EVERYBODY knows hunger can make people go insane. They get cranky, snappish and use non-words like “grrr” a lot.
People who are familiar with Ilaputi avoid the dark side of hunger pangs with fast casual gourmet comfort food prepared from scratch.
Ilaputi, in the Cebuano vernacular, means ‘at whitey’s’. What started at Talamban on April of 2002 has grown and evolved into the Ilaputi establishment serving the dining public of the Asia Town I.T. Park at Lahug.
Its offerings are catchy, not too far off from a pop song.
Imagine drinking the deliriously named Fizzion drinks, a fusion of homemade sparkling water and natural fruit flavors, like Whatta’melon, Berry Kewl kiwi and Virgin Mojito.
The cocktails can make you delightfully dizzy. And since two is never enough, you can buy two and get one at P50 off on all cocktails like the aptly named joy juice, Kaminikaz, down south delight and fiery Marga, all sloshed in a 1.2-liter decanter.
Stave off hunger with grilled Chinese chicken jambalaya, a five-spiced rubbed grilled chicken breast fillet with Hungarian and Chinese sausages and Peking fried rice; grilled Mexcebuano chicken, Mexican rubbed-Cebuano spice marinated chicken breast fillet with spiced yellow rice and pickled jalapenos; Phoenix Mandarin salad with grilled rosemary chicken, nuts, onions and apples on a bed of greens with cirtus-honey cream dressing; and chix sate, tender bamboo-skewered chicken with fresh cucumbers and oriental peanut dipping sauce or the Kenso, grilled chicken miso with shitake cream sauce and nori-dusted rice. Now that’s how you chicken out!
To make it an even more festive ambiance, live acoustic music is served every Saturday to the delight of regular patrons. Local Cebu talent like Pandora, Kurt Ebarita, After Cycle, Alley and Save Sessions have played.
Even with the Cebuano’s very strict standards, Ilaputi, with its ‘give great value’ mentality, delights and defies anyone to not ooze happiness after ingesting its dishes and drinks.
r