Philippines Trip 2018 – Days 1-9: The Good Food Part Of The Trip

This trip was all about the food.

Midnight Layover at NAIA

Our first meal was in Manila, during a middle of the night layover for our 4:40 AM flight to Legazpi. Even though we arrived in the airport after midnight, the airport food court was hopping.

There are a lot of good choices in the airport – all the Filipino favorites like Max’s and Jollibee, plus Western choices, like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and KFC.

Not all of the places were open in the middle of the night, but enough of them that there was plenty to choose from!

We opted for Gardinia Kitchen, a “turo-turo” place (where you pick your dishes from a spread of ready-made choices).

We had beef nilaga, Hawaiian chicken, pork barbecue sticks, and for dessert, slices of egg pie and choco cake. Total cost was around $8. I topped it off with a one-hour foot massage for $18, including tip.

Eating In Legazpi

Upon arriving at Legazpi, we checked in at The Oriental hotel, where we stayed on our 2017 visit. I love The Oriental for its spa and and infinity pool that overlooks the Mayon volcano. Scott and I also took advantage of the spa, both doing a one-hour massage this trip. Make sure to book your room with the spa package, which makes the spa an even better deal!

But the best part of the hotel is the breakfast buffet:

Yes, we had dessert during breakfast, but it’s worth the inevitable food coma that follows. There are always mini-cakes – black forest, chocolate mousse, German chocolate, and a non-chocolate variety they stick in for the weirdos that don’t eat chocolate, I suppose.

They also have shot glasses filled with a soft dessert – on the three days we were there, they had chocolate pudding, buko pandan and Filipino fruit salad shots.

There is also a large cake that normally I don’t cut into because it’s some variation of the mini-cakes already there. But one day, it was different, and that ended up being my favorite dessert of our stay. This cake was a yellow layer cake where the frosting was the same filling as the egg custard middle of Brazo de Mercedes. I’m writing this five days later, and I can still taste that dessert! It is in the upper left corner of the above photo.

Meanwhile, the dessert selection was just one course of the buffet. There were rotating hot entrees with the typical Filipino comfort foods – beef steak, tocino, longanisa, sotanghon. Also, Champorado was available daily, and it’s amazing! There were different soup selections – pancit mami, arroz caldo, misua. Different fish selections were put out daily – I tried the tinapa and the Oriental “signature fish” – and then my arteries gave out.

Given the huge breakfast at The Oriental, when in Legazpi, we just ate two meals a day!

Of course, no trip to the Philippines would be complete without halo-halo, a popular Filipino dessert, made with shaved ice, topped with fruits, sweet beans, ice cream and evaporated milk.

I got my halo-halo fix at Kuya J’s, a chain of fast casual restaurants branded by actor Jericho Rosales. I tried a variation that had langka and fried bananas instead of the typical mix-ins. Delicious, but I missed my favorite, ube topping.

Too Much Food Back In Manila

The food parade continued in Manila, where we hit way too many donut places, including our previous Asian favorites J.Co and Mister Donut. We also stopped into a Krispy Kreme to try their Green Tea KitKat donut to compare to the green tea donut we had at J.Co.

My favorite is still J.Co as they make the kind of donuts the hipster stores in New York City make – except these donuts are a reasonable size and cost less than a dollar. We unfortunately didn’t get any photos of our J.Co donuts, but peruse the varieties on their donut page, and I’m sure you’ll want to take a trip there to try them out!

My favorite stop in Manila was lunch at the SM grocery store. Seriously.

The SM grocery stores are expansive and all-encompassing like Super-Walmarts, except they have these amazing food stalls at the front of the store. I was also able to get Ube soft serve ice cream!

Lunch for both of us cost a total of 200 pesos (about $4) and consisted of:

• 2 large turon (deep fried sweet plantains and jackfruit) – 30 pesos
• 2 large lumpia (vegetable egg roll) – 40 pesos
• 2 apple green tea bottles – 50 pesos
• 1 giant asado siopao (dumpling with a sweet pork filling) – 25 pesos
• 1 chocolate chip brownie – 15 pesos
• 2 ice creams – 40 pesos

Just wandering around you can stumble onto great food finds, like fluffy donuts and pandesal from Pan de Manila.

Or hot chocolate and ensaymada from Mary Grace. For you Filipino purists, that’s a banana chocolate ensaymada in the picture, along with the traditional plain. It’s just as good as it sounds.

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In all, over a week in the Philippines, we spent about $200 on food, eating out for virtually every meal. Great deal, especially considering how good everything was. It will not be hard to stay within a reasonable budget when we travel to the Philippines in the future!