Published 27 July 2026 · 3 min read · by the Tierra de Ibalon team
Bicolano food is built on two things: coconut milk and chilli. Get those in your head and the rest of the region's cooking makes sense. Here is what to order, in roughly the order you should order it.
Start with Bicol Express
The dish that carries the region's name. Pork simmered in coconut milk with shrimp paste and a genuinely serious quantity of siling labuyo. It was named after the Manila–Legazpi train, and it is hotter in Bicol than any version you have had elsewhere — restaurants outside the region tend to soften it for the audience.
Order it with a lot of rice. That is not a suggestion.
Then laing
Dried taro leaves cooked slowly in coconut milk until they collapse into something dark, rich and faintly smoky. Done well it is the best thing on the table. Done badly it is itchy — properly dried leaves and long cooking are what prevent that, which is why laing is a good test of a kitchen.
Pinangat
Laing's more refined relative: taro leaves wrapped into parcels around fish or pork, tied, and simmered in coconut milk. Camalig in Albay is particularly associated with it. If you see it on a menu, take it.
Kinunot
Flaked fish in coconut milk with malunggay leaves — a Bicol classic, traditionally made with ray or shark. Many kitchens now use other fish given the conservation pressure on those species, and it is worth asking. The dish is excellent either way.
Sili ice cream
Chilli ice cream, made famous by a Legazpi restaurant and now a fixture across the region. It comes in ascending heat levels, and the heat arrives late — after the sweetness, at the back of the throat. Start lower than your pride suggests. It is a genuinely good ice cream, not just a dare.
Pili nuts, and why they matter here
The pili is Bicol's own nut, grown across Albay and Sorsogon and difficult to crack, which is part of why it stayed regional for so long. You will meet it in several forms:
- Candied or glazed pili — the standard pasalubong, sweet and very rich.
- Pili tarts — small, buttery, and the thing most people end up buying a second box of.
- Roasted and salted — the version to eat on the road rather than take home.
- Pili oil and pili-based products — an increasingly common local industry.
A workable two-day eating route
Day one, Naga City. A proper Bicolano lunch — Bicol Express, laing, grilled fish — then an afternoon at the public market for pili and local sweets. Naga is a student city, so it eats well and cheaply, and it eats late.
Day two, Albay. Drive down through Camalig for pinangat, on to Legazpi for sili ice cream with the volcano in view, and finish at a pasalubong centre for tarts and candied pili to carry home.
Neither day needs to be rigid. Ask your guide where they personally eat — in Bicol that question reliably produces a better answer than any list, this one included.
What to bring home
Pili tarts and candied pili travel well. Bottled laing and Bicol Express are widely sold and survive a flight. Chilli products — oils, pastes, dried siling labuyo — are light and make the best gifts. True to the meaning of Ibalon, the region rather expects you to leave carrying something for other people.