that took us back from the hike into Banaue village.

The next day in the morning we proceeded to Batad, as follows: from Banaue to Batad we took a jeepney for and hour and a half over a windy unpaved mountain road. The roads are quite scary, but the drivers are amazing, so nothing to worry there. Maybe a little prayer and a cross sign inside your mouth with your tongue, if you're the religious type. After 1.5h on this dusty unpaved road we get to the "saddle," which is exactly what it sounds like: the saddle of a mountain. Jeepneys can't go on from here, so it's all on foot, all downhill on a trail for about an hour until you reach the village of Batad. Easy on the way down, not so easy on the way back up. And remember, this trail is the only way in. No cars ever get to this village.

The guy walking behind Anne asked us many times to be our guide to the waterfall. We kept saying no to him. Anne asked me to describe here my reaction to the guy, which she found hilarious. Here it is: so imagine an 18 year old boy with a really long and thin rat-tail, wearing a machete on his back, who could barely speak any English at all, and was unable to understand anything we were saying. On top of that, he was chewing betel nut, so his mouth, teeth and lips were covered in red saliva. Every time he spoke, you could see his teeth drenched in red saliva. It make him look like a blood-thirsty head-hunter, who was going to take us to a dark corner of the forest, kill us with his machete and suck our blood. How can you look like this and expect tourists to hire you as their guide? 

Batad is one of those perfect places that you will never forget. It's the perfect village for meditation, running away from civilization, relaxing and escaping. It really is. It is so quiet, so pristine and pure, that I can't think of any other place I've been to that has the same qualities. Even the nicest beaches in Thailand get the loud noise of motorized boats all day long. Batad sits at the bottom of an amphitheater made up of 2,000 year old terraces. Ya, the Inca terraces are awesome, but the Filipino ones are way more impressive. Plus, they've been continuously used, every year, for the last two thousand years. To make it even better, just around the corner, on the other side of the mountain in the background, there is a huge waterfall with a giant basin to swim in. Batad is hard to get to, but really worth the effort if you make it to these parts of the world.

This is one of the last photos I took with my old camera. I had a little accident while hiking, I fell down and broke the camera. For the next few days I did not take any photos and later I was lucky enough to find a replacement camera in a mall in Baguio.

The traditional Ifugao hut we slept in during our stay in Baguio - and also the first photo with my new replacement camera.


In Vigan, a picturesque village in the northern tip of Lizon, which is famous for its colonial Spanish architecture. The village was not damaged during WW2, so fortunately today you can see how many other villages in the Philippines looked like. I personally like the old Spanish architecture style much better than the new Filipino constructions.


We couldn't resist the temptation to get a ride in a calesa (a horse-drawn carriage).

Anne found some cool old photos in an antique store.

Then we went to visit an old church-bell tower.

And we had lunch at the Hidden Garden.

After lunch we started walking the 2km walk to the beach, but luckily a guy in a tricycle stopped and gave us a ride there.

The beach in Vigan is nothing to write home about. It's very windy, the surf is high and you can't really swim. It reminded me of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Here, this type of beach is used only by fishermen, you never see anyone sunbathing or any tourists. But in the Philippines there's no shortage of good beaches, so they can easily ignore the rougher ones.

Walking around Vigan, I snapped this photo in Sepia mode and then realized how old-timey it actually looks.

The tricycles are all individualized, with custom paint jobs, stickers and all sorts of adornments.

Sunset on the streets of Vigan.