American food in Manila: burgers, warehouse clubs, game day and Thanksgiving turkey

Manila might be the easiest city in Asia to eat like an American. Decades of close ties with the US mean burgers, fried chicken, doughnuts and warehouse clubs are part of everyday Filipino life. You'll just find spaghetti on the McDonald's menu.

The short version

• US chains are everywhere. McDonald's has been here since 1981 and had over 800 stores by 2025; Wendy's since 1983; Shake Shack since 2019 [1][2][3].
• Warehouse clubs are the closest thing to a Costco run. S&R started in 2001 as a PriceSmart franchise and Landers opened in 2016. Both are members only [5][7].
• Game day comes at breakfast. A 1:00 p.m. Sunday NFL kickoff on the East Coast is 2:00 a.m. Monday in Manila, and the Super Bowl lands on Monday morning.
• Basketball is king. The NBA is hugely popular, so finding a bar or restaurant with the game on is rarely hard.
• Thanksgiving is a regular workday here. Order your turkey and fixings early.

US chains: the taste of home

Walk into any big Manila mall and you could be in suburban America for a minute, until you read the menu.

The Filipino twist

Here's the heads-up nobody gives you: American chains here adapt to Filipino tastes. McDonald's sells the Chicken McDo, fried chicken with rice and gravy, introduced in 1987, and the McSpaghetti, a sweet tomato pasta with bits of hot dog, from 1986 [1]. Rice comes with a lot of meals. Ketchup is often banana ketchup. Lean into it. Filipino-style sweet spaghetti is a kids' birthday party staple, and you'll be eating it at office parties soon enough.

You'll also run into Jollibee, the homegrown fast food giant that Filipino-Americans back home already know. Its Chickenjoy fried chicken has a cult following on both sides of the Pacific.

Where to look

• Bonifacio Global City (BGC). The old US Army base Fort William McKinley, handed over to the Philippines in 1949, is now a district of malls, condos and restaurants, master-planned by the American firm HOK [9]. Bonifacio High Street and Uptown are dense with international and American-style restaurants.
• Makati. Greenbelt, Glorietta and Legaspi Village have plenty of burger joints, steakhouses and brunch spots.
• Every big mall. SM, Ayala and Robinsons malls across the metro have food courts full of US brands.

We're only naming chains and stores we could verify. For the newest burger spot or steakhouse, ask around.

Groceries: warehouse clubs and import grocers

S&R Membership Shopping

S&R is the closest thing Manila has to Costco. It opened in November 2001 in Bonifacio Global City as S&R PriceSmart, a franchise of the US chain PriceSmart, and its name honors the American businessmen Sol and Robert Price [5]. It's now owned by Puregold Price Club and had 34 warehouse clubs as of September 2026, 11 of them in Metro Manila [5].

Expect big packs, a members-only door and a lot of US brands. S&R's site lists names like Hershey's, Heinz and Pringles, plus its own Member's Value store brand and seasonal Christmas and Halloween ranges [6]. The membership fee isn't shown on the homepage, so ask at the membership desk [6].

Landers Superstore

Landers is a membership warehouse club run by Southeast Asia Retail Inc. Its first branch opened on June 22, 2016, along EDSA in Balintawak, Quezon City, and it had 16 branches by December 2025 [7]. Metro Manila branches include Balintawak and Arcovia City in Pasig [7]. The Fairview branch was temporarily closed after a fire in January 2026 [7], so check before you drive over.

Import grocers and supermarkets

For smaller trips, upscale supermarkets carry imported cereal, baking supplies, cheese and condiments. The old Rustan's supermarkets became The Marketplace, and Shopwise is a hypermarket from the same family, both now under Robinsons Retail [8]. Expect sticker shock on imported goods. A box of US cereal can cost more than a Filipino family meal.

What's hard to find

Even with warehouse clubs, some things are spotty: specific US brands of baking chips, canned pumpkin outside the holidays, decent root beer and certain over-the-counter medicines. Many Americans stock up on trips home or use a US mail forwarding service for the essentials, and Filipino-American families have the balikbayan box. Our guide to balikbayan boxes explains how they work.

Game day: NFL and NBA in Manila

Manila doesn't switch clocks for daylight saving time, so the gap with the East Coast changes during the year. In November, Manila is 13 hours ahead of New York.

That means Sunday afternoon football becomes Monday morning breakfast, and most Americans with office jobs end up streaming at their desk or catching the replay. The Super Bowl Monday breakfast is a well-loved expat tradition: if you can take the morning off, a hotel or bar showing the game with eggs and beer is the way to do it.

Basketball is a different story. The Philippines is basketball crazy, between the NBA and the local PBA, and plenty of bars and restaurants put NBA games on during the morning and early afternoon. College football and baseball are harder to find on a public screen; a streaming subscription is your friend.

We haven't listed sports bars by name because their game-day schedules change from season to season. Ask in our community group for Americans in the Philippines where the game is on this week.

Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July

Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in the Philippines, so you'll be at work on Thursday. But the Christmas season here starts in September, so stores are already in holiday mode by late November, and that helps.

How Americans usually handle turkey day:

1. Order early. Whole turkeys are a special order item in a lot of places. Check the frozen section at warehouse clubs and upscale supermarkets in early November, and ask the meat counter whether they can order one in.
2. Check your oven. Many Manila apartment ovens are small. Measure before you buy a 15-pound (7 kg) bird, or order a fully cooked turkey and sides from a hotel or restaurant.
3. Shop for the sides. Canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce and stuffing mix can sell out in late November. Buy them when you see them.
4. Make it a Saturday. Plenty of Americans hold their dinner the weekend after, so friends can come.

For the Fourth of July, note that the Philippines also marks July 4 as Philippine-American Friendship Day, though it's not a public holiday. Many Americans in Manila keep it simple: burgers, hot dogs and a cooler on a condo roof deck.

Around Memorial Day and Veterans Day, the Manila American Cemetery in BGC, which honors the Allied dead of the Pacific campaign in World War II, is worth a visit [9].

Sources

1. Wikipedia: McDonald's Philippines
2. Wikipedia: Shake Shack
3. Wikipedia: Wendy's
4. Wikipedia: Krispy Kreme
5. Wikipedia: S&R Membership Shopping
6. S&R Membership Shopping
7. Wikipedia: Landers Superstore
8. Wikipedia: Rustan's
9. Wikipedia: Bonifacio Global City

Keep reading

• American life in Manila
• Nightlife in Manila
• Filipino-American families and balikbayan boxes
• Shipping your things and pets from the US