Seafood, wine galore: New resto offers the bounty of land and sea at the SRP

A scenic and comfortable place to feast on fish and wine is this new restaurant at Il Corso, along the South Road Properties (SRP) main thoroughfare: Fishes (Seafood and Wine). It is run by siblings Jocille and Jeru Nico Bascones, children of Nelson Bascones. Nelson has been exporting fish since 1997, and also supplies for local culinary outlets.

Both Bascones siblings are entrepreneurial management graduates: Jocille from the University of San Carlos (USC) and Jeru from the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P). Both had a practice at being entrepreneurs in school. Jocille said hers was a group project, making dolls out of recycled materials. Jeru’s project was making industrial uniforms. The idea of coming up with a fish restaurant at Il Corso came from Joy R. Polloso, senior vice-president of Filinvest Lifemalls. Since their father, Nelson, actually had a restaurant with his associates and friends called Ocean Garden in Lahug, Cebu City, the siblings decided to give it a try. Jocille is the administrator and marketing manager while Jeru is the operations manager. They have hired a Kapampangan chef, Danny Aquino, who is a self-taught chef. One can be sure that the seafood available at Fishes (Seafood and Wine) are the best catch of the day.

The restaurant has fish “paluto,” where one can have his choice of fish—parrot fish, flounder, grouper, red snapper—cooked the way he wants it: grilled, steamed and fried. Also available for paluto are crustaceans: black tiger prawns, white shrimps, lobsters and squid. The a la carte menu has more than just seafood. It has vegetables, beef, chicken and pork—with the giant crispy pork belly being a favorite.

The appetizers are all from the sea: squid head, scallops overload, scallop hotshots, crispy crablets and shrimp gambas. The salads are all from the garden: Green Garden, Caesar’s and Arugula. For soups, there are bouillabaisse, spicy seafood, seafood kare-kare and sinampalokang native chicken to choose from. The place even has noodles and pasta: a very good seafood canton guisado, mixed seafood carbonara, tomato basil mixed seafood pasta and Bolognese pasta. For dessert, one must try the halo-halo turon.

To go with all this good food, there is a selection of Italian wines (which the siblings sourced from their neighborhood Italian wine merchant), some fruit juices, sodas and coffee.

Fishes (Seafood and Wine) can accommodate up to 60 diners. It faces the sea and is almost directly in front of Il Corso’s battleship playground and meandering canal, so the view from the inside or outside is great at any time of the day or night. With their father Nelson (a marine biologist and scuba diver) to guide them, the siblings are confident that this venture will succeed and eventually branch out.

Here’s how to get there. Using Google Maps or Waze on your internet-connected mobile device, search for Fishes (Seafood and Wine) located at the IL Corso Filinvest Lifemalls-North Parking. Or, you can search for the IL Corso Lighthouse (Main Entrance). There’s ample parking and an Il Corso Filinvest Lifemalls guard will be around to guide you. It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.