An independent magazine for a city that deserves a serious one.
The Iloilo Review is a slow editorial publication on the food, places, travel, and development of Iloilo and Panay. Founded in 2024, we publish two to three carefully reported, generously edited pieces a week — and a longer, more reflective Sunday letter.
We started The Iloilo Review because the magazine we wanted to read about our own city did not exist. There were listicles, sponsored content disguised as reporting, breathless travel-blog write-ups, and the occasional excellent piece buried in a national publication. There was nothing that treated Iloilo with the slow, considered attention you'd give Lisbon or Naples or Kyoto — even though Iloilo, by any honest accounting, deserves it.
So we built one. The magazine you are reading is small, independent, and reader-supported. We do not run press releases as news. We do not accept paid placements dressed up as recommendations. We pay our writers fairly and edit them carefully. We publish slowly because we'd rather get one piece right than three pieces fast.
What we cover
Five sections, written from Iloilo by writers who live here.Food — restaurants, cafes, bars, the dishes that define the place. Places — public parks, waterfronts, plazas, heritage sites, neighborhood guides. Travel — field-tested itineraries across Panay. Development — how a heritage city is rewriting its next century, with the political and infrastructural reporting that requires. Features — the profiles, essays, and long-form documentary stories that don't fit the other beats.
How we work
A piece in this magazine takes, on average, six weeks from commission to publication; the longer features can take six months. Every reporting piece is fact-checked. Every restaurant we review, we visit at least three times, on our own bill, anonymously. We disclose every comp, every sponsorship, every potential conflict.
The conversation is the point. Our editors read every reader email, and a meaningful percentage of our best stories have started as tips from people who live here.
The people writing this magazine.
HH
HH writes about food, place, and the slow architectures of Iloilo life. Born in Molo, raised in Jaro, she has spent the last decade chronicling the city's quiet reinvention.
JL
JL covers urban development, infrastructure, and the politics of public space. Before joining the Review, he was an architect in Manila and a guest critic at UPV.
HH
HH maps the Visayas one ferry, jeepney, and bangka at a time. She has filed dispatches from every municipality in Iloilo Province.
JL
JL trained in kitchens in San Sebastián and Hong Kong before returning to write about the cuisine he grew up in. His weekly review column has run since the magazine's first issue.
JL
JL's photographs have appeared in Cereal, Apartamento, and the Review's print annual. He lives in a 1920s ancestral house in Jaro that he has spent six years restoring.
HH
HH writes about heritage, memory, and the quiet politics of preservation. She holds a degree in Philippine Studies and runs a heritage walking tour in her spare time.