What Is Sisig? The History of the Sizzling Filipino Dish
Sisig started as a sour salad in a 1732 Kapampangan dictionary. The story from Pampanga and Clark Air Base to Aling Lucing's hot plate, and where to eat it in Halifax.
Barrios Restaurant & Bar
9/29/20263 min read
The History of Sisig: From Pampanga to a Halifax Hot Plate
Sisig is chopped pork with crisp edges, served sizzling on a cast-iron plate with an egg on top. That is what arrives at the table in Halifax.
It is not what the word meant nearly three hundred years ago. Back then there was no pork in it at all.
Sisig started as a sour salad
In 1732, an Augustinian friar named Diego Bergaño published a Kapampangan dictionary. He recorded sisig as a salad: green papaya or green guava, dressed with salt, pepper, garlic and vinegar.
No pork. No hot plate. Sour fruit and a sharp dressing, written down seventeen years before Halifax was founded.
Sourness is the thread that runs through everything that came after. Vinegar is still in the dish today, and the name never stopped pointing at it.
Pampanga, Clark Air Base and the pig's head
Pampanga is the province north of Manila with the strongest claim to being the country's kitchen. Sisig belongs to it.
Angeles City sits in Pampanga, next to Clark Air Base, which the Americans ran until 1991. The usual account is that the base commissaries had no use for pig heads, so they went out cheap or free, and cooks in Angeles City started working with them.
That is the raw material. What came next turned it into something people crossed the province for.
Aling Lucing and the hot plate
Lucia Cunanan, known to everyone as Aling Lucing, developed her version of sisig in Angeles City in the middle of 1974. Grilled and chopped pig ears and cheeks, seasoned with vinegar, calamansi juice and chopped onions, with chicken liver worked through it, served on a hot plate.
That is the dish as most people know it now, and both halves matter: the grilling and chopping, and the cast iron.
The plate keeps cooking the meat at the table, so the edges go on crisping while you eat and the last spoonful is still hot. It also means the dish arrives loud.
The Department of Tourism credits her restaurant with making Angeles City the sisig capital of the Philippines in 1974. She was killed at her home in April 2008, at eighty. Angeles City started a sisig festival in 2003 and made it an annual December event the following year.
What is actually in sisig
The classic cut is the pig's head. Cheeks and ears, boiled until tender, grilled over coals, then chopped fine. Many versions keep the chicken liver that Aling Lucing used.
Three textures in one spoonful is the point: soft meat, gelatinous skin, crisp grilled edge, with the sour cutting through all of it.
Modern versions add mayonnaise, or crack an egg onto the hot plate and stir it through while it cooks. Traditionalists in Pampanga think both are a mistake. Most of the country does it anyway, and so do we. The egg turns the plate creamy and takes the edge off the salt.
Plenty of kitchens outside Pampanga use pork belly or shoulder instead of the head, because it is easier to buy. Kapampangans consider that a different dish.
Sisig is pulutan
Pulutan is the Filipino word for what you eat while you are drinking, and sisig is on every list of it. Salty, fatty and sour on purpose, which is exactly what you want beside a cold beer.
It is also a full meal with rice, and plenty of people order it that way. Both are correct.
Where to eat sisig in Halifax
We serve sisig at Barrios Kitchen & Bar: chopped roasted pork seasoned with soy sauce and chili, sizzling on cast iron with a fresh egg cracked on top and steamed rice alongside. Mix the egg through while the plate is still going.
We are at 1571 Barrington Street in downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia. Open Tuesday to Saturday from 11:30 AM, until 9 PM Tuesday to Thursday and 11 PM Friday and Saturday. Closed Mondays. Sunday is Filipino brunch, 10:30 AM to 4 PM. Call 902-444-2515 or book a table.
Quick answers
What is sisig?
Chopped pork, classically from the pig's head, grilled and served sizzling on a cast-iron plate with calamansi and onion. Sour, salty and rich.
What did sisig originally mean?
A sour salad. Diego Bergaño's 1732 Kapampangan dictionary records it as green papaya or guava with salt, pepper, garlic and vinegar.
Who invented sizzling sisig?
Lucia Cunanan, known as Aling Lucing, in Angeles City in 1974. Grilled and chopped pig ears and cheeks with chicken liver, served on a hot plate.
Why is sisig served on a hot plate?
The cast iron keeps crisping the edges at the table, so the texture keeps changing while you eat it.
Is sisig spicy?
Ours is mild. The chili is there, but it sits under the salt rather than on top of it.
Where can I eat sisig in Halifax?
Barrios Kitchen & Bar, 1571 Barrington Street, downtown Halifax. Tuesday to Saturday from 11:30 AM, Sunday brunch 10:30 AM to 4 PM, closed Mondays.
Further reading
Pepper.ph tells the fuller story of Aling Lucing, including how it ended.