Having lived and traveled in nearly all of Southeast Asia, I've been able to sample a wide variety of cuisines. I love the Philippines as a country, love Filipinos as a people, and loved the time I served a mission there. That being said, I rank Filipino food at the bottom of all the various Asian and Southeast Asian food lists. Simply not enough variety, spice, and flavor to compete.
In my opinion, the good and more well-known Filipino dishes (such as lumpia, adobo, lechon, etc.) generally have a counterpart in the cuisine of other SE Asian or Pacific Island countries that is better.
I'm not saying I
dislike Filipino food - I'm just saying that I would probably prefer most any other SE Asian cuisine over Philippine cuisine.
I suppose you can count balut in the "variety" category as well but that isn't buying much.
