In Iloilo City, entrepreneurs and chefs all share a commitment to creative gastronomy

The future of this UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy rests in the inspiring hands of locals and transplants creating an ecosystem built on love, sustainability, and heritage

Love runs deep in Iloilo City. You can see and feel it everywhere.

It’s evident in how its public markets are undergoing redevelopment to allow the highly urbanized city to step into the future with its values intact.

From the busy downtown Central Market and Jaro Big Market to the La Paz Market where the batchoy originated from, it’s easy to appreciate the city’s reinvention as both a labor and legacy of love.

This is the same narrative that runs right through many of the establishments and personalities that define Iloilo as a newly crowned UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.

If love races through Iloilo’s streets, then the slew of traditional and innovative dishes inhabiting the depths of its urban core are manifestations of that feeling.

In 2023, the city was inducted into the Creative Cities Network list after meeting eight key criteria, which include a vibrant gastronomy community, use of Indigenous ingredients in cooking, traditional food markets, and promotion of sustainability.

When you get down to the grassroots level, the well-earned label slowly reveals itself as though Iloilo City has been waiting for the right moment to share more of what it is about to the world. On a mid-March visit to the Western Visayan city via a one-hour Cebu Pacific flight, I experienced how exactly it gives pieces of itself to tourists.

Motivated by heritage and love

If love races through Iloilo’s streets, then the slew of traditional and innovative dishes inhabiting the depths of its urban core are manifestations of that feeling. The emotional connection Ilonggos have with their food is another reminder of the power it wields to bring people together.

Camiña Balay nga Bato is one such historic place that leads to the love for Ilonggo cuisine. Established in 1865 and formerly known as Avancena House, the multifaceted ilustrado heritage house—adaptively reused into a restaurant, museum, and retail space in 2010—is an invitation to the creative gastronomic history of Iloilo.

Characterized by 15 slow food dishes in a lunch or dinner buffet, Camiña Balay nga Bato doesn’t bend so much to the whims of modern times. The food sticks to its historical integrity and deep respect for the past while sustaining itself into the future. And yet the impact is largely felt.

Pancit molo and ratotoy (an eggplant dish with tomatoes and onions) are exciting starts to kick off the affair before you make your way down the selection of embotido de Arevalo, adobo rice, and pancit miki Bisaya. But the foremost examples of Ilonggo cuisine’s impact can be found at the far end of the buffet where a carving station of either a pork binuong with a spicy sinamak or chicken inasal awaits diners.

Another individual who has had a successful approach to heritage cooking is Ian Varona who shows another side to the psyche of Iloilo. Born and bred in Villa Beach, Varona’s panoramic beachside restaurant 8 Villa Beach House in Arevalo tells a generational story of the city through what Varona calls “HispanicIlonggo coastal cuisine.”

“This whole place, actually Villa Beach, was started by my half-Spanish grandfather before the war and he worked in cruise ships and hotels, and he put his influence into what ingredients he saw around,” says Varona, who returned to Iloilo seven years ago to revive his grandfather’s food.

“This is going back to the roots and the time when there was no refrigeration, no mixes, no MSG,” he explains. “So all the food here is never frozen and everything served is within 30 kilometers of the restaurant, as we call it from the Iloilo Strait diretso to your plate.”

Varona prepares a diversity of dishes that creep into your senses: a sea-farmed boneless bangus, a sinigang na gingaw (pink snapper) that uses batwan for the sourness and acidity, an appetizing pinsec (akin to fried rice paper chips) to scoop the hinanggop—“essentially a medley of aromatics, like salsa”—that is drizzled with their sinamak, which are fermented for three months in his grandfather’s pre-World War II vats.

“This is going back to the roots and the time when there was no refrigeration, no mixes, no MSG,” Ian Varona explains. “So all the food here is never frozen and everything served is within 30 kilometers of the restaurant, as we call it from the Iloilo Strait diretso to your plate.”

Elsewhere, the playful “isaw” is driven by mushrooms instead of intestines while the grilled and baked talaba are done papisik (grilled while sitting on a bed of salt) to create steam and impart the saltiness into the oysters.

His grilled scallops and shrimp kinilaw (a family recipe) nod even more to the strait’s healthy bounty but Varona’s aligue rice flips the switch to provide some superb savory kick, thanks to what he tops it with—“chalibaba,” a portmanteau of “chicharon, aligue, bagoong, and baboy.”

“When you eat this, you are one step closer to heaven,” jokes Varona.

A visit to the courtyard of Iloilo

On the more contemporary facet of the city, Courtyard by Marriott Iloilo stands as a beacon of innovation in the historic city.

Vibrating around the more modern side of Iloilo, its new executive chef Bonn Reyes—who’s only been in the post for a little over a year—has made decisions that play out to the hotel’s advantage and their unique role in furthering the UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy distinction.

“The status is not just about fine dining food but also about using the local ingredients and elevating it to a different level,” says Reyes. In the short space of time that he’s been manning the culinary program of the hotel, the affable young chef who simply “wants to make people happy with my food” has scaled up the Indigenous elements in their repertoire of F&B outlets.

Since arriving in the hotel, Reyes has reimagined endemic ingredients like batwan, takway, kadios, and Guimaras mangoes into a constellation of recipes using Western techniques.

Batwan, for instance, is commonly used in the region as a souring agent in sinigang but Reyes transformed it into a cheesecake.

