Is It a Real Filipino Dish or Did We Make It Up? Food Quiz

Real! Despite sounding like a railway timetable, Bicol Express is a much-loved Filipino dish. It is popularly credited to Manila cook Cely Kalaw, who is said to have named it in the 1960s after the train service between Manila and the Bicol region. The recipe draws on Bicolano cooking, which famously pairs gata (coconut milk) with plenty of chili.

Real, and a Palawan legend. Tamilok aren't actually worms. They are shipworms, a group of bivalve mollusks (family Teredinidae) that bore into submerged wood. Cleaned and prepared kinilaw-style with vinegar, onion and chili, they are often compared to oysters in taste. You'll also find them served in the mangrove areas of Aklan.

Made up! Batangas is genuinely famous for kapeng barako, a bold coffee made from Liberica beans, and the province's real breakfast favorites include tapang Taal (cured pork). But coffee-braised squid is not a recognized traditional dish. We stitched two real Filipino favorites together to fool you.

Real! Champorado is glutinous rice cooked with tablea, tablets of pure ground cacao. Its name is linked to Mexico's champurrado, a chocolate drink believed to have reached the islands through the Manila–Acapulco galleon trade (1565–1815). Eating it with tuyo (salty dried fish) is a classic sweet-and-salty pairing, especially on rainy mornings.

Made up! Sinigang itself is iconic: a sour broth flavored with tamarind (sampalok), guava, kamias, green mango or other souring fruits, usually cooked with pork, shrimp or fish and vegetables such as radish and kangkong. Tablea is real too. But there is no traditional chocolate sinigang. The giveaway: sinigang is savory comfort food eaten with rice, not dessert.

Made up! Taal is a real and active volcano, and nobody bakes snacks in it. Genuine bibingka is made from rice flour and coconut milk, poured into a clay pot lined with banana leaf and cooked with hot coals both underneath and on top. It's the classic treat sold outside churches during Simbang Gabi, the series of dawn Masses before Christmas.

Real! Pancit habhab is the street-food pride of Lucban, Quezon. The noodles, known as miki Lucban, are stir-fried with vegetables and meat, then served on banana leaf. Diners lift the leaf to their lips and eat directly from it, the hands-free, mouth-to-leaf style the name refers to. It's a must-try during Lucban's colorful Pahiyas Festival every May 15.

Real, and possibly one of the oldest dishes in the islands. Archaeological finds in Butuan, Mindanao, including fish bones found alongside halved tabon-tabon fruit (still used in kinilaw today to tame fishy flavors) and dated to roughly the 10th to 13th centuries, have been cited by food historians as early evidence of this method. The acid firms the fish without any heat.

Made up, with a sneaky real detail. Tinola really does appear in Noli Me Tángere: in the chapter about the dinner party, Padre Dámaso is served the bony neck and wing and is visibly annoyed. But real tinola is chicken in a clear ginger broth with green papaya or sayote and chili leaves or malunggay. No ripe mango and certainly no condensed milk.

Real! The name comes from dugo, the Filipino word for blood. Pork, often including offal, is cooked with fresh pig's blood, vinegar, garlic and long green chilies until it turns rich and nearly black. Some families call it "chocolate meat" to coax children into trying it. Its classic partner is puto, a soft steamed rice cake.

Made up! Adobo is arguably the most famous Filipino dish: meat simmered in vinegar, garlic, bay leaf and peppercorns, with soy sauce added in many versions. Spanish colonizers named it after adobar ("to marinate"), though food historians believe the vinegar-stewing method existed long before. The real frozen fiesta favorites? Ice candy and sorbetes, the cart-sold "dirty ice cream."

Real! Ginataang kuhol is a home-style favorite in Bicol, Central Luzon and other rice-farming areas, often cooked with greens such as kangkong or malunggay. Many cooks use golden apple snails, an invasive species that damages rice fields, which turns a farm pest into a hearty dinner. A toothpick or safety pin is the traditional eating tool.