Merienda
An afternoon (or sometimes mid-morning) snack meal in Filipino culture — often a light savory or sweet dish eaten between lunch and dinner.
Merienda is a built-in part of the Filipino daily eating rhythm, roughly equivalent to a British afternoon tea but with a much wider range of food — anything from a bowl of taho from a street vendor to a plate of turon, a cup of instant noodles, or leftover kakanin. It's less about a specific dish than about the occasion: a pause in the day for something to eat, often shared.
Some households have a formal "merienda time," especially for children coming home from school, while for others it's simply whatever's around between meals.
Where you'll taste it
Recipes on Pancit.com that call for merienda.
Pancit Habhab
Lucban, Quezon's stir-fried miki noodles with pork and shrimp, served on a banana leaf and eaten by hand.
Puto
Soft, fluffy steamed rice cakes — the everyday companion to pancit and dinuguan.
Taho
Warm silken tofu topped with brown sugar syrup and chewy tapioca pearls.
Turon
Crisp fried spring rolls of saba banana and jackfruit in a caramelized brown sugar shell.
Champorado
Sticky chocolate rice porridge finished with evaporated milk — a rainy-day breakfast classic.
Hopia
Flaky, laminated pastry wrapped around a sweet mung bean filling, plus ube, baboy, and other popular varieties.
Polvoron
Toasted flour, milk, sugar, and butter pressed into a crumbly candy, plus pinipig, cashew, ube, and cocoa varieties.
Pastillas de Leche
Milk and condensed milk rolled into a soft candy, coated in sugar and twisted in wax paper.