A taste of Mindanao

Four days. Four provinces (and one charter city). Over a thousand kilometers logged. One word: amazing. Mindanao is indeed this country’s last frontier, and to think I’ve only haphazardly explored the northeastern tip of this expansive island — namely, the CARAGA region.

Traversing the countryside between the progressive cities of Surigao and Butuan, it was difficult not to take note of the disparity in living conditions, reminding us this region is one of the most impoverished in the Philippines — alongside ours (Leyte-Samar), it must be said. And yet as has been noted elsewhere in this overwhelmingly poor (and poorly managed) archipelago, people always smile and put their best foot forward. It’s quite hard to miss. Leaving the Enchanted River, children along the 12-kilometer road back to the national highway waved us goodbye.

Even though this part of Mindanao looked and felt a lot like Leyte — which, after all, is a mere 45-minute ferry ride from Surigao City — it was its own unique wonders that had prompted our weekend excursion. Yes, I groused about the Enchanted River being crowded, but what did I expect? It’s the height of summer. At Tinuy-an Falls in Bislig, our guide was apologetic that the cataracts were not at their voluminous best. Hello, El Niño. As for the Britania Islets, we’d signed up for the grand tour but ended up visiting just one islet because of the big waves. Did we have a good time? You betcha.

Here’s a blog post (not mine) that features the same places we visited, but with better photos. I figure I better tell you about what we ate instead, this being primarily a food blog. Save for a few, the dishes featured here tasted better than they look in my photos. Likewise, they should not be taken as representative of the venues that served them; that would involve repeat visits and an extensive sampling of their menus. Not that I fashion myself a critic — I just know what I like.

Our first Mindanao meal was at Aling Cora, beside Robinson’s Butuan. The place styles itself as a seafood dampa (shack), and the food and ambiance reflected that no-frills aesthetic. For starters we had crispy chicken skin, which turned out to be not so crispy, even a tad chewy. Next came Jenny’s order of clam soup. The soup part was good and that was good enough for me (I didn’t bother to try the clam meat). For the main course we chose to have maya-maya (red snapper) two ways — steamed and sweet-and-sour — plus grilled pork belly and sautéed kangkong (water spinach) with tofu and fresh oyster mushrooms.

I don’t know about the grilled pork — I was too busy savoring the steamed fish, it was sooo good. So was the kangkong-tofu-mushroom combination; I made a mental note to replicate the dish once I got back home. As for the sweet-and-sour fish, I had expected a sauce done home-style, i.e., a simple mixture of toyo, vinegar, sugar, and water semi-thickened with cornstarch. Alas, it came smothered with sweet ketchup (or was it spaghetti sauce?) — a definite no-no in my book. To be fair, the fish was fried to a perfect crisp, but everyone agreed the sauce didn’t look or taste right.

Will I go back to Aling Cora, given the chance? Definitely.

Breakfast the next day was at McDonald’s. “You know what?” I told Jenny over bites of something forgettable. “Every time I step in here, I instantly regret it. Then the lazy side of me takes over.” This time we were in a rush to meet the rest of our group on the first flight from Manila, then it was off to Hinatuan to make it to the noonday fish feeding at the Enchanted River.

We made it in time. So, it seemed, did half of the country (we met the other half on our way out).

Late lunch consisted of kinilawn’g liplipan/malasugi (sailfish ceviche), fried kitong (rabbitfish), and shrimp, steamed and fried — all good, the kinilaw included (as per my companions, since I don’t eat kinilaw). If you don’t have a table, the PA system will announce when your order is ready, and as with all other announcements, in Bisaya and nothing but. (If it had been left up to me, we would have starved because I was too busy playing in the water to even think about food!)

I won’t bore you with details of dinner. Suffice it to say that we arrived late in Hinatuan poblacion after a quick trip to the falls at Tinuy-an and had to content ourselves with whatever the local barbecue joint had left (mostly lean pork). I reserve my unbridled enthusiasm for the halo-halo at Alba’s — it’s reason enough to visit that sleepy town.

The next day we set off for the Britania Islets (see second photo above) in San Agustin, also in Surigao del Sur (I realize just now that all the sites we visited were located in the same province). We made a stopover at Erve’s Seafoods in Lianga to stock up on shellfish. They had alimango (mud crab), curacha (spanner crab), slipper lobster, and, of course, the house specialty, tikud sa amó (literal translation: monkey’s heel), which wasn’t at all simian but a bivalve.

According to this Inquirer feature, tikud sa amó is some kind of rock oyster found in the deep waters of Lianga Bay, and is believed to be of a different species than the common talaba. We ordered it adobo-style. I would later regret not ordering more. The curacha turned out anemic (Jenny outright refused to eat them, saying they reminded her too much of sea turtle).

As for the food we ordered at Britania, they were generally unimpressive. We had hired an independent operator rather than book with a resort (we were in too much of a hurry, this section of the outing not being part of our original itinerary), and although the food was cheap, it also showed in the quality. We had a hearty lunch, anyway. Excuse the mess:

Safely back in Butuan City later that evening, we went to Islands Seafood for our last Mindanao dinner. The moment we entered I knew there was something off. Let’s just say it doesn’t bode well for your restaurant when the first thing a customer notices is the sticky floor. “Is that intentional?” Jenny asked.

“Intentional, my ass. It’s dirty, that’s what it is.”

Things went downhill from there. The native chicken soup was too watery, the meat tough. (“I’ll choose Eva’s manok bisaya anytime,” I said, and Jenny concurred.) The Shanghai fried rice had hotdog instead of ham (no shrimp, either). The pinakbet was at least decent, but I’d had better.

I was pinning my hopes on the steamed red pugapo or lapu-lapu (grouper). The fish itself was good, until I tried the sauce, which, as we Bisaya like to joke, was one wave short of the sea (for the benefit of non-speakers, that’s a dysphemism for “wickedly salty”).

There was one dish that impressed me. Only thing was, it wasn’t a seafood item — unless goats have gills where you’re from.

To think we only ordered it out of curiosity. We’ve never tried goat adobo-style before, and it turned out to be excellent: tender meat (with none of that peculiar goat smell) in a well-seasoned creamy sauce. See? I told you I know what I like, and I liked that adobong kanding veddy, veddy much. My to-do list grows longer.

We were leaving for home the next morning, right? Give me these last two paragraphs; I want to show you the worst meal I had on that trip:

That’s the tapa (cured beef) breakfast at the Y Hotel. I can’t call it tapsilog on account of the rice not being fried, but it does not change the fact that it was bland, dry, and did I say bland? C’mon guys, a fine establishment like yours should not be serving this atrocity. Even McDonald’s used to serve better Filipino breakfast than this one. No wonder your floor’s so clean!