My last visit to Dumaguete – a city on Negros Island, in the centre of the Philippines – was in 2018. The Filipino friend I travelled with had learned of my fondness for halo-halo shaved ice desserts and wanted to find the best place for us to eat them.
He found Bernie’s Halo-Halo (now closed). I was dubious: the traditional fruit toppings had been replaced by chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, crushed chocolate cookies and lashings of chocolate sauce. I took a bite: it was rich, creamy, one of the best I’d had. Bernie’s owners, like this city, had pulled in foreign influences and created something that was greater than the sum of its parts.
