Gata and sili
Two ingredients explain nearly all of it. Coconut milk, gata, and chilli, sili. Bicol cooks with more of both than anywhere else in the Philippines, and that is not a marketing line, it is what the food tastes like.
Pork, coconut milk, shrimp paste and a great deal of chilli. Named after the Manila to Bicol train, and known in Bicol itself as an outsider’s name for something people here just cook.
Dried taro leaves simmered slowly in coconut milk with chilli and often pork or dried fish. Cooked badly it is itchy. Cooked properly it is the single dish that defines Bicolano food.
Taro leaves wrapped into parcels around a filling and simmered in coconut milk. Camalig in Albay is the town most associated with it.
Flaked fish, traditionally stingray or shark, in coconut milk with malunggay. The species question is worth asking your cook about; some are protected.
Chilli ice cream, most famously from the Cagsawa area. It is a novelty and it is also a fair introduction to how much heat Bicolano cooking assumes you can take.
The regional nut, grown across Bicol and Sorsogon in particular. Sold roasted, candied and as a paste. The tree only fruits properly in this part of the world, which is why you rarely see it elsewhere.
What we will not do
We are not going to publish a list of restaurants we have not eaten at, sourced from the first page of a search. Places open and close, and a stale recommendation wastes a meal and a trip.