Sisigan sa Talisay is not even its official or marketed name,
and I don’t know if it even has one. A
friend who brought me there only called it as such because sisig is what he and
his friends eat there all the time. All
I know is that I was pleasantly and deliciously surprised by my first visit to
this place.
The oft repeated adage “don’t judge the book by its cover”
is relevant but not exactly applicable to this story simply because the place,
from 2pm to before 5pm, does not even look like a restaurant, or even a store
that you would vaguely suspect as a turo-turo.
In fact, if you don’t know someone who knows the place, and if you don’t
ask locals for its location then you can pass by it over and over and you can’t
be faulted for not finding it at all.
Sammy, my friend has been boasting of this place for some
time already. Because he is known to
find anything that he can eat delicious, I did not really have high
expectations about the food. I was more looking
forward to sharing a bike ride with him, a newbie.
Sammy and I arrived there a good 30 minutes before 5pm. As I said there’s not much visual cues to give
you an inkling that the place is a highly recommended food stop. It resembles more an abandoned concrete house
with a small frontage that is lined by concrete tables paired with concrete
benches crudely constructed to look like calesa seats with wheel armrests. Overhead is a tall kamias tree with mature fruits
about to fall on its own; some already did and are squished flat on the ground
by footfalls. To the side of the house
are several mini bamboo huts that look like they are dangerously close to
collapsing on unwary customers.
The house itself was dark and you wouldn’t know that it is
inhabited if not for an old man wearing an oversized shirt and cargo shorts
coming in and out of the very open front door.
He was stocking his display counter with one steaming dish after another,
pork adobo swimming in its own fat, fried chicken wings with signs of chili
flakes, rebosado, pakbet, tapa and others.
They all looked and smelled tasty, but we were there for the sisig.
The old man informed us that he was preparing the sisig
last, but he offered us an appetizer, what he called seafood salad, a special
dish that he only serves on Fridays. A plate of salad won’t ruin our appetite if it’s good, and at P40 a serving, wouldn’t
hurt the pocket if it’s bad.
When the old man brought us his salad, I can’t help but
smile because it looked like something that can be served in a much more
expensive restaurant. The plating was
almost exquisite. A generous heap of
lettuce and tomato slices bordered an avocado fruit sliced in half which
contains, aside from its succulent flesh, an assortment of steamed shrimps,
tahong and squid. The salad is
accentuated by a simple mayonnaise/ketchup dressing sprinkled with sesame seeds
and balanced off by freshly squeezed calamansi and a hint of ginger shreds.
The salad did not last long and soon Sammy was spooning remnants
of the dressing and leftover morsels into his mouth as we awaited our main
order. My taste buds’ first encounter
left me with skyrocketing expectations.
By then it was almost 5pm and customers slowly began
trickling in, some by car, others by foot.
It was obvious that this barangay’s watering hole has already built
quite a reputation even to non-locals.
The sisig came, sizzling, hot and aromatic, followed shortly
by two plates, each with four mounds of rice rolled in some orange concoction.
Believe it or not, and I can’t believe it at first, each plate of rice costs
only P10.
I thought the rice was too much for one sitting. But when I stirred in a few bits of the sisig
with a spoonful of rice into my mouth I realized that the first bite should be
followed immediately by another, then another.
Soon, I was looking at an almost empty plate which would be a sin if I
left it that way. So I diligently
scraped the little sisig left on the sizzling plate and merged them in my mouth
with the last remaining rice.
The meal was heavy and a bit early for dinner. But it was satisfying, fun, and an adventure
that is worth doing all over again, and is certainly a great deal what with the
measly P128 that we have to shell out for such a flavorful meal. I’m pretty sure that the other dishes in the
display counter are equally good, but they have to wait for another visit.
The ride home was slower because Sammy, the newbie, felt the
added weight in his every stroke of the pedal.
But we were not in a hurry. When
you’ve just had a beautiful meal, you would want to take it slow.
There are two Talisays in Lipa; one is beside Taal Lake and
is known as the gateway to Taal Volcano, the other is at the footstep of the
Malarayat mountain range – this is where we had our sisig.
No comments:
Post a Comment