Where To Eat

What's a good vacation without good food? Zamboanga offers a wide array of gastronomic delights for people with impeccable taste for food, from native home cooking to international cuisine. Dining can be done in style and elegance in cozy, comfotable surroundings in some of the fine hotels and specialty restaurants in town. Other more affordable dining places or casual eateries can be found almost anywhere in the city.

Savor the best seafood, fruits and delicacies uniquely Zamboanga to your heart's content. Have your taste of its fabled Curacha, a crossbreed of the large sea crab and the big spiny lobster, that is found only in the waters around Zamboanga and nowhere else in the world. Try authentic Chavacano cuisine that brings the best of Spanish and Malay gastronomy. Indulge in the mouth-watering flavors and vibrant natural colors of magosteen, marang, durian, lanzones, young coconut and wani mango. Zamboanga is a place not only of beauty but also of bounty. Buen Apetito!

Travel Tip

When you go to a country, you must learn how to say two things: how to ask for food, and to tell a woman that you love her. Of these the second is more important, for if you tell a woman you love her she will certainly feed you.

- Louis L'Amour

Seafood Restaurants

Alavar Seafood Restaurant

One of the most popular sea food restaurants in the city. Alavar is just about one of the few places where the young and the young at heart will not only get to taste excellent sea food, but the original Spanish Creole recipes as well that evoke memories of Zamboanga’s colorful past.

Hai San Seafood Market and Restaurant

Unique sea food restaurant allows its customers to pick their choice of fresh sea catch contained in shallow containers before these are brought to the kitchen. The fresh catch include the famous “curacha,” lobsters and “lapu-lapu,” or groupers.

La Vista Del Mar Restaurant

Elegant outdoor sea food restaurant that offers good food with a great view of the sea complemented with its décor of vinta sail boats. Try its roasted freshly harvested prawns served on bamboo trays or grilled milk fish called “bangus” with a dipping of soy sauce, mild vinegar and chili.