THERE’S a lot of buzz about Cebu street food these days on social media. Love it or hate it, street food is part and parcel of a city’s life and culture. One can even say it economically essential. Anywhere around the world, you just cannot visit a new place and leave without trying its street food. The ones you find in Cebu, though they definitely differ in form or flavor compared to other international street fare, of course, are no different when it comes to their stories of creation or purpose.
Most, if not all, street food items, are the offspring of resourcefulness and ingenuity.
Resourcefulness, because people have to figure out how to make a living without burning a hole in their pockets. Take for instance, the simplicity of pork or chicken barbecue. Ingenuity, because ideas are born when people naturally look around them for answers. And in Cebu, being this urban jungle surrounded by water, seafood is a no-nonsense revenue option.
Seashells like saang are boiled and sold on the streets in carts. These are best had plain, dipped in a mixture of chili and vinegar. There’s also the popular nilarang, a basic fish stew that the locals enjoy, most especially on cold nights. Slightly spicy and majorly savory, nilarang is best enjoyed with corn grits or steamed white rice. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to try out dishes like bakasi (eel) or the tuna panga (jaw), too!
Proud to say, the working class haven’t entirely traded their love for local flavors for the stuff of fast food joints. Evidence of this can be seen in pungko-pungko spots around town. During lunch breaks, office people gather around a basket of fried delicacies; most popular is the ginabot (deep fried pork intestine). This is best enjoyed with hanging rice, which locals refer to as puso.
Speaking of quick lunch breaks, there are also tons of places around town that serve the popular ngohiong, a local variation of a deep-fried savory roll prepared with Chinese five-spice powder. Now, come to think of it, everything is almost deep-fried when it comes to quick street bites: fried chicken, chicken proven (made from chicken proventriculus; a delicacy originating from Cagayan de Oro), tempura (albeit, the cheaper version), kwek-kwek (made with quail eggs) and squid ball. One can usually find these sold in carts around the city, just before the sun sets, greeting employees just leaving their places of work.
Street food is good business. It is also an advocacy. The daily market not only boosts these small, medium endeavors but also sustains them.
Take the success story of “Siomai sa Tisa” for example. A brand based in Barangay Tisa, Cebu City took the popular dumpling that was once only available in classy restaurants, and made it available for the simplest of folks. This took dim sum to the streets, igniting a new culinary and economic revolution. Even desserts took notice. In the same area, the grandiose-looking halo-halo, a popular Filipino dessert made with shaved ice, milk and other various sweet ingredients, has become the stuff of evening hangouts.
But pork will always be king in the Queen City. Once a centerpiece for only the grandest of feasts, the whole roasted pig, known as lechon, underwent an evolution, and is now available in hole-in-the-wall stops around the metro served as “lechon belly” instead. This pork dish still packs the same punch, but now comes in bite-sized pieces. Nearer the heart of the city, the exotic tuslob buwa, a dish featuring mashed and sauteed pork brains, is now a tourist attraction in itself. The entire pig’s been roasted; the innards, deep-fried and sold on the streets; instinctively, this little saute proved to be a no-brainer.
The simplicity and complexity of local street food is tricky talk. But at the end of the day—which is when most like to eat their street food anyway—these stories are better tasted than debated about.