Calamba's food is firmly in the Laguna tradition, which means buko pie and espasol above all. Buko pie — a flaky pastry shell filled with young coconut meat in a sweet milky custard — is sold along the national highway by half a dozen long-established bakeries, of which Lety's and The Original Buko Pie are the best known. Try a fresh one warm from the oven and you will understand why the queue moves slowly.
Espasol is a soft, mildly sweet cylinder of glutinous rice flour and coconut, rolled in toasted rice flour and sold in bamboo wrappers. Find it at roadside stalls and supermarkets all along the Pansol strip.
In central Calamba, look for bulalo (bone-marrow beef soup, a Laguna staple), pancit Calamba (a local noodle variant — see if you can find it on a turo-turo menu), and grilled freshwater tilapia from nearby Laguna de Bay. Most of the better sit-down restaurants are in the malls on the highway rather than the old centre.