How to · 2026-08-18

Never Had Filipino Food? Start With These Five

New to Filipino food? Order lumpia, sisig, pancit, chicken adobo and halo halo. Five dishes in the order a first timer should meet them, in Al Barsha, Dubai.

The short answer, if you are standing in the doorway deciding: Lumpiang Shanghai, Beef Sisig, Pancit Bihon, Adobong Manok, Halo Halo. One crisp thing, one sizzling thing, one noodle, one stew, one dessert. Between them they cover most of what Filipino cooking actually does, and not one of them asks anything of you beyond a fork.

What Filipino food tastes like, in one paragraph

Sour, salty and sweet, usually in the same mouthful, with rice underneath holding it together. Filipino cooking leans on vinegar, soy, calamansi and tamarind rather than dried spice, so it reads savoury and bright instead of hot. It is not a chilli cuisine.

Why these five and not the famous ones

Filipino food often gets introduced badly. A first timer is handed the most extreme dish on the table, decides the cuisine tastes of that one thing, and never comes back. These five are the ones our first timers finish, and two of them, the lumpia and the pancit, carry the best seller mark on our menu.

The five, in the order to eat them

• Lumpiang Shanghai, first. Finger-thin spring rolls cut short, crisp the whole way through, gone in two bites. Nobody has ever needed persuading on this one.
• Beef Sisig, second. Chopped meat seasoned sharp with calamansi and chilli, on a cast iron plate still sizzling when it lands. Nine of our Google reviewers name it, and the long version is in our sisig guide.
• Pancit Bihon, third. Thin rice noodles tossed with vegetables and meat, mild by design and easy to share. Filipinos serve pancit at birthdays because long noodles are meant to mean long life, so if you are handed a plate at a Filipino party, that is why.
• Adobong Manok, fourth. Chicken simmered in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, bay leaf and black pepper until the sauce goes dark and salty-sour. Adobo is the closest thing the country has to a national dish, and every Filipino family will tell you their version is the correct one.
• Halo Halo, last. Shaved ice under evaporated milk with sweet toppings buried beneath. Halo halo means mix mix, and that is an instruction: stir the glass into one purple mess before your first spoon.

How much to order for two people

A starter, two mains and one dessert feeds two comfortably, because every main already comes with one free rice. Filipino portions assume sharing, so ordering one dish each is the mistake most first timers make. Order less than you think and add later: the kitchen runs ten to fifteen minutes at a normal hour.

What to leave for the third visit

• Papaitan and Bopis. Both are offal dishes, both are deliberately bitter or sharp, and both land much better once you already like the cuisine.
• Ginisang Ampalaya with Egg. Ampalaya is bitter melon, and the bitterness is the point rather than a fault in the cooking.
• Sinigang is not a skip, it is the next step. Sour tamarind soup, the dish many Filipinos quietly judge a kitchen by, explained in our sinigang guide.

Ordering when you do not know the words

Tell us how many are eating and what you do not eat, and we will build the order with you on WhatsApp. Nobody expects you to pronounce anything correctly.

No pork is served at Pinoy Tambayan. That is the first question most mixed groups in Dubai ask, and it is worth answering before you invite anyone rather than after.

For four or more, the boodle fight removes the ordering problem entirely: seafood and rice down banana leaves, unlimited rice and iced lemon tea included.

Words you will see on the menu

• Ulam: the dish that goes with rice. Filipinos do not order a main, they order an ulam and the rice is assumed.
• Sabaw: soup or broth. A sabaw dish is meant to be spooned over rice, not drunk from a cup.
• Sinangag: garlic fried rice. It turns up as the second half of every silog set.
• Pulutan: food eaten while drinking and talking, closer to bar snacks than to starters.
• Merienda: the afternoon snack hour, roughly three o'clock, and a real meal rather than a biscuit.
• Kamayan: eating with your hands, explained properly in our kamayan guide.
• Sarap: delicious. If you learn one word before you arrive, learn this one.

If you do not eat meat

Filipino cooking is meat-heavy by habit rather than by rule, and the vegetable side of it is real food rather than an afterthought. Tofu Sisig comes out on the same sizzling plate as the beef version, Ginataang Gulay is squash and beans in coconut milk, and Chopsuey and Stirfry Broccoli with Tofu are both on the menu every day. Tell us at the point of ordering and the kitchen will keep the fish sauce out.

First timer questions we get asked

We are open every day from 8:00 AM until 1:00 AM, rated 4.5 on Google. Come hungry, order the five, and argue about the adobo afterwards.