Food scene:
The year that was

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

The exploration continues.

That, in a sentence, captures 2011 on the food front in Bacolod and Negros Occidental. The exploration for new taste experiences, of developing thoroughly new foods, and new foods out of old favorites is what animated the food scene in the year that passed.

Iconic foods were turned over and upside down and inside out in this exploration, so that new foods and dishes got to our tables throughout the year. Too, new tastes reached us as the world continued to get ever smaller, with culinary influences steadily flowing into our kitchens.

Thus you just don’t have piyayitos, shrunken version of the piaya, but piayiytos in different variants. You  just don’t have dinuguan, you can now have crispy dinuguan – the good old blood based stew made even more interesting with crushed and crispy bagnet, deep-fried pork slices.

Even our old, iconic food institutions have joined this movement for new taste adventures, adding new items in their menu. Pendy’s has  Batchon, successfully merging the flavors of  batchoy and lechon. Café Bob’s serves  Pinoy Deli spaghetti, pasta with the quintessential Pinoy delicatessen items like salted eggs, red tomatoes, smoked salted fish.

Trattoria Uma and Café Uma of course have been serving the flavors of the world in their menu, with items like Asian Mediterranean salad complete with couscous and  Lemoncillo pasta.

Over  the Art District, Café Joint serves  chicken or beef fajitas,  meats with veggies and diced mango and avocado in cream sauce rolled inside  tortilla wrapping.  The Joint also serves a Mexican  influenced item: tortilla chips topped with olives ground beef, cream sauce, and cheese.

Aside from foreign influences, however, we also saw the entry of restaurants specializing in foreign cuisine, the most notable of which were Korean. Now, Bacolod is getting used to Kimchi and Melona ice cream

Swept in this continued food adventure is the sisig, the Kapangpangan appetizer that we have  reinvented into  main course, using instead of pork face the meats of the bangus from our fish. Actually, so the fish vendors in our wet markets tell me, some restaurants buy the bangus meat they generate in their bangus deboning operations to be used for fish lumpia and bangus sisig dishes. There isn’t anything wrong in this, is there; after all, some of the great recipes the world has known came from what we call the nasty bits – heretofore inedible animal or fish parts that have been made edible.

 Of course the sugar front continued to be as lively, with the cakes and pastry businesses ever rising in popularity. On the sweets department, however, 2011 saw the entry of more yogurt-based desserts businesses,  including one simple stall in a mall.

Another notable development in the food scene  is the continued development of the Tourism Strip of Bacolod along Lacson into a food strip, as more restos opened during the year. These include Shakey’s, Pancake House, Island Spoon and Calea, adding to the already bustling food business in the area.

Of course the year saw us still talking about the chicken deal of the century: the purchase of the Mang Inasal chain of restaurant to food behemoth Jolibee for a staggering P3billion plus in October 2010.

The taste of Mang Inasal barbecue aside, this deal was one staggering example of how far our own native dishes can go; who would have thought that something that started in our streets could become this big?*

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