Philippines cost of living, Part 2 of 3 — groceries, local meals and eating Korean food.

Approximate Korean-won conversions follow the rule of thumb I used when living there: ₱1 ≈ ₩25. They are not today’s exchange rate.

It is possible to eat cheaply in the Philippines. But keeping the same food habits you had in Korea is not necessarily cheap. I first noticed the difference not in a restaurant but while shopping for groceries.

I Started Shopping at SM Hypermarket

When I first settled in Angeles City, I went to SM Hypermarket inside SM City Clark. Large supermarkets were familiar from Korea, so it seemed like the obvious place to shop.

But some of the prices surprised me. Vegetables in particular were more expensive than I had expected.

It is easy to assume that a country with lower average incomes must have cheaper groceries across the board. In practice, prices varied widely by item and where I shopped. Some vegetables felt surprisingly costly even when compared with meat by weight.

One example that stayed in my memory was siling labuyo, the small, fiery hot chili. I remember a price approaching ₱1,000 per kilogram at the time—roughly ₩25,000 using my old conversion rule.

At least in the shopping environment I knew, vegetables were not automatically the affordable option.

Even Chicken Wasn’t Always Much Cheaper Than in Korea

Meat was not uniformly inexpensive either. To put that memory in context, I looked at data from February 2025.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s average retail-price figures, dressed broiler chicken cost ₱215.47 per kilogram. In the fourth week of February 2025, a Korean retail-price survey reported chicken at ₩5,500 per kilogram in traditional markets.

Using ₱1 ≈ ₩25, the Philippine price comes to roughly ₩5,387—very close in nominal won terms.

That is an illustration, not a matched international price index. One figure is a Philippine national average, the other a Korean traditional-market survey; the products and sampling methods are not identical.

Sources: Philippine Statistics Authority, poultry retail prices and Korea Price Information, fourth week of February 2025.

Why I Switched to Pampang Public Market

Eventually I changed where I shopped. Instead of relying on the large supermarket, I started going to Pampang Public Market to look for better prices on groceries.

It was a practical decision: I wanted to make everyday shopping more reasonable.

Just as prices can differ between big supermarkets, neighborhood stores and traditional markets in Korea, they differ among retailers in the Philippines. Shopping in a large supermarket does not tell you the price level of every local market, and finding a few cheap items in a market doesn’t prove that groceries everywhere are cheap.

The cost of vegetables also made me think about everyday meals. Among some people I ate with, rice and meat dishes appeared more often than the variety of vegetable side dishes I was used to in Korea.

I wondered whether vegetable prices might play a part, but they cannot explain an entire food culture. Filipino cooking includes many vegetable dishes, and food habits differ by household, region and tradition.

What I can say from my own experience is that shopping for vegetables cost more than I expected.

A Meal at a Carinderia Could Cost ₱65

Eating out could be a very different story. At a carinderia (also spelled karinderya), a small local eatery serving prepared dishes, I remember paying around ₱15 for rice and ₱50 for a meat dish.

That made a meal of about ₱65. Depending on the dishes, I could eat for ₱65–80. Some cheaper side dishes cost around ₱30.

I saw similar setups in canteens, although a canteen can also mean a workplace or school dining area, so it is not exactly the same type of business. Some places also offered unli rice—unlimited rice.

For a Korean visitor, ₱65 is a remarkably inexpensive lunch. But in Part 1 I described the roughly ₱515 base daily wage I paid employees years ago. A ₱65 meal was around 12.6% of that wage. Two such meals would take about a quarter of the base daily income.

The price on the menu was the same. The meaning of that price depended on who was paying.

Korean Restaurants Changed the Budget

When I wanted Korean food, the numbers shifted. At places I visited, simpler dishes such as ramyeon or gimbap could often be found for under ₱300.

For kimchi jjigae or doenjang jjigae, however, I generally expected to spend roughly ₩10,000. Locally sourced meat could sometimes feel slightly cheaper than in Korea, while imported Korean meat was often not dramatically less expensive and sometimes felt dearer.

These are recollections from particular restaurants, not current standard menu prices throughout the Philippines.

I have written separately about service and cultural differences in Korean restaurants: Korean Restaurants in the Philippines vs. Korea: It Wasn’t the Food. Here, the important point is the food budget.

If you keep craving the same Korean meals and eat at Korean restaurants regularly, much of the savings associated with local food can disappear.

Is Jollibee Cheap for Everyone?

Jollibee may look like affordable fast food to someone spending Korean-earned income.

But in some families I encountered, a family outing to Jollibee seemed more like a weekend treat than an ordinary everyday meal. That is not a statement about every Filipino family.

The underlying point is simple: a few thousand won spent on a meal in Korea is not the same decision as feeding an entire family from a much smaller local daily wage.

Starbucks, Paik’s Coffee and PICKUP COFFEE

I noticed another difference in coffee prices. In my experience, Starbucks in the Philippines felt around 5–10% cheaper than comparable purchases in Korea.

But Paik’s Coffee, known as a budget coffee brand in Korea, did not feel much cheaper than Starbucks in the Philippines. Meanwhile, PICKUP COFFEE was noticeably inexpensive.

Those were my impressions at the time, not a study matching cup size, menu, promotions and store location. A brand’s position in one country does not automatically carry over to another.

One Soju Could Cost as Much as Six Beers

Drinking out revealed an even sharper difference between businesses. I remember a bottle of soju costing about ₱250–300 in Korean restaurants, while San Miguel beer there was around ₱80 a bottle.

At some local pubs, a bucket of six beers cost roughly ₱250–300. I remember Red Horse being slightly more expensive.

That means a bottle of soju in one type of establishment could cost about as much as six beers in another. It doesn’t say anything about the drinks’ wholesale costs; the business models and settings were different.

I also remember spending around ₱1,000 on a Korean-restaurant meal with about two bottles of soju—roughly ₩25,000 by my old conversion.

For a Korean diner that may not sound outrageous. For someone earning a low local wage, it is a serious discretionary expense.

What Eating Cheaply in the Philippines Really Means

If you buy groceries at local markets, eat at carinderias and choose local coffee or beer, living costs can be considerably lower from the perspective of Korean income.

If you frequently eat Korean food and socialize as you did in Korea, spending climbs. The Philippines was not simply a country where food was cheap; the cost depended on the eating habits you chose.

For the wage perspective behind that distinction, see what I learned hiring employees in the Philippines.

What about housing? In the final part, I compare two places I actually lived in Angeles City: a ₱10,000 local condo and a ₱25,000 hotel-style long-stay room, where electricity became an unexpectedly large part of the bill.

Featured photo credit: Philippine public-market vegetables. © 2017 Adryan R. Villanueva / Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped and resized. This is an illustrative market image, not a photograph of Pampang Public Market.