Filipino cuisine

Filipino cuisine draws from the food traditions of more than a hundred ethnolinguistic groups spread across the Philippine archipelago. The best-known dishes come from communities like the Ilocano, Pangasinan, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bicolano, Visayan, Chavacano, and Maranao. These cooking styles grew over centuries from a largely indigenous Austronesian base shared with maritime Southeast Asia, picking up influences from Chinese, Spanish, and American cuisines during major cultural waves, and adapting them with native ingredients to suit local tastes.

Meals range from simple fried salted fish with rice to Iberian-style curries, paellas, and cozidos served at fiestas. Popular dishes include lechón (whole roasted pig), longganisa (Philippine sausage), tapa (cured beef), torta (omelette), adobo (vinegar and soy sauce stew), kaldereta (meat stewed in tomato sauce and liver paste), mechado (larded beef in soy and tomato sauce), pochero (beef and bananas in tomato sauce), afritada (chicken or beef with vegetables in tomato sauce), kare-kare (oxtail and vegetables in peanut sauce), pinakbet (kabocha squash, eggplant, beans, okra, bitter melon, and tomato stew with shrimp paste), sinigang (meat or seafood with vegetables in sour broth), pancit (noodles), and lumpia (fresh or fried spring rolls).

**History**

The Negritos, the archipelago’s first people, were nomadic hunter-gatherers who ate foraged wild tubers, seafood, and game meat. Remains of tubers likely from ube (Dioscorea alata) were found at Palawan’s Ille Cave dating to about 11,000 years ago, showing that ube is native to Island Southeast Asia and that early humans already used starchy plants. Ube also appears in archaeological sites in the Batanes Islands from around 3,500 years ago, linked to some of the region’s earliest farming communities. Among yam species cultivated independently in Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea, only ube and lesser yams were regularly eaten; others were considered famine food because of high dioscorine toxin levels, requiring careful preparation. The earliest evidence of fried chicken in the Philippines comes from a local archaeological site.

Around 6,000 years ago, later migrations of seafaring Austronesians—ancestors of most modern Filipinos—brought new aquaculture and agriculture techniques, along with domesticated foodstuffs and animals, across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Domesticated pigs arrived from Taiwan in northern Luzon about 4,500–4,000 years ago, then spread from the Philippines to the Mariana Islands around 3,500 years ago, together with red-slipped pottery.

**Pre-Colonial period**

Taro cultivation likely drove the start of terracing in the Cordilleras less than a thousand years ago. Taro was later replaced by rice around 1600 A.D., which remains the main crop today. Although solid evidence for paddy rice cultivation in the Philippines dates back only about 700 years, the shift to rice was a major development in Filipino cuisine. Using basic tools, the Ifugao built the Banaue Rice Terraces with stone and mud walls to create flat surfaces on steep slopes, enabling highland rice farming. The plains of central and southwestern Luzon, the Bicol peninsula, and eastern Panay became major rice producers, exporting surplus to other parts of the archipelago. Rice was a symbol of wealth, and many rice-based delicacies were used as offerings in important ceremonies. As in much of Asia, rice is a staple of Filipino cuisine, with regional variations like arroz caldo, similar to Chinese congee.

Although colonial periods brought heavy influence, the cuisines of surrounding countries and the Philippines’ own origins are also vital. Before Spanish colonization, the Philippines had frequent trade with China, which set up outposts along some coastal cities. The Chinese introduced rice noodles—the main ingredient of pancit—and eggrolls, which became lumpia in the Philippines.

**Spanish colonial period**

Spanish rule brought major changes to the archipelago’s cuisines, from the Manila galleon trade network to domestic agricultural reform. The galleon trade introduced two significant culinary influences: Chinese and Mexican. The exchange ran mainly between Manila and Acapulco in New Spain (present-day Mexico), so Mexican cuisine brought a wide range of New World and Spanish foodstuffs and techniques. From the Americas came crops like maize, chili peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, chocolate, pineapples, coffee beans, jicama, various squashes, annatto, and avocados. Mexicans and other Latin Americans also brought Spanish cooking techniques such as sofrito, sausage making (longganisa, similar to chorizos), bread baking, and dishes that became local versions of empanadas, paellas, omelettes called tortas, and tamales.

At the same time, migrating Filipinos carried their culinary techniques, dishes, and produce to the Americas and several Pacific islands under Spanish rule, especially Guam and the Marianas. Rice, sugarcane, coconuts, citruses, mangoes, and tamarind were among the items they introduced.