fishing town north of Manila. With thin rice noodles, sautéed and tossed with pork, chicken, shrimp, vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, and chicharon, it’s called pancit bihon, from the Hokkien term bee hoon meaning rice vermicelli. Take the same noodles, cook them in boiling water, toss in a shrimp sauce with all the toppings, add achuete powder for color, and it’s pancit palabok. (“Palabok” in Tagalog means “added flavor.”) One can go from north to south on the Philippine map and match each province to its pancit, as food historian Claude Tayag has done, calling out pancit canton, pancit sotanghon, pancit palabok, pancit habhab, pancit langlang, batchoy, udong, miki, molo, lomi.



Manila’s homegrown variation, invented in the 1920s by a Chinese immigrant called Ma Mon Luk, is called pancit mami. Aended the Spanish-American War, a decrepit colonial power sold its last important possession to an emerging one for $20 million. Unfortunately, nobody told the newly established Philippine Revolutionary Government, so the deal that ended one war also launched another: the brief-but-brutal, three-year-long Philippine-American war.



The Philippines became America’s only formal colony. For 35 years the United States worked to shape a fledgling, little-understood nation in its image: government, education, language, urban planning, and, of course, food, particularly processed foods like corned beef and refined wheat flour. The flour, imported in bulk, was cheaper than rice, so places like Kamuning Bakery, which opened in 1939, popped up around Manila to prepare small, airy pan de sal, or salt bread.



Pan de sal is best in the morning, fresh out of a