LA PRECIOSA is among the better known restaurants in Laoag City, Ilocos Sur. Thus, we made it a point to dine there.
We brought with us our healthy appetites, and so we could feats on a lot starting off with their version of dinengdeng. Their version, because it’s in a soup and was very neat, like really neat. Like a third grade student all set to take his first communion. It’s not the dinengdeng you will get from an Ilocano home. But it’s delicious still. Just not dinengdeng as an Ilocano gourmand will insist it is.
I wanted the Sabong Ken Tucmem described as squash flowers with baby clams, but it was out of stock. Woe is I. Thus I agreed to explore the most unusual, thus we had Igadu, Ibsabarasab, and Imbaliktad. They are all dishes made of innards – pork and beef. Plus, of course, the mainstay – bagnet.
This is no place for those with health problems, the food is lethal. The carnivorous Bisaya will die here for as long as he does not adopt the Ilocano ways of eating a lot of native ampalaya and bunga ng malunggay, and garlic.
La Preciosa deserves its popularity as it matches the food with its ambience as if you’ve fallen into some ime warp and landed in the time when your grandparents were still children listening to their grandparents tell tales of the long ago and far away.
When you’re in Laoag, dining at La Preciosa will be a good way to start the visit. It’s along J.P. Rizal Street in Laoag City and is pretty much popular, you can just tell the tricycle driver that you’re going to la Preciosa and they will bring you there.