Filipino Snacks

Filipinos love to snack. Merienda is what Filipinos call their mid-morning and mid-afternoon meals. Some favorite snack time meals include:

Bibingka - rice cake with cheese and salted egg.

Halo-halo - literally means "mixed", fruit, sweets, crushed ice, milk, beans, and sometimes ice cream. Similar to the ice kachang served in Malaysia and Singapore.

Balut - is a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. Popularly believed to be an aphrodisiac and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, baluts are mostly sold by street vendors at night in the regions where they are available. Boiled and usually eaten with a sprinkle of salt and vinegar.

Penoy - same as balut, but without the embryo, just the yolk.

Buko pie - pie made with fresh coconut flesh. The province of Laguna has numerous roadside buko pie stores, with several of them claiming to be the home of the "original" buko pie.

Pandesal - small buns usually made fresh in the morning, usually an alternative to rice for breakfast. It is usually eaten with a cup of coffee. Some people prefer to dip their pandesal in coffee.

Banana cue - a popular street food made of saba bananas fried in very hot oil with caramelized sugar coating. The saba bananas can also be boiled instead of fried.

Fishballs - more popularly known to Filipinos as "fishballan" they usually come in vendor stands and are sold deep-fried along with squidballs, chickenballs and kikiam. Some stands also sell "isaw" (chicken innard), siomai (steamed dumpling), "kwekkwek" (boiled quail egg in orange coating), and "betamax" (dried and cubed pig's blood). A stick may sell from P5 to P10. Isaw sticks usually sell for P2.

Puto - a general term for rice cake, they usually come as soft white rice muffins or pie-shaped desserts. Other kinds include Biko, Cuchinta, Pichi-Pichi, Sapin-Sapin, etc. The towns of Calasiao in Pangasinan and Binan, Laguna are famous for their puto.

Chicharon - crunchy snacks made from deep-fried pig skin.

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