Silay is one of the best places in the Philippines to buy traditional kakanin and pastries, and doing so is part of any proper visit. The city's sugar industry produced not just industrial wealth but a sophisticated local sweet-making tradition that survives in bakeries and market stalls throughout the heritage district.
Piaya is the signature item: a flat, unleavened pastry filled with muscovado sugar (the dark, unrefined cane sugar produced in Negros), sometimes mixed with sesame seeds or ube. Fresh piaya from a bakery on Rizal Street tastes entirely different from the packaged versions sold in Manila supermarkets — the filling is moist and slightly caramelised, the pastry thin and yielding. Napoleones are another Negrense speciality: small squares of puff pastry filled with custard cream and glazed with sugar icing. Barquillos, thin wafer rolls with a faint sweetness, are the oldest of the local sweets and are traditionally made in hand-rolled batches.
The main street bakeries and market stalls near the plaza sell all of these. El Ideal Bakery in the Cesar Lacson Locsin house is the most famous source for ensaimadas and sans rival, but several smaller shops specialise in piaya and napoleones. Buy a mixed box before leaving Silay — these sweets travel well and make better souvenirs than anything sold in the souvenir shops.