Baguio Food Culture

This could fairly be called a ritual. They beat the live chicken with a stick first (the bruising brings blood to the surface and changes the meat's texture), then cook it with etag - salt-cured pork that tastes like concentrated mountain air. The broth arrives cloudy and slightly metallic, with pieces of chicken that have a dense, almost rubbery chew you won't find in regular tinola.

Forget everything you know about Manila's syrupy taho. Here, the warm silken tofu comes topped with Baguio's tiny, intensely sweet strawberries instead of brown sugar syrup. The berries pop between your teeth while the tofu slides down like liquid velvet.

Day-old rice fried in pork fat rendered from etag, with bits of the cured meat crisped until they shatter between molars. The smell hits you first: smoke and salt and something almost blue-cheese funky.

This is what happens when you take purple yams that grew slowly in mountain soil and cook them down with carabao milk until they reach the consistency of thick peanut butter. The flavor is deeper than any ube you've had - less sweet, more earthy, with a texture that clings to your spoon like purple lava.

These aren't your Starbucks beans. Grown at 4,500 feet in Atok, the arabica has a bright, almost wine-like acidity with none of the burnt bitterness you associate with Filipino coffee. The beans smell like chocolate and pine needles when ground.

Smaller than the Vigan version, with a snap when you bite through the casing and fat that melts on contact with a hot pan. The flavor leans sweet-savory with a hit of garlic that lingers for hours.

These aren't tops as in "leftover" - they're the tender shoots of chayote plants that grow wild here. The leaves have a slight bitterness that cuts through grilled meat, dressed with cane vinegar and tiny tomatoes that taste like they were picked an hour ago.

Don't expect Napa. This stuff is sweet enough to make your teeth ache, but there's something charming about drinking alcohol made from fruit that was on a vine yesterday. The pink color looks artificial but isn't, and the taste is pure strawberry jam with a kick.

Blood sausage made with pig's blood and rice, stuffed into intestines and grilled until the casing cracks. The inside stays soft and slightly grainy, tasting like iron and smoke with a texture that squeaks between your teeth.

Smoked pork that's been air-dried in the mountain breeze for weeks. The outside forms a hard shell that you crack with your teeth, revealing meat that's concentrated and sweet-salty. It tastes like the inside of a campfire.

Sweet potato leaves blended with calamansi and honey. The color is alarming - radioactive green - but the taste is bright and grassy with a citrus finish.

The mountain version of this beef shank soup has marrow so soft it spreads like butter, in a broth that's been simmering since before dawn. The vegetables - cabbage, corn, potatoes - taste like themselves instead of waterlogged versions.