Tarlac is a crossroads between Kapampangan, Ilocano, and Tagalog kitchens, and you eat well here. The classic local dish is iniruban, a glutinous rice-and-coconut cake that turns up at every fiesta, and tinubong, sticky rice cooked inside bamboo tubes. The Kapampangan-leaning south of the province is sisig country — chopped pork ear and cheek with chillies and calamansi, eaten on rice with a fried egg.
The cheapest food is at the carinderias around the public market and along McArthur Highway. Isdaan Floating Restaurant in Gerona, north of the city, is a sprawling open-air place built over fish ponds — theatrical in the best provincial Filipino way, and famous for its Tacsiyapo smashing wall. For more polished cooking, try the restaurants at the SM City Tarlac and Tarlac Hotel.