Sunday, April 16, 2006
Grilled trip
By Stella A. Estremera
Goin' Places
DABAWENYOS are grilled food lovers. Everyone knows that. If no one has yet told you about that fact, then you should have already noticed the number of "litsong manok" stalls dotting the whole city from north to south, the clusters of barbikyuhan the likes of Colasa's, Magallanes Bebecue Vendors, Julio's and that one along Bonifacio Street, the tinap-anan grills lining up beaches, and the neighborhood makeshift grill set up every early evening. And yes, what is Davao without inihaw na panga?
Just before the Catholic world went off the meat for Biernes Santo, my buddies and I went on a pork barbecue binge. Wala lang. Trip lang.
We were targeting all places that sell pork barbecue. I'll let you know how far we've gone later on...
Anyway, the first stop was BB Barbecue along Rizal Street in front of Rizal Promenade in that cluster of joints featuring Majid's Persian Kebabs, a videoke named Cats and Dogs, and BBBBQ. Very Dabawenyo -- very, wala lang.
It was dinner time and office folk not wanting to do their cooking have already gathered to eat, like really eat.
To my left was a group of office ladies, behind me a smaller group of men, and then some young ones too, raising their hands asking for another cup of rice.
It was an interesting scene though. Snapping photos here and there brought out motion lines. At first I rued it, and then I enjoyed it and decided to click on and get the most motion lines I can, people becoming like phantoms walking in and out of the frame. Lingaw.
Since this was going to be a long night, I opted to do without the rice. Just two pieces of pork barbecue and a pork liver barbecue.
In front of me, was working station with the raw barbecue laid out on trays on a stainless steel surface and the grill being tended to. It was dizzying... people moving in and out, bringing order slips, and pushing orders, the "barbecuer" furiously fanning the embers as these burst into flames, and squirting water on the flames to turn them back to embers.
Interesting... except that, those flames turned out to be the ones cooking our barbecues and we got singed ones -- not burnt, just singed on the fringes. But those small burnt fringes can rule your entire barbecue's taste and so what we really had were carameled bitter meat. That's part of the experience.
We moved on to the one at Rizal Promenade, BBQ Boss! Since the barbecues there are smaller, we tucked in two more each plus a "baticolon" for me. No singed taste this time, thank God. And then the next stop, the "dinokdok" grillers along C.M. Recto Street right after RCBC. The sidewalk barbecue stalls that only come out at night.
The dinokdok today isn't like the dinokdok before when Sun.Star was still in Aldevinco Building along C.M. Recto though. For one, the barbecue sticks are thicker and the meat are not as "dinokdok" (pounded flat) as before. But the taste remains the same. Sweetish, full of ketchup and soy sauce, apparently so designed so that one tiny piece of "dinokdok" can already be good enough for one piece of "puso" (rice cooked inside woven palm leaves).
Our P100 netted us a mound that we were no longer able to consume all.
The verdict, except for the bitter taste of barbecue cooked on flames, all three tasted the same. Sweetish, full of ketchup and soy sauce.
We were supposed to carry on our trip toward the more "sosi" barbecue places, but the stomach can only take so much. Especially this stomach that only eats meat to be able to talk about it.
We soon split up, and about time too because my tummy was already grumbling and complaining. Too much of anything is bad.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (April 16, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
