Manila eats in layers: Spanish adobo, Chinese noodles, American fried chicken and 7,000 islands of regional cooking, all crowded onto one plate. Three days here take you from Quiapo's wet stalls to Poblacion's craft-beer alleys.
Manila's rebuilt riverside wet market under Quezon Bridge opens at 05:00. Wander stalls of calamansi, banana-leaf-wrapped suman and live tilapia, then hit the herbal-remedy row outside Quiapo Church for tuba vinegar and dried lagundi.
The noodle house that gave the Philippines its own word for soup — mami — has been ladling the same chicken broth since 1920. Order mami with a jumbo siopao asado; the tiled dining room and uniformed waiters haven't changed in decades.
Quezon City's sprawling market is the best one-stop education in Filipino ingredients: whole lechon, banana blossoms, live crabs, kesong puti and a flower hall. The seafood section will cook your purchase for a small fee.
Founded 1939 and still baking pandesal in a wood-fired pugon oven, this restored panaderia serves the bread with kesong puti and tsokolate batirol. The house pan de suelo comes out hot around 16:00 and again in the early evening.
Malate's 1979 bistro is where Manila's writers still take breakfast. Order champorado with tuyo, tsokolate eh thickened with tablea, and arroz caldo. The tiled bar and shuttered windows feel like a Spanish-era sala transplanted.
Kapampangan cooking — Pampanga is the country's acknowledged culinary province — done properly: knockout binukadkad na pla-pla, morcon, and adobong pusit. Named for painter Emilio Aguilar Cruz, whose recipes the kitchen still follows.
Making halo-halo since 1962, upstairs from the original ice-cream plant. Shaved ice piled with ube halaya, leche flan, nata de coco and sweet beans, plus their own carabao-milk ice cream. Also does a serious kare-kare if you're still hungry.
Chef Jordy Navarra's tasting menu rebuilds Filipino home cooking from the ingredient up — the Bahay Kubo salad puts all eighteen vegetables from the folk song on one plate. Regularly ranked among Asia's 50 Best Restaurants.
Malabon is the sticky-rice capital, and Dolor's has been steaming sapin-sapin, kutsinta, palitaw and biko in banana leaves since 1961. Pair a tray of kakanin with a bowl of thick, orange-sauced pancit Malabon from the shops on the same street.
The paluto system in its purest form: haggle for tiger prawns, lapu-lapu, tahong and blue crab at the wet stalls, carry your bag to an adjoining restaurant and pay them to cook it. Choose sinigang, buttered garlic or sizzling.
A single-origin espresso bar by day that turns into a hidden cocktail room through the back door. The bartenders build drinks around Filipino spirits and produce — lambanog, calamansi, pandan — and will make something off-menu to your brief.
The anchor of Makati's densest bar district, serving regional Filipino plates — Bicol laing, Ilocos bagnet, tuna panga — alongside local craft beer. Afterwards the surrounding streets fill with isaw, balut and betamax grills until 02:00.