The Philippines city of Iloilo sits on the southeastern edge of Panay Island, sandwiched between the more popular Boracay and Guimaras islands. Though it might be overlooked for other versions of paradise, foodie travelers should add this UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy to their bucket lists, ASAP. Writer Sarah Gillespie returns to her mom’s hometown to tell us what to eat and where.
“They put eggs and cheese on everything,” I groan, rolling my eyes so hard that green sparks flare at the edge of my vision. I have this conversation with my family every time I return to my mother’s hometown of Iloilo, after spending time elsewhere in the Philippines.
It’s usually after I’ve ripped open a bag filled with bingka, flame-baked rice cakes sold at roadside stalls throughout the city, especially at Christmas. I flake away the black, brittle banana-leaf wrapper and pull it apart in a puff of sugary steam, exposing strings of milk-white, young coconut flesh.
You’ll find a version of bingka (known nationally as bibingka) in other cities, but the Ilonggo ones are special: Tiny, dense, with half the ingredients yet double the flavor, and thankfully no egg and no cheese. When it comes to food, Ilonggos are essentialists, minimalists; some might call us snobs, and most of us would happily agree.
And now, we’re justified. In 2023, Iloilo was named as the Philippines’ first (and only) UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. The designation recognizes the unique vision of the Ilonggo people—a distinct ethnolinguistic group with their own language, Hiligaynon—but also the influence of Spanish colonists and Chinese settlers.
Like most Philippine cities, it’s usually left off traveler itineraries, but a trip here is a chance to know the Philippines beyond the beaches—and a chance to know Iloilo through food.
In the 19th century, Iloilo, once a modest riverside town, became one of the Philippines’ wealthiest cities when Spanish colonists developed it into a shipping port for exporting sugar grown on nearby Negros Island. Though the industry declined in the 1900s, the past lives on in Iloilo’s colonial-era mansions—the largest number of any city in the Philippines—and Ilonggos’ reputation for sweetness, both in character and cuisine.
Begin your Iloilo trip at the Avanceña-Camiña Balay Nga Bato, an 1865 ancestral home with swirling narra-wood transoms and Capiz oyster shell windows. Order their signature tsokolate de batirol, a silken chocolate drink prepared with a high-sided metal jug and wood whisk. It uses tangy, fruit-forward (more aromatic and less bitter) cacao from Guimaras, an island that’s just 30 minutes from Iloilo by boat and well worth a day trip if you have time.
Ilonggo adobo is red, drenched in annatto oil—a common ingredient in these parts. I’ve yet to find a better red adobo than the one my Tita Janet makes: A flavor punch of fatty pork cubes, lemongrass, coconut wine vinegar, and a faint tingle of bird’s-eye chilies.
From there, catch a tricycle to Molo Plaza, Iloilo’s most attractive Spanish-era square, lorded over by the neo-gothic Molo Church. The church’s coral bricks are fused by an egg-white mortar, as were many buildings during that time. Women turned the leftover egg whites into biscuits; three of those women, the Jason sisters, founded Panaderia de Molo in the late 1800s, now managed by their descendants. Here, visitors stuff whole crates with biscochos (twice-baked breads coated with butter and sugar), galletas (paper-thin, subtly sweet biscuits) and barquillos (cigar-shaped rolled wafers).
Among the sweets, you’ll see a sign advertising Pancit Molo: Pork dumpling soup. Chinese merchants traded with Ilonggos as early as the 10th century and many settled in the city; post-colonization, the Spanish forcibly relocated them to Molo to curb their growing influence through monitoring and heavy tariffs. Despite this, Iloilo’s Chinese community had—and continues to have—a huge impact on Ilonggo cuisine.
Pancit Molo is wonton soup’s loud little sister: Chicken bone broth, garlic, and fat dumplings in a thick noodle wrapper. You’ll find it all over Molo, though Kap Ising’s restaurant is one of the most highly regarded.
