So just to set the scene Im not close-minded when it comes to food at all. Before I went to the Philippines I'd been travelling all around south east Asia eating four meals a day in Vietnam. Only at the little local places with poor hygiene and plastic stools.
I'd heard lots of bad things about Filipino food from travellers that had been already but I thought they are probably just eating crap hostel food. I'd also read a few articles about Fillipino food being massively underrated so I was really excited to try the food.
To say why I don't like it I have so say why I love other SE Asian food; balance and technique all over south east Asia the food is just packed with herbs and spices, it's always perfectly balanced between, sweet sour, spicy and savoury. There's also just so much fresh vegetables in the their food. And it doesn't have that greasy heavy feeling you get from Western food (even if it is packed with grease they still balance it)
Now wherever I'd travelled I'd been eating at the little rice eateries where you get rice and then you choose a few dishes. Everywhere else in South East Asia the food was fresh at lunch time and warm. In the Phillipines it was almost always cold, stale and stodgy as if it had been cooked the day before. You know like bits of chicken poking out with congealed sauce around it.
The quality of the ingredients doesn't seem to be great, very little vegetables or herbs. Meat was always stringy and tough. Lots of processed foods. Like even halo halo had that crappy pre-grated mozzarella in it, just why?
I know I will offend some but it felt like no one really knew how to cook, everything was overcooked, chalky eggs, meat like leather. And just no balance at all, garlic rice was unnecessarily greasy. I'd way prefer to just have steamed rice. I ordered pancit a few times and it was always just mushy noodles, coated in grease none of that "wok hay" that you get with stir-fried noodles you get across Asia. Everything was way too sweet. I had fish that was cooked without being cleaned first and just stewed in a pot whole. Same when I hired boats to go out fishing they'd just throw the whole thing on the barbecue, they thought it was hilarious that I wanted to gut it first.
I guess it probably is still a bit harder than mainland SE Asia to grow food and maybe that's why the food isn't as diverse, maybe it's that people would rather eat Jollibee fried chicken rather than some of the more traditional food so there's not as much about anymore due to the American presence in the country. I don't know.
I've got to finish this by saying that The Phillipines would absolutely be my favourite place in the entire world if it weren't for the food. The people are so unbelievably genuine and kind and they just love a good time. It s an insanely stunning country. But unfortunately for me I live to eat and I ended up losing 10kg after two months because I just couldn't eat the food anymore and I had to leave.