a taste of cebu

just spent five days in cebu, queen city of the south, to attend a seminar. i wasn't able to go out, especially to eat in as many restaurants as i wanted to but here's what i learned about cebu's flavors. in the hotel where they held the seminar, they served us what they called "mandaue" bibingka because its original recipe came from mandaue city. immediately i caught a whiff of coconut. not good. i am not a coconut fan because of what it does to my tummy. i do not want to explain, thank you very much. but still i tried it. it was so dry and flavorless. i mentally added it to my yuck-never-again list. tuesday night, i went to my godsister, Georgia's, restaurant "Cafe Georg" in Banilad. I will be the first to tell you if it's awful, believe me. i had their mushroom soup... nothing spectacular. my main course was the beef lasagna. yummy. the thick slathering of bechamel and cheese on top was just heaven. they didn't scrimp on the beef and tomato sauce either. for dessert, i had mango tart. That was the best part of my dinner. IT WAS DEeeeeLISH!!!! next night, georgia took me to a restaurant called "chika-an sa cebu"... lots'a people. i found out later that you had to have a reservation coz it's always jam packed. out of everything georgia ordered, the best was their sisig. it was nothing like i've ever tasted. for dessert, georgia said i had to try the mandaue bibingka. uh-oh. but not wanting to be rude, i swallowed hard and took my first bite. heyyy... not bad. this was not flavorless at all. it tasted more like ground rice bibingka with just a hint of coconut, not coconut in your face taste. they added cheese on top which, i think, made it even better. mandaue bibingka is now on my for reconsideration list. thursday night, our office's local boss took us out to dinner at this place called neo-neo. again, it was their sisig i loved. an all together different way of cooking but it worked. contrary to the usual, this sisig was sizzling in its own sauce. no egg, no mayo, just it's own flavors to carry it through. sadly, i was not able to eat the famous cebu lechon. i found out a bit too late that just a few meters away from our restaurant was CnT lechon, one of the best cebu lechon roasters in town. before going home, i knew i had to buy pasalubong. so off to shamrock i went for the best otap. another brand of otap is sugbu, just as yummy but not as expensive. lastly, i just had to buy dried mango. for this, there's no where else to go but R&M's. internationally acclaimed and competitively priced. cebu wouldn't be cebu were it not for its dried mangoes. bottom line, i will return to cebu to eat cebu lechon! hear that, james?