Filipino Food
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48 free Filipino Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Filipino food is the cooking of more than a hundred ethnolinguistic groups spread across 7,000 islands, layered with Chinese noodles, Spanish stews, Mexican galleon cargo and American Spam. It runs on rice, vinegar, coconut milk and the interplay of sweet, sour and salty, and it is finally getting its due: TasteAtlas ranks sisig and chicken inasal among the world's best dishes and the Michelin Guide arrived in Manila and Cebu in 2026. These 48 questions cover the classics and the stories behind them: adobo and sinigang's rivalry for national dish, lechon and its liver sauce, kare-kare's peanut stew, the silog breakfasts, merienda and pulutan, the Christmas table of ham and queso de bola, and regional specialities from Ilocano bagnet and Kapampangan sisig to Bicol express and Cebu lechon. There are questions on street food (balut, kwek-kwek, taho, the skewers nicknamed adidas and betamax), on drinks from tuba to lambanog and San Miguel, and on history, from 11,000-year-old ube in a Palawan cave to the Manila galleons and Tom's Dixie Kitchen. Easy questions stick to the famous dishes; the expert tier asks about rice cakes, coffee varieties and the only freshwater sardine. Every answer is cited and explained.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Adobo, often called the national dish, is a stew based on soy sauce and what?
Vinegar
Vinegar was the islands' own way of preserving meat, and the Spanish later labelled the native dish 'adobo' after a Spanish word for marinade.
Q 02What is the fiesta centrepiece known as lechon?
A whole roasted pig
It is the centrepiece of fiesta tables, served with a sauce made from the pig's liver.
Q 03Kare-kare is an oxtail stew cooked in which kind of sauce?
Peanut
Peanut sauce takes real work, from toasting and grinding rice and peanuts to tenderising oxtail, so kare-kare is mostly saved for fiestas and holidays.
Q 04Sinigang is traditionally soured with which fruit?
Tamarind
Guava or miso are used in some seafood versions; it rivals adobo as the national dish.
Q 05What does the word pancit refer to?
Noodles
Noodles of many kinds count as pancit, and Filipinos serve them at birthdays because long noodles are believed to symbolise a long life.
Q 06Fresh lumpia, or lumpiang sariwa, derives from which Chinese dish?
Popiah
It is served with a sweet peanut and garlic sauce.
Q 07Dinuguan is a savoury stew made from what?
Pig's blood
Pig's blood gives dinuguan its dark gravy and its nickname, 'chocolate meat', and the stew is often eaten with little rice cakes called puto.
Q 08Champorado, the sweet chocolate rice porridge, is traditionally eaten with what?
Salted dried fish
Salted dried fish is the classic partner, and the porridge descends from Mexican champurrado, with Filipino cooks swapping its corn masa for sticky rice.
Q 09Bibingka, the Filipino Christmas rice cake, is traditionally cooked with hot coals placed where?
Above and below it
Above and below it: coals under the clay pot and on top of it make it work like an oven, giving the cake its charred surface.
Q 10Which people built the Banaue Rice Terraces?
The Ifugao
The Ifugao built them, and although an early archaeologist guessed they were 2,000 years old, recent digs suggest they rose around the time the Spanish pushed into northern Luzon.
Q 11The Manila galleon trade linked the Philippines with which port?
Acapulco
Acapulco galleons carried American crops such as maize, tomatoes and cocoa to Manila, and Mexican traders also brought the know-how behind chocolate rice porridge.
Q 12Which small, sour citrus fruit is served in halves with almost every pancit dish?
Calamansi
Calamansi is naturally very sour, so diners squeeze it over their food or mix its juice with soy sauce for one of the most common Filipino dipping sauces.
Q 13Before it is baked, pandesal dough is coated in what?
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs coat each roll, and despite a name that sounds salty, pandesal actually tastes slightly sweet.
Q 21Pulutan, the word for finger food eaten with drinks, comes from a word meaning what?
To pick up
It is roughly equivalent to tapas.
Q 22Before frying, the boiled pork rinds for chicharon are first what?
Dried out
Dried out rinds puff up and turn crisp once they hit the hot oil.
Q 23Sisig is made mainly from which parts of the pig?
Cheek skin, ears and liver
It is boiled, grilled, then minced with onions and chillies; a Kapampangan classic.
Q 24Sisig and kare-kare are signature dishes of which regional cuisine?
Q 14Which nut, grown mainly in the Bicol region, is used in Filipino candies?
Pili
Pili kernels sit inside a shell so hard that Bicol shellers traditionally split it open by hand with a bolo knife.
Q 15What is kamayan?
Eating with the hands
Eating with the hands was discouraged under colonial rule, but Filipino chefs at home and abroad have revived it as a proud communal feast.
Q 16A "boodle fight" feast is served on what?
Banana leaves
Banana leaves serve as the platter, and the military custom has soldiers of every rank eat together to build camaraderie and equality.
Q 17Filipino diners typically hold a spoon in one hand and what in the other?
A fork
A fork goes in the other hand, and because the dishes arrive all at once, diners help themselves to soup, meat and vegetables in any order.
Q 18In breakfast names like tapsilog and longsilog, "si" stands for sinangag, which is what?
Garlic fried rice
Tapa, longganisa and tocino supply the tap-, long- and toci- parts.
Q 19Kapeng barako, a strong coffee variety, is grown in the mountains of which province?
Batangas
Batangas coffee helped make the Philippines one of the world's top coffee exporters, until insect pests and coffee rust ruined the industry at the end of the 1800s.
Q 20Chicken inasal, grilled chicken basted with its marinade, is a famous specialty of which Visayan city?
Bacolod
Bacolod made chicken inasal famous, and annatto in the marinade gives the grilled chicken its orange colour.
Kapampangan
It comes from Pampanga and parts of Tarlac in Central Luzon.
Q 25What cheese stars on the Noche Buena Christmas table alongside ham?
Edam
Queso de bola is a popular corporate giveaway in the season.
Q 26Puto bumbong, the purple Christmas rice cake, is steamed in what?
Bamboo tubes
It is sold outside churches along with bibingka.
Q 27Okoy, the crispy Filipino fritter, is traditionally packed with which seafood?
Shrimp
Shrimp go in whole with their shells on, and small ones fry up so crunchy that the shells get eaten too.
Q 28Bicol express is a spicy stew of pork, chilli and what?
Coconut milk
Bicol is the region with the hottest appetite for chilli.
Q 29Laing, the Bicol speciality, is made with the leaves of which plant?
Taro
Taro leaves carry calcium oxalate crystals that can make the mouth itch, so cooks wash them well, dry them or cook them thoroughly before making laing.
Q 30Kaldereta is often associated with which meat besides beef?
Goat
It is a tomato stew with peas, carrots, peppers, potatoes and sometimes liver.