Iloilo Food Tour — La Paz Batchoy, Pancit Molo & KBL

Iloilo City has been called the food capital of the Western Visayas with good reason: it is the birthplace of dishes so distinct that they cannot be found anywhere else in the Philippines in their original form. This progressive food tour visits five establishments across the city's most food-rich districts, eating the same dishes that Ilonggos have been eating for generations.

The tour starts at La Paz Market, the correct address for batchoy. The dish was invented here in the 1930s and the vendors in the market stalls that line the interior have been serving it continuously ever since — some families for three generations. The broth is cooked for hours with pork bones, liver, and kidney until it turns a deep amber, then ladled over thin noodles and crowned with crumbled chicharron. The guide knows which stall to order from and how to customise your bowl (extra liver? raw egg? more chicharron? — all honourable options).

Molo district follows for Pancit Molo, the Ilonggo dish that tourists consistently describe as a surprise — expecting noodles and finding instead a bowl of pork-stuffed dumplings floating in clear broth with garlic-fried shallots on top. The dish originated in the Chinese mestizo community of Molo, the same quarter that built the famous church, and retains its distinct character despite being copied across the Visayas.

KBL (Kadios, Baboy, Langka) is the soul of Ilonggo home cooking: a stew of pigeon peas, pork, and unripe jackfruit cooked in batwan fruit broth that delivers a distinctive sweet-sour note found nowhere else in Philippine cuisine. The best versions are served only in modest neighbourhood eateries — the guide knows exactly where to find them. The tour ends with dessert: biscocho (twice-baked butter bread sticks) and barquillos (rolled wafer tubes), Iloilo's famous snack exports, bought fresh from the factory shop for the journey home.