It was our first time in Philippines and I didn’t really know what to expect of their cuisine having only eaten them at Filipino restaurants everywhere else except on homeground! We spent 8 days in Boracay and ate lots of fresh seafood, went to two fancy meals at the Shangri-La Resort- I had a great chicken adobo there and we had a lukewarm experience at Rima, their Italian fine dining restaurant in a tree house where we had our anniversary dinner. We also tried Kash bar recommended by a few magazines, the ambience was nice, the food so-so and nothing to write home about.
Our top two picks for dining are D’Talipapa, a great wet market concept where you pick your own freshest seafood and choose one of the stalls around to cook them for you. I recommend always choosing the butter garlic sauce, they seem to add a dash of sugar to everything in the Philippines, which actually adds to the flavour of the garlic sauce. We ordered the fresh lobsters (don’t come cheap- market rate as is everywhere in the world), king prawns and a garouper. Delish.
D’ Talipapa is not far from White beach and any tricycle driver should know how to take you there. that should set you back 70-100pesos.
Maya’s Cuisine
The highlight of our meals over the course of a week is Maya’s cuisine, that’s also Jony’s shakes on Station 1 beach during the day. The make the best fruit shakes there and I highly recommend the avocado shake.
The hallmark of Visayas cuisine is the fresh seafood and our extensive tasting menu showed chef Jun Salme’s repertoire of dishes from fresh Boracay oysters served with a citrusy vinaigrette granite to salt crusted garouper served alongside deliciously rich pots of adobo sauced rice and crab roe rice. The roast pig crispy pata was a little heavy on the grease but worth every calorie.
Dessert was a creative bibingka soufflé where flavours of coconut and pandan perfectly complemented each other, and then we got to the bottom of things – salted duck egg yolks which was a surprise and for some of our French dining companions – ruined their sweet dreams of the perfect soufflé found in Boracay.
The approach reminded me of desserts in Thailand served both salty and sweet, but I couldn’t quite decide if I liked it or not. It was interesting to say the least. The salty sandy texture of the yolks at the bottom created a twist to the end of our fluffy fragrant sweet mix of a South East Asian soufflé. Truth be told, I’ve only had salted egg yolks with congee, steam egg and deep fried with crabs, and this gave my culinary memories a jolt… the kind of surprise that catches you off guard, like having one of those retro sour lemon sweets for the first time in reverse.
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