“We made it into a jam, adding sugar and boiling it together using the meat of the batwan and then when you put it in a cheesecake, it’s like a strawberry cheesecake with a more earthy element.” There’s also a vegetarian salisbury steak made with langka and a kadios jam served as a special amenity. “It’s usually in soups here, but incorporating it into a jam [made it feel and taste] like red mung beans.”

Though not new to exhibiting these types of creative pursuits—like the Marriott Moments A-Fair: Dream Weddings and Events Expo—Courtyard by Marriott confidently steps into the forefront of the food city’s positioning and wrestles with the pressure head on.

Since arriving in the hotel, Bonn Reyes has reimagined endemic ingredients like batwan, takway, kadios, and Guimaras mangoes into a constellation of recipes using Western techniques.

Dropping delicious gestures that signal the group rising to the culinary challenge, the optimistic initiatives they call “Fusion Fiesta” are all rooted in respect: for heritage and history, for the endemic produce, and most importantly for the local community that have made Iloilo such a dynamic food destination.

The love-based food fest dubbed My Love Dish is an undeniably fun vantage point for not only connecting with Ilonggo bloggers and reinterpreting their family’s heirloom dishes but also giving back, as a portion of the revenue will be initially given to Save the Children Philippines.

Promoting the initial “love dish fest” is Reyes’ rendition of A Not So Secret Life Iloilo’s Nana Jover’s chicken adobo with liver spread.

“When she told the story of her parents’ chicken adobo with liver spread, I was actually challenged because I have never tried it,” admits Reyes.

“There’s adobo sa atay but not adobo with liver spread. So I turned it into a chicken liver pate.” The result is an enjoyable dish that expands the Jover family adobo—full-bodied chicken roulade with a slightly spiced adobo sauce and a chicken liver pate that pairs well with the popped rice.

Branching out into sustainability

The same can also be said for the connection Courtyard by Marriott makes with local fisherfolk and consumers through The Good Catch: Sustainable Seafood Dinner Buffet, a weekly culinary affair held every Friday at Runway Kitchen. 

Created in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Region IV, this initiative supports the “Fish It Right Program,” promoting sustainable fishing practices and honoring Filipino heritage during Earth Month.

Partnerships make business sense and they are the building blocks behind the success stories of Courtyard by Marriott’s initiatives. First, with Better Seafood Philippines, a non-governmental organization that, according to its mission and values, “seeks to promote responsible sourcing practices along the Philippine seafood supply chains.”

“Here in Iloilo there’s a lot of fisheries but again, what is the gap between them? Those small fisheries and companies cannot sustain the capital for the kinds of dealings with other big companies,” explains Bonn Reyes.

“They educate on what to fish, how big the fish should be to sell it in the right size or age,” Reyes says. “Even our crabs right now coming from Igbon [are properly measured].”

Another partner that’s crucial in supporting their sustainability initiatives is Agro-DigitalPH, a digital solutions platform that brings together small farms and cooperatives then links them directly to consumers and institutions like Courtyard by Marriott Iloilo.

“Here in Iloilo there’s a lot of fisheries but again, what is the gap between them? Those small fisheries and companies cannot sustain the capital for the kinds of dealings with other big companies,” explains Reyes.

“So [Agro-DigitalPH] is the bridge between those two… they are the ones finding capital, they are the ones educating the fisherfolk on how to sustainably source and sustainably harvest fish.”

This circles back to Runway Kitchen’s sustainable seafood dinner buffet where the good cycle acknowledges a business model that supports everyone in the value chain. The most concrete example of which is the sustainably sourced red and blue crabs delivered direct from Concepcion, Igbon.

“They sell us their products and Agro-DigitalPH will then sell them the products they need to continuously harvest like baits and nets,” says Reyes. The process also covers the problem of fisherfolk going to the city and back to their island. “So, really bridging both sides of the [value chain].”

Grilled, baked, slathered in butter, stewed in a rich broth, or simply pan-seared, the taste of the sea is punctuated by a devotion to community empowerment.

And then of course the crabs, shrimps, and variety of fish like lapu-lapu, tuna, and pompano occupy a special section in the buffet where customers can then choose how they would like to eat the fresh seafood.

Grilled, baked, slathered in butter, stewed in a rich broth, or simply pan-seared, the taste of the sea is punctuated by a devotion to community empowerment.

Plain sailing, epic escapes in Iloilo

While it’s 100 percent sure that food and history—and the sometimes intertwining of the two—are usual endgames for anyone going to Iloilo, sailing into the sunset is a symbolic arc of where this creative gastronomic city is headed.

Led by a couple of hobbyists-turned-entrepreneurs, Epic Escapes is an exciting startup that is a welcome addition to Iloilo’s body of work (and water). 

The journey starts at The Boat Club Iloilo where you’ll find boats berthed in their respective positions before you board one—a sleek vessel that can hold up to 14 people—and coast down the Iloilo River and out into the strait.

Once the team reaches a predetermined spot close to Guimaras, it’s hard to overstate the natural beauty of the environment when you’re surrounded by solace. Partner that with a platter of seafood, pancit, and pastries prepared by Courtyard by Marriott and the golden sun cementing itself on the horizon, and you’ve got a recipe for solace and serenity.

The vibe is familiar and fresh, as if the Ilonggo crew is simply intent to just let you go with the flow of the splendid sunset cruise.

The vibe is familiar and fresh, as if the Ilonggo crew is simply intent to just let you go with the flow of the splendid sunset cruise.

As you swoon over the scenery with the incredibly warm people and into the happy ending you’ve always deserved, you realize that creativity is indeed Iloilo’s love language—whether that’s made by man or nature itself.