Perhaps the queen of all Chinese-Ilonggo dishes, though, is La Paz Batchoy. It is the filthiest, funkiest noodle soup I have ever tasted, using every shred of umami in the Filipino canon: Pork belly, liver, intestines, marrow and crackling; ginamos (shrimp paste), deep-fried garlic and fish sauce.
It’s named for La Paz Public Market, where it was created in the early 1900s; exactly which shop invented it is a matter of debate. The top three candidates are Deco’s, Netong’s and Ted’s and regardless of who’s right, I can attest that all three are excellent.
Of course, there are many, many other Ilonggo dishes—too many to name here—with origins that are either Indigenous or shrouded in mystery. Social media shock jocks will find plenty of material for clicks, such as biga-biga (marinated pork rectum) and the euphemistically named Soup Number 5, made from bull’s testes and penis, and believed to be an aphrodisiac.
The less adventurous still have a broad menu, from the sour stew known as KBL (an acronym of the Hiligaynon words for pigeon peas, pork and jackfruit) to the local adobo. The Philippines’ national dish is color-coded according to region, from the clear-vinegar ‘white’ adobo of Mindanao, the Philippines’ second-largest island, to the turmeric yellow adobo of Batangas city. Ilonggo adobo is red, drenched in annatto oil—a common ingredient in these parts. I’ve yet to find a better red adobo than the one my Tita Janet makes: A flavor punch of fatty pork cubes, lemongrass, coconut wine vinegar, and a faint tingle of bird’s-eye chilies.
As with any coastal city, seafood here is king; the typical Ilonggo style is to season only with salt, preserving the essence of native species.
Tita Janet runs a karinderya (small, affordable canteen), Bon Bon Eatery, outside the family home in Mandurriao, one of Iloilo’s seven districts. You’ll find these family-run restaurants everywhere, with their Coca-Cola signs, PVC tablecloths and names referencing one or all of the kids. Mostly ignored by foreign visitors, they are the best way to experience native food—you may even end up joining a karaoke session. The oldest and most reputable karinderyas become institutions, such as Nora’s Eatery and Beige Eatery.
Though the dish originated across the strait in the city of Bacolod, Iloilo could arguably be credited with popularizing chicken inasal, a citrusy Filipino-style BBQ chicken dish—Mang Inasal, a beloved chicken restaurant with more than 500 branches, was founded here. The best place to try this lemongrass-marinated chicken is at Fort San Pedro, a destroyed Spanish fortress lined with street food stalls, and my mum’s favorite sunset spot since her teens. Both then and now, Ilonggos sit along the sea wall as the sky turns the color of annatto, inhaling the smell of woodsmoke and licking the grease and rice from their fingers.
As with any coastal city, seafood here is king; the typical Ilonggo style is to season only with salt, preserving the essence of native species. The best seafood restaurants are near Villa Beach, where colorful sailboats converge for the Paraw Regatta sailing festival every February.
Breakthrough is possibly Iloilo’s ‘fanciest’ restaurant, though still unbelievably cheap. Try the imbaw (mangrove clams in an aromatic soup), grilled managat (mangrove red snapper) and the rare ‘angel wing’ clam known as diwal, if it’s in season.
But the restaurant closest to my heart—and my grandmother’s favorite—is Stanley Talabahan, a specialist oyster restaurant. I’ve come here since my early childhood, when most of my family—around 25 cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents—still lived on the same plot of land, and descended on Stanley’s en masse. Stanley’s is built, like many Filipino homes still are, on stilts over the ocean, with a corrugated iron roof. Salty air wafted up through the bamboo slats and chilled my toes.
What makes Stanley’s truly Ilonggo to me though, is that it’s barely changed in all my 35 years. Ilonggos are sweet, yes—but we are also stubborn, and in the face of ever-creeping Americanization, it’s this stubbornness that will preserve us and our cuisine for years to come.
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Sarah Gillespie is an award-winning travel writer based in Glasgow, Scotland. She has written for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, and National Geographic Traveller UK, and has appeared on BBC Scotland and multiple podcasts. She enjoys whisky and adobo, occasionally at the same time.
