My darleng Mary Ann and I were in Cebu City three weeks ago doing some “field research” for the revised edition of our book Linamnam: Eating One’s Way Around the Philippines. And, as the title declares, we literally ate our way around Cebu for three days, scouring the city for good eats, following leads from friends, bloggers, and people we met along the way. We’ve had our fair share of lechon — the whole roasted pig and the latest craze, a boneless variant — and the su-tu-kil genre of eateries (sugba or charcoal grill, tula or boil, and kilaw or to soak in vinegar, the very foundations of Visayan cooking.)
We’ve observed, too, the Cebuanos’ love affair with the pusó or leaf-wrapped rice in the shape and size of a heart. It’s a great social leveler, which the rich and poor alike eat cold with so much gusto, whether at home, in restaurants, or out on the streets with barbecue, lechon, ngohiong (another love affair deserving another story), or whatever ulam or viand there is available. In fact, we’ve met some locals professing that if their rice was served steaming hot, they would have it fanned to cool it before eating.
Our good friend, writer Teddy Boy Locsin of “Teditorial” fame, would throw a fit if his rice were served not only cold but also packed hard like pusó. He likes it fluffy and steaming hot, like we do, and is known to carry around with him a blanket-wrapped rice cooker whenever he’s on a sortie.
Anyway, one of the more delightful culinary discoveries we had on this trip was through a tip by Lorenz Florendo, owner of Tatang’s Extra Crispy Lechon (deserving of another story), whom we met upon the recommendation of our Cebu-based kabalen (town mate) Maricris Encarnacion. He said we shouldn’t leave the city without trying its latest craze, tuslob buwa. Here’s our story on that as a teaser to the revised edition of Linamnam:
The concept is so simple yet brilliantly packaged that one wonders why no one thought of it sooner. One queues up to enter this convenience store, pays P99 over the counter, and is given a tray of a dozen pusó, a bowl of pig’s brain soup, and a saucer each of chopped onion, mashed chicken liver and salted alamang, or shrimp paste. He then goes back out to the front parking lot, where his barkada (group mates) are seated around a table, eagerly awaiting the loot.
A designated “cook” heats up a small wok on a portable butane stove, pours a little oil from a squeeze bottle, then sautés the onion, adds the salted alamang and liver, and some soy sauce for good measure. The brain soup is then poured over the sizzling wok, made to simmer until the milky-white soup is reduced into a puddle of bubbling oil (buwa in Cebuano) with a creamy brown paste forming at the bottom.
The dipping (tuslob in Cebuano) is now set in motion. Amid some friendly jostling and banter among the barkada, one gets a piece of the unwrapped pusó and dips it into the buwa (yes, including the glorious rendered fat) and bites into it. The dipping is repeated until the wok is wiped clean, and in many instances, more pusó is ordered at P3 each.
Its owner, Ian Sekong, entrepreneur by day with his sound-system rental company and T-shirt store next door and a drummer in a band by night, readily admits that tuslob-buwa was not his original idea but is actually a traditional dish/ practice in the wet markets of Pasil and Carbon of Cebu City.
He says his father recalls a time when laborers would buy bundles of the cheap pusó and were given free “scum” from a bubbling frying pan in the karinderias, to flavor their rice. This “scum” is now sold as a dish in the market, each vendor having his own version.
Being an adventurous eater who loves experimenting in the kitchen, Ian concocted his own recipe of the tuslob-buwa. He opened Azul convenience store in October 2013, serving the call centers nearby till the wee hours. Then, in February of this year, he started serving the tuslob-buwa, mainly to accompany beer drinking. It became a hit once social media discovered it and has been copied by others since. What’s to stop him from making more flavor variants like adobo, bistek, kare-kare, and the like?
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Azul Tuslob Buwa is on Gorordo Ave., Brgy. Kamputhaw, Lahug, Cebu City, next to the Yamaha 3S Shop, tel. no. 0917-546-3735. It’s open from 10 a.m. to 6 a.m. the following day.