Rediscovering Pangasinan through Food

Pangasinan is known for its beautiful sceneries and nature’s wonders: from cave systems, white sand beaches, islands, falls to its unique and delectable selection of foods.

This January, I was lucky to be one of the few people to experience and taste the mouthwatering delicacies of Pangasinan, thanks to GBG Pangasinan and Dagupan!

GBG Pangasinan and Dagupan spearheaded the event entitled “Pangasinan Food Tour 2014”. The goal of this event is to discover the unique foods offered in the province in preparation for the Pangasinan Food Mapping scheduled on the 1st quarter of the year.

The tour is a 3-day event; it started on January 10, Friday. Alcala was the first stop wherein the locality demonstrated the process of Veggie noodle production. The Veggie Noodle Processing Plant is a project of LGU Alcala for their women entrepreneurs.

They also prepared the famous Filipino delicacy called pancit, and spaghetti made up of veggie noodles which we savored after the demo.And all were all delicious. You won’t even recognize there were vegetables in it, so I recommend it to those parents who has problem feeding their children with vegetables.

After Alcala, we went to Laoac, the home of the tasty tupig, sticky rice logs with coconut cream. Aside the famous tupig, we also tasted the different flavors of fresh milk offered by Laoac’s dairy farm, in which we’ve gotten head to head with the cows that came from Australia.

On our second day, everybody was feeling kind of stuffed already because of the amazing food selection. We started the tour by celebrating with the Pozzorubians on their annual Patupat festival, then immediately proceeded to Mangaldan.

Everyonewent salivating when Ms.Joan started cooking the tapa, one of Cela’s Meat products, (the first destination in Mangaldan), because its aroma was really inviting.In fact, it is the best tapa I ever tasted yet!

After the treat from Cela’s, we went to Romana’s, a peanut brittle retailer, to try some of their sweets.We were already full at the time, but it didn’t stop us from munching in their goods.

Our lunch was big heartedly spent at Kuya Max’Restogrilllocated in Lucao Dist., Dagupan City. Sir Maximo Tan, the owner of the alternative restaurant, let us try his top sellers.First was the refreshing drink concoction called, frozen lemonade, also featured in Phillipine Daily Inquirer. Next was his special pigar-pigar made in imported Angus beef. We were also served with different seafood dishes that are proudly Dagupan.

Don Armandos and Don Vitos Pizza were our next stop for Calasiao. And let me just say, I can’t get enough of their Bangus sinigangsa Buko and Don Vito’s Special pizza. Jech’s, which was a 10 minute- ride away,offered lengua and pancit which I openly recommending for everyone to try.

Our last destination on that day was Rudy Jing’s Eatery which offered clams, inihaw na hito (catfish) andBangus (milkfish), and other seafood dishes, but before going there, we visited Binmaley’s seafood manufacturing area and tasted some of their product samples such as: Siomai Bbangus, Tocino Bangus, Longganisa Bangus, and Shanghai Bangus.

Yoly’s Garden Grill and Resto was our first stop for the last day of the tour. Madam Yoly, the proud owner demonstrated on how they cook their signature dish, the veggie tempura. The tour ended at the famous BangsalLechonand Seafood Restaurant in Binmaley, where they served us they’re 2 boodle dishes, the Sigay boodle and the Chinese boodle.

This was definitely an experience worth keeping and remembering.

I am looking forward on the next Pangasinan Food tour.