La Guerta Kuzina

La Guerta Kuzina, on the circumferential road in Maria, blends Filipino and Chinese home cooking in a garden setting, and also caters for private events.

4.5/5 on 106 Google reviews, on the circumferential road in Maria. La Guerta Kuzina is a family Filipino table, and its speciality is not a dish: it is a way of eating.

The boodle fight. This is the Filipino communal meal: rice and dishes are spread over banana leaves down the middle of the table, with no plates and no cutlery, and everyone eats with their hands, standing or sitting, at the same time. The practice comes from the Philippine military, where officers and soldiers ate together from the same spread. It is worth doing once on the island, and this is where you can order it. The house has advertised it at 1,500 ₱ for the table, but that figure is several years old: ask for the current price when you book.

What to order from the menu: the beef kansi, the sour beef shank soup typical of the Western Visayas, is the dish the house puts forward most. Then: chicken adobo, pork sinigang, beef caldereta, gambas, fried chicken, and a mango shake.

The house also caters for events, which is what the boodle fight format comes from.

Opening hours: not published. No public source lists them. Two numbers circulate in the directories, +63 917 202 6720 and +63 966 785 3063: try one then the other, and get the time confirmed before driving out to Maria.

Our honest take: the Google rating is good, but the only detailed review we could read, an older one, reported disorganised service (coconuts ordered as an aperitif arriving halfway through the meal) and modest portions. For a boodle fight, give notice: it is not a ten-minute dish.