Best Street food to try in Manila, Philippines, what to eat at Mercato Centrale
In the capital of the Philippines, Manila, we ate some delicious street food and explored the city. Exploring Manila for the first time was pretty fun. We came to Mercato Centrale in BGC which also happen to be a night market. It has loads of food, Filipino dishes and also some international dishes. The market was full of different food choices.
Here’s what we ate
Barbecue
In Manila’s central market, they were lots of places that serve meat on sticks. We went for barbecue pork which is one the most popular meats on a stick in the market for locals. We were a little surprised at that considering the numerous other options. The taste was delicious as well as the smell. The pork stick was covered with delicious sauce that was kind of savoury and a little bit sweet at the same time. The meat was perfectly cooked. We also tried chicken barbecue which smelled amazing. It was nice and tender. Flavour-wise, it was a little bit sweet and not too spicy. It was a yummy barbecue.
Chicken Skin
Our second round of food tasting was chicken skin. To flavour it they put it in a bucket and then shake it so the chicken skin can get the flavour all over it. We chose the chicken skin with garlic parmesan flavour which was delicious. It was like eating chips. It was extremely crunchy. We previously tried chicken skin in a fancy restaurant but definitely not in a night market.
Tacos
Mexican food is one of our favourites so we decided to go to a place called Chocos. We right away noticed that they have beef that was slowly cooking in a pot. It smelled delicious. We ended up with two different kinds of tacos. A beef taco in a hard shell and a chicken taco in a soft shell. The beef taco had some lettuce, tomato, and sauce and was covered with cheese. It was delicious. On the other hand, the chicken taco was marinated in a lot of spices and also tasted great. It had a white sauce which went really well with the flavours. Both of the tacos were tasty.
Lechon
It was time to try the most popular dish in the Philippines which is Lechon. Basically, it is a suckling pig with perfectly roasted skin. We ordered the spicy one. The skin was crunchy, the meat was tender and the taste was really good. It was intense since it had so much flavour packed into it. Some of the pieces of pork were little fatty and some were tender. But the skin was the showstopper. It was the best part of the dish. We will definitely be having more Lechon. It was amazing and we can see why it’s so popular in the Philippines.
Tipsy Ice Cream
Lastly, we wanted to finish things off with something sweet. So we stopped at a place called Tipsy ice cream. It is essentially an alcoholic ice cream. We went for the chocolate brandy flavour. It was almost like dark chocolate but it was super rich and a little bit spicy. It reminded us of a Mexican ice cream that we tried which had chilli in it. This ice cream was very gooey and delicious.