Festivals

Among the most popular travel activities is sampling local cuisine, and it’s good that several of our cities and provinces are actively promoting their unique food offerings.

Last Tuesday Dagupan kicked off its annual month-long bangus or milkfish festival. The fish – the most succulent of its species – is uniquely identified with the city, like the maliputo of Taal Lake and the smoked fish or tinapa of Salinas, Cavite.

For the first time in many years I visited Dagupan again last Good Friday. The city has prospered and the excellent quality of its food specialties has not changed.

I had forgotten where my favorite riverside restaurants were; all I could remember was that they were built near a bridge, with roadside stalls of oysters and bangus. But the riverside area is so popular locals directed me to the right bridge, over the Dawel River.

It helps that the people of Dagupan are fixated on bangus. On the way home when I asked for directions back to Manila – “Babalik kaming Maynila” – a woman who didn’t hear the question clearly asked, “Ano, bibili kayo ng isda (What, you’re buying fish)?”

In my younger years during regular visits to Pangasinan, home province of my paternal grandmother, my family and I often had lunch in the restaurant that straddled the Dawel River.

This time, no longer with my family, I found Silverio’s Restaurant, closest to the river and the Dawel bridge. It looks like the restaurant has killed all the competition; the one beside it that I remember distinctly, designed like a giant crab, was closed and in a state of disrepair.

The food at Silverio’s did not disappoint, but the service did – a letdown especially in a country that takes pride in its people’s hospitality and TLC. Alejandra “Dading” Clemente of the Federation of Tourism Industries of the Philippines is right: our people working in travel and tourism-related industries need better training.

But it was a pleasant surprise to see the Dawel River looking so clean. Last year during the Bangus Festival the Dawel River cruise was launched. Those taking the cruise can see, among other things, mangrove forests and watch bangus being harvested.

Near the Dawel bridge monkeys in a cage entertained Silverio’s diners. A streamer near the cage warned about numerous complaints from people who were cheated by roadside vendors; better to buy bangus and seafood at the wet market, the streamers advised.

So off I went to the seafood market in the heart of the city. Dagupan even on Good Friday was crowded. It being a holy day, however, the lechon outlets were closed, so I missed the roasted 30-day-old organically grown pig – a specialty of the city. Also missing was the city’s popular street food, pigar-pigar – sliced beef sautéed in garlic, onions and spices. Or maybe I was on the wrong street – pigar-pigar is supposed to be available 24 hours daily.

But the seafood market was open and packed with people, even after 3 p.m. of Good Friday. Dagupan bangus – fresh, boneless, smoked, daing or butterfly-cut and marinated – everything was there, alongside tubs of crabs, prawns, and the other special fish of Dagupan, the pond-cultured malaga.

Also available were mangoes – the Pangasinan variety is among the best – plus bagoong and patis.

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Every major city should develop its markets as showcases of local products. In any country I visit, among my must-see destinations is the market and, on weekends, the flea markets. In Spain and France, the markets are a delight to visit and are major tourist draws, offering both raw and cooked food products.

Those markets – including the wet sections – are kept clean, properly ventilated and smelling of fresh items, which unfortunately cannot be said of the typical Philippine market, especially in Metro Manila. In one fish market that I visited recently, with the ground wet and littered with fish scales, cockroaches crawled everywhere. A fishmonger shrugged and told me the place had just been sprayed with insecticide. And that was one of the better fish markets in Metro Manila, selling high-value items such as lapu-lapu (grouper), crabs, prawns and tuna belly.

The Dagupan market can use more space. But the city and the rest of Pangasinan as well as the Ilocos Region are actively promoting their food products. The same is true in the Bicol Region, Bulacan, Cebu, Iloilo, Laguna and Pampanga. Several other provinces and cities can follow their example.

In Cavite, the fishing villages and resorts of Tanza, where the sea is visible anywhere you turn, have become more accessible (to those who can afford the P64 one-way toll) through the Cavitex. With more potential visitors because of the new tollway, the province may want to work on its cuisine.

From the Kawit exit, where you can buy fresh oysters and mussels from roadside stalls, I had some trouble looking for a restaurant that featured local cuisine. I finally settled on a bungalow restaurant with old furniture, called Pilita’s, where the seafood kare-kare with stewed bagoong and oysters adobo were delectable and affordable.

With better marketing and packaging of its menu (maybe “Aguinaldo’s kare-kare”), Pilita’s could pull in at least some of the crowd that’s drawn to Tanza’s new destination, the Oasis hotel in Capipisa, a barangay once notorious for smuggling. The hotel, with an outdoor pool and beachfront huts, was packed last Maundy Thursday.

Restaurants in this part of Cavite may also want to include the province’s homegrown coffee on their menu. Pilita’s had only instant coffee; Oasis offered Hawaiian brew.

The local government in Salinas has set up an outlet on the main road for its specialties, especially the tinapang Salinas. Cavite can use more of such outlets.

One day the province may want to stage its own festival, similar to the one in Dagupan whose highlight is the “Kalutan ed Dalan” or street grill party wherein 5,000 kilos of bangus will be grilled. Cavite can feature its oysters.

The tourists will come, and tourism, as Dagupan has shown, is one of the better paths to prosperity.