Non Filipino people: Filipino food leads with sour despite the delicious adobo, lumpia and pancit you have tried :-) Those 3 dishes are great but because they don't lead with sour, they don't represent the full Filipino flavour spectrum. Also, the super sugary stuff is American colonial brainwashing and big food, it is not really representative of Filipino food and Filipino bread is amazing despite what Spanish colonizers thought, just like the Vietnamese they took the colonial bread and made it work for them. Finally, leylut manuk over arroz caldo :-) and I hated pinakbet growing up but now I love it despite the bitter melon ; Vanjo Merano:: Filipino Food - Panlasang Pinoy
Discovered: Aug 8, 2026 05:53 (UTC) Non Filipino people: Filipino food leads with sour despite the delicious adobo, lumpia and pancit you have tried :-) Those 3 dishes are great but because they don’t lead with sour, they don’t represent the full Filipino flavour spectrum. Also, the super sugary stuff is American colonial brainwashing and big food, it is not really representative of Filipino food and Filipino bread is amazing despite what Spanish colonizers thought, just like the Vietnamese they took the colonial bread and made it work for them. Finally, leylut manuk over arroz caldo :-) and I hated pinakbet growing up but now I love it despite the bitter melon ; Vanjo Merano:: Filipino Food - Panlasang Pinoy
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- Read the whole thing: Vanjo Merano:: Filipino Food - Panlasang Pinoy
And one more thing about Filipino food that I want to point out. It is sour. Sinigang, paksiw, kinilaw, sinampalukang manok. These are entire dish families built around different ways to make a broth or a cure sour. Most cuisines do not lead with sour. Filipino food does, and the sourness is balanced by the saltiness and umami of patis and bagoong. Once you understand that, a lot of the cuisine starts to make more sense.
Five Dishes Filipinos Argue About
Filipino food is regional and family-by-family. Most published recipes flatten that. Over the years, the dishes I see readers correct, defend, and assert their family’s version of are menudo, arroz caldo, pancit, pinakbet, and humba.
Menudo varies by whether the family adds raisins, hot dogs, bell peppers, or chickpeas, and by whether the liver is real pig liver or liver spread. Arroz caldo splits along whether it is the chicken-and-saffron version, the plain lugaw of breakfast, or the offal-rich goto. Pancit has many versions: canton, malabon, palabok, bihon, sotanghon, lomi, habhab, molo. Each one has families and provinces that consider their version the right one. Pinakbet divides between the Ilocano version with bagoong isda and the Tagalog version with bagoong alamang. Humba is the Visayan and Cebuano take on braised pork, and rarely tastes the same in any two homes.