Tiendesitas – A Different Taste of Delicacies 0
One of the things that makes a vacation ‘GOOD’ is the fact that you have the opportunity to get along with different other cultures. This basically includes some wide choices of food. There may be a lot of restaurants offering different delicacies from other cultures, but the best restaurants are run by natives and the ingredients used are indigenous, original and authentic. Being a Filipino, I would definitely say that our own version of oriental cooking is a great competitor against all others. May it be main courses or just simple snacks.
My cousin has an American boyfriend, and he just arrived a few days ago. Now, she decided that we will bring him for lunch to a restaurant that offers purely Filipino food. I’ve asked my friends which restaurant would be best for this, and they said Tiendesitas offer good food. Our stay was just purposely made to fetch his boyfriend and go home to Iligan soon after we finish our business in Manila.
From our hotel, we took a taxi, with the traffic of course because it was 11:30am, the drive took 30 minutes to Tiendesitas. We arrived there and luckily, there was one more seat, and I figured it out that it was really meant for us. The place was full of buzzing, talking and the sound of spoon and forks hitting the plates.
But in spite of all the noises, it was the overwhelming smell of the food that is most distinguishable above all. We took our seats, and the waitress came to our table and led us to the very big buffet. Indeed, they have lots of Filipino-authentic dishes coming from different local cultures around the Philippines.
We asked Beau (the name of my cousin’s American boyfriend) if what dish would he like, but he didn’t know what to choose so he lent us the opportunity in choosing which we thought was best. I chose my favorite dish, Kare-kare which is a particularly sensitive dish made up of either beef, tripe, oxtail or the combination of the three, some spices and a lot of peanut butter.
It may sound weird to find a lot of peanut butter in this dish, but it is the highlight of Kare-Kare. Then I picked Ginataang Kuhol, basically, “ginataan” means a dish with coconut milk, and kuhol is a species of edible snails. Then, I added to the list, a serving of Papaitan. Papaitan is beef stomach cooked with bile and other delicate spices.
Rice has always been a partner of almost all Filipino dishes, so a platter of cooked rice is included. For drinks, I ordered Madre de Cacao, it’s a chocolate drink made from freshly ground dry cacao seeds. Finishing our meal was a suman (a traditionally flavored rice cake wrapped in a banana leaf) and Puto Balanghoy (steamed cassava cake with coconut custard on top). It was such a filling lunch, and Beau is such an eater to have munched the last pile of rice on the platter, he said that we should come back here every time we are in manila.
Anyway, aside from the deliciously orange-colored crustaceans, barbecues are one of the favorites serve my family loves. I always enjoy that tasty smell of charcoal fire burning up to the fabulously flavored chicken thigh on a bamboo stick. Traditionally, barbecues are often partnered with rice and a sauce made from a mixture of soy sauce and vinegar. Personally, I like to add calamansi and chilies to the mix. What a toothsome pair.
Camiguin is the home of the Lanzones festival. Lanzones is the common term used by most Filipinos for the plant Lansium domesticum. It is a native fruit to the Philippines and many tropical countries of Asia. In Camiguin, it has been the best form of livelihood for centuries. As a fruit, Lazones is pale yellow when ripe and the meat inside is white. Some big pieces of the inside contain huge seeds but most small bits are seedless. It is a sweet fruit but the island of camiguin produces that sweetest Lanzones among all places in the Philippines. 
The Lanzones festival which happens every 3rd week of October, is an annual event made to commemorate the plentiful harvest. Headdresses, baskets, carriages and even capes are accented with Lanzones that makes the event more vibrant but the best things about the festival, are the facts that people living in Camiguin come together to dance, give thanks and celebrate the feast. 
Camiguin is an island of inland beauties. However, it also has beaches that could even match the beauty of other leading beaches in the Philippines like Boracay. Popularly, the white island is a small islet of white sands that shows up on the medium to low tide. It is 2 kilometers away from the nearest shore of Camiguin, and it is an amusing sight to witness.