Cebu Food Trip & Street Food Tour

Cebu is, without argument, one of the best food cities in the Philippines. The city that gave the world its most celebrated lechon (spit-roasted pig, crackling so good Anthony Bourdain called it "the best pig you'll ever eat") is also home to a street food scene that rewards the curious eater at every turn. This evening food crawl connects the dots.

Your guide starts at Larsian BBQ, a beloved open-air barbecue complex where vendors grill skewers of pork, chicken and seafood over coconut-husk coals beside the highway — the smoke and the noise and the flickering lights are as much the experience as the food. From there, the crawl hits a Cebu lechon house for a proper portion of the city's signature dish: crunchy amber skin, moist meat, liver sauce on the side.

Next comes ngohiong (Cebuano spring rolls with a Chinese-mestizo heritage), puso (hanging rice in woven coconut leaf packets — the Visayan street staple), sinuglaw (a brilliant hybrid of sinugba grilled pork and kinilaw ceviche), and the obligatory dried mango shop. The tour ends with halo-halo at a local parlour — Cebu's version is a little different from Manila's, and the debate about which is better is an excellent conversation to have over crushed ice.