Food tripping in Boracay

And so I’m back from six days of sun, sea, photography, shopping and glorious food. We arrived in Boracay on Monday, March 17th, a little after noon. We deposited our bags in the hotel and went straight to lunch. Our friends who got there about an hour ahead of us recommended a turo-turo a few meters from the beach. We were starving and hardly in the mood to conduct a survey so we went right ahead and made our choices.

The girls wanted soup and they were unanimous in their choice of sinigang na sugpo which, of course, I did not touch because of an allergy. Not that I felt I missed anything because we ordered three other dishes, two of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The grilled blue marlin was moist and succulent. I only wished they didn’t baste it with sweet barbecue sauce which detracted from the natural flavor of the fish.

The liempo (pork belly) was perfectly charred. The stuffed squid I did not touch but the kids finished it so I don’t think there was anything wrong with it. Otherwise, they would have complained.

Where did we eat all that?

The place is called Sunset Turo-turo and Grill. It was an okay place to eat but click on the links to the rest of the pages in this entry because we had a much better lunch on Tuesday.

After showering and resting, my husband and I went for a walk on the beach. The girls wouldn’t get out of bed and we didn’t persist in waking them up. At around 4.00 p.m., we were out of the hotel. We figured we had enough time to wander leisurely, check out the action, have merienda and take photos before sunset.

In Boracay, you just have to walk along White Beach to survey the food. Look, look closer, check the available varieties then choose.

Grilled seafood is the most popular. These large clams and oysters looked enticing.

There are plenty of barbecue stalls. Some offer varieties of seafood; others have seafood, pork, chicken and the usual hotdogs. I noticed though that pork ears and isaw (intestines) weren’t popular items in Boracay. Not popular with foreigners, I suppose. Balut vendors were a-plenty though.

Boracay offers local and international cuisines. At least three establishments along White Beach sell fancy crepes a la Crazy Crepes. One of them, Rock and Roll Crepes, named their crepes after famous rock artists.

But it wasn’t only in stalls and restaurants that food could be found. These men were transporting live lobsters in an ice chest. They even accommodated us by lifting the cover to allow us to take photos.

We didn’t just walk and take photos, of course. We did have our afternoon snack. Click on the link to page 3 to find out where.

The place is called Isla Cafe and we chose it because of its laid back ambience. Bar stools, open air, rustic setting and the kind of coffee I was craving for.

We both ordered cappuccino. I chose a mango crepe and my husband had a peach crepe.

I was halfway through my mango crepe when a foreigner placed his order and chose three kinds of fruit in his crepe. My, my, my… had I known a crepe medley was possible, I would have ordered one too.

We walked some more, met with friends who discovered that a former officemate is now managing one of the restaurants in Boracay called Hey, Jude. We chatted for a while, agreed to have dinner at Hey, Jude with the usual joke of how much discount she would give us. We stayed on the beach until sunset, took photos then went back to the hotel to find the girls still fast asleep. An hour or so later, we insisted that they take their shower. We went down to dinner at around 8.00 p.m.

Older girl Sam had burger which came with cole slaw and fries. Younger girl Alex had carbonara which she found too bland. Adding Parmesan didn’t work; a sprinkling of salt solved the problem.

My husband Speedy ordered grilled sausage; I had pork schnitzel with fried potatoes and gravy. We occupied a long table (we were about 15 in the group) and I didn’t know what the others ordered. My pork schnitzel was fine, Speedy had no complaints about his food, our common gripe was how long it took for our food to be served when the place wasn’t even packed.

Anyway, on to the best meal we had in Boracay.

On our second day in Boracay, we went island-hopping and snorkeling in the morning. We didn’t get back to White Beach until around 1.00 p.m. We showered and changed and had lunch at around 3.00 p.m. Never mind the lateness of the hour. It was a delicious lunch. Our friend, PJ Juinio, left the hotel ahead of all of us and ordered the food so that everything would be cooked by the time everyone got there. Nice friend, eh? He’s the seafood expert so he was on familiar grounds.

There means the talipapa or the village market.

The set-up is similar to Dampa — the customer chooses the fresh seafood from the market and specifies how he wants it cooked. The price of the food is the cost plus cooking charge. The difference is the size of the market. The talipapa in Boracay is not some humble affair like the ones in Dampa sa Libis and Coastal Road. It’s a larger market, comparable in size to the Marikina wet market.

There were live crabs, fresh clams and oysters…

Lobsters and squid…

Prawns and shrimps… Of course, PJ didn’t order an all-crustacean meal because I would have starved. Plus, the kids in the group, including mine, were already pining for fried chicken.

We had mussels served on the half shell, dotted with butter and topped with grated cheese.

I feasted on the oysters which were large and fresh.

There was grilled blue marlin — cooked perfectly this time, seasoned with salt and brushed with butter but not basted with sweet barbecue sauce.

And there was fried chicken.

What I wasn’t able to take a photo of was the salad — chopped tomatoes, salted eggs and mangoes that were neither tart and green nor fully ripe. The bagoong (shrimp paste) was served on the side instead of mixed in so I was able to enjoy the salad along with everyone else. The problem was that we were halfway through the meal when the salad arrived, my hands were in no condition to handle the camera because I was shucking oysters for myself and my two daughters. If the lateness of the arrival of the salad sounds too weird to foreigners, tomato and mango salad is eaten in the Philippines as an accompaniment to grilled seafood rather than as a starter course. The salad was late but not that late — we managed to finish it. In fact, we finished everything and left the talipapa happy and full.

We came home with over a thousand photos (we brought five cameras and an assortment of lenses so that shouldn’t be surprising) but I won’t be posting all of the photos here as the majority are not food related. I’ll be posting them in The Mommy Journals within the next couple of days.