Let me start with a confession.
When I tell people I make Filipino food, I get one of two reactions. The first is genuine excitement — usually from someone who's been to the Philippines, grown up eating it, or stumbled across it recently and can't stop thinking about it. The second is a polite, slightly uncertain smile and the question: "What's Filipino food like, then?"
And my answer is always the same: you already know. You just haven't had it introduced to you properly yet.
I've spent years travelling, eating, and drawing the lines between Filipino food and the cuisines the world already loves. Not in a food-academic way — in a sat-at-a-restaurant-in-Madrid, stood-at-a-market-in-Normandy, ordering-noodles-on-a-Tuesday kind of way. And every time, I come back thinking the same thing: Filipino food has been hiding in plain sight. It's time to introduce you.
Start Here: The Dish That Says Everything
If you want to understand Filipino food, start with Adobo.
Not because it's the most complex dish — it isn't. But because its story tells you everything about how Filipino cuisine works: resourceful, layered with history, and entirely its own thing despite what anyone else might claim.
Here's a fact that surprises people: Spain, Mexico, and the Philippines all have a dish called Adobo. Spanish Adobo is a marinade for preserving meat — vinegar, garlic, herbs. Mexican Adobo is a bold, chilli-based sauce. Filipino Adobo is something else entirely: chicken or pork simmered low and slow in vinegar, garlic, soy sauce, bay leaves, and black pepper until the meat is impossibly tender and the sauce clings to everything like a promise.
The Spanish gave Filipino Adobo its name when they colonised the Philippines. But here's the part that matters: the cooking method — that slow braise in vinegar — already existed before they arrived. Filipinos were preserving meat in acid long before colonisation. The Spanish just gave it a word they recognised.
Filipino food has always been its own thing. It just sometimes gets told otherwise.
The good news? You don't need to spend hours at the stove to experience it. A jar of our adobo sauce into your pan, a little patience, and you're there — that sticky, deeply savoury result that makes people ask what on earth you put in it.
The Noodles You've Already Slurped
I want to be honest with you: I first truly understood Pancit Canton's place in the world sitting in a Chinese restaurant, twirling egg noodles in a savoury, garlicky sauce, thinking — this is it. This is the same feeling. Different flag on the dish, same soul underneath.
Chinese traders brought noodle-making traditions to the Philippines centuries ago, and Filipinos did what Filipinos always do: they made it their own. Pancit Canton uses egg noodles, soy sauce, garlic, cabbage, carrots, and whatever protein is to hand. The flavour profile is deeply recognisable — savoury, slightly caramelised from the wok, comforting in the way only a great noodle dish can be. If you've ever ordered chow mein and felt that deep, satisfied warmth, you already know half the story.
But Pancit Canton carries something extra. In the Philippines, it's celebratory food — eaten on birthdays because long noodles symbolise a long life. There's intention in every tangle. It isn't just dinner. It's a wish.
Try it at home and finish with a drizzle of our garlic chilli oil just before serving. It adds a warm, garlicky heat that takes the whole dish up a level — and honestly, once you've done it, you'll put it on everything.
The Whole Roasted Pig: A Shared Obsession
I ate Cochinillo in Madrid — properly, in a restaurant where they carved it tableside with the edge of a plate to prove how tender the skin was. It shattered. The room actually went quiet for a second. And my first thought, hand on heart, was: this is what Lechon feels like.
In the Philippines, Lechon is a whole pig roasted slowly over charcoal for hours until the skin is crackled, mahogany-brown, and so impossibly crisp it shatters at the touch. The meat underneath? Pull-apart tender, deeply smoky, rich in a way that makes you close your eyes for a second. In Spain, Cochinillo achieves the same thing through the oven rather than the fire — different technique, same primal satisfaction.
What strikes me about both dishes isn't the differences — it's the shared obsession. Across cultures, across continents, humans have always understood that a whole roasted pig means something. It means gathering. It means generosity. It means someone cared enough to spend all day tending the fire.
In the Philippines, Lechon isn't served at a quiet Tuesday dinner. It's served at fiestas, weddings, and reunions where the whole family travels to be together. It's the dish that says: you matter enough for this.
And what do you serve alongside it? A proper spiced vinegar dipping sauce. Mix a little of our garlic chilli oil with good cane vinegar and a pinch of black pepper — sharp, garlicky, with just enough heat. It cuts through the richness of the pork beautifully. That balance of fat and acid is one of the great combinations in Filipino food, and once you taste it, you'll understand exactly why.
The Universal Truth About Crispy Pork
Here's a question: name a country that doesn't have a version of slow-cooked, crispy-skinned pork on the bone.
Go on. I'll wait.
I've had Schweinshaxe in Germany — proper Schweinshaxe, the kind that arrives at the table looking almost intimidatingly large, skin blistered and crackling, served on a bed of sauerkraut. And I've sat in the Czech Republic with a Pečené Vepřové Koleno in front of me, slow-roasted pork knee with mustard and caraway, the meat falling away from the bone before I'd even picked up a fork. Both times, the same thought: we do this too. We just call it Crispy Pata — and we deep-fry ours until the skin is so shatteringly crisp it practically sings when you tap it.
Three countries. Three techniques. One universal truth: humans across cultures have always known that the best things take time, patience, and a very hot pan.
And just like the Lechon, Crispy Pata is best met with a dipping sauce. Same move: our garlic chilli oil stirred through vinegar, sharp and alive, making every bite of that crispy, unctuous pork taste even better than the last.
Humble Ingredients. Extraordinary Results.
This one is for the adventurous eaters — and the ones who think they aren't.
I visited Caen in Normandy and tried Tripes à la Mode de Caen — slow-cooked tripe with vegetables, cider, and herbs, served in a deep earthenware pot that had clearly been in the oven for most of the day. It was rich, deeply savoury, and utterly comforting. And it tasted like a dish that knew exactly what it was doing.
Filipino Callos does the same thing from a different direction — tripe, chorizo, chickpeas, and bell peppers in a rich tomato sauce. Both dishes transform the most humble, overlooked ingredient in the kitchen into something extraordinary. Both are the kind of food that tastes better the next day, and the day after that.
That's a deeply Filipino philosophy. Nothing wasted. Everything elevated. And if you want to bring a little extra depth to your Callos — or any slow-cooked stew — stir through a little of our garlic chilli oil right at the end. It blooms into the sauce and adds that final layer that makes the whole pot taste like it's been cooking for twice as long.
You don't need to be a chef. You just need the right jar.
So, Now We've Been Properly Introduced
Filipino food isn't exotic. It isn't niche. It isn't something you need a culinary passport to understand — though if eating your way around the world helps, I thoroughly recommend it.
It's the food that's been hiding in plain sight — in your favourite noodle dish, in your love of slow-roasted pork, in every meal built on bold seasoning and the kind of cooking that makes people linger at the table long after they've finished eating.
The only difference is that until now, you might not have known its name.
Now you do. And I hope that's just the beginning.
This is me stuffing my face with some delicious food. Happy eating!
— Roni
Explore RoniB's Kitchen Filipino sauces and condiments at ronibkitchen.co.uk