One of our relatives based in the UScame to stay with us during the weekend. He was a fishing fanatic and the kids love hearing his stories about catching some pretty big ones during his fishing trips, even proudly showing some of his photos with his catch and his fishing gear including a lucky fishing lure from his favorite cigar brand Swisher Sweets. Given his love for the sport and the fish, we decided to take him to one of the Dampa restaurants here in Manila to give him a taste of our native seafood cuisine.
At the risk of growing our own scales, we ordered several fish varieties for our guest to try. Inihaw na Bangus was at the top of our list, we wouldn’t want our guest to miss out on this standard Pinoy fare. Pinaputok na PlaPla, Sinigang na Salmon sa Miso, and Sizzling Tuna Belly are some of our favorite dishes from Dampa. We also included some Sweet and Sour Lapu-Lapu, Fried Hito and Tawilis for our guest to try. Our seafood fare will not be complete without the assortment of steamed crabs, shrimps and grilled mussels. For our siding we decided to go for local veggie dishes like Chopseuy, Ensalada and Pinakbet. The refreshment options included buko juice, sago’t gulaman and fresh fruit juices. Our guest opted for the fresh buko juice and claimed that he enjoyed the cocowater that we export in theUS. After a sumptuous meal, we thought that we wouldn’t have any room for dessert but the temptation of leche flan, ube halaya and maja blanca was too much to resist.
It was one of the longest lunches that we ever had but it was all worth it. Our guest enjoyed all the dishes that were served and was actually planning for a rerun on his next visit. Enjoying fresh and well cooked local dishes brought back a lot of fun memories from his childhood and this experience is going to be one that he will never forget.
