Asked to name your favorite dish from Japanese, Italian, Mexican, or Indian cuisine, and a flood of options may come to mind. Should you choose ramen or sushi? Pizza or pasta? Tacos or enchiladas? Butter chicken or saag paneer? Yet when asked to recall a treasured dish of the Philippines, you may find yourself stumped to identify a single entree.

It’s been five years since food writer Andrew Zimmern predicted Filipino cuisine was going to become “the next big thing.” Yet the flavors of the Philippines are still largely misunderstood by the rest of the world. Food stylists have been known to position chopsticks alongside Filipino dishes, assuming the country’s Southeast Asian geography means chopsticks are used as the primary delivery vehicle for food, when it is, in fact, forks and spoons. Balut, or developing bird embryo, has been erected as a lazy stand-in for a cuisine as varied and nuanced as its 18 regions.

Often called the original fusion cuisine, Filipino food is an intricate pattern of Spanish, Western, Chinese, Japanese, and Pacific Islander flavors that serve as living proof of the country’s rich cultural history. Chicken or pork adobo uses the Spanish term adobo meaning “marinade” to drench meats in a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar. Kare kare, or oxtail stew, derives its name from “curry” as a result of the country’s deeply rooted Indian heritage. The celebrated use of Spam—fried to golden crisps in spamsilog or served in sandwiches between fluffy French bread topped with a fried egg—remains a symbol of the American influence during World War II.

But make no mistake: The palate of Filipino food is entirely its own, relying on acids and sweetness perhaps more than any other cuisine. The crunchy, indulgent exterior of lechon, or whole spit-roasted pig, is lightened with a dip of lechon sauce made from vinegar, sugar, and a pinch of liver. Savory dishes like pork longganisa (a sausage made of ground pork) and Jollibee-style spaghetti (pasta slicked with tomato sauce and a kick of sugar) are sweeter than one might expect. It’s here that flavors don’t blend together so much as sit atop one another, lifting each up into an addictive symphony of tangy, salty, and sweet.

Although the cuisine is pork heavy, a natural abundance of seafood and tropical fruit has given rise to dishes that are light without being bland. Think mango and tomato salads finished with tart calamansi juice and bagoong, an umami-rich fermented fish sauce native to the Philippines. Or tilapia sinigang, a delicate soup for which whitefish is poached in sour tamarind broth alongside fresh greens like water spinach and bok choy.