Kalami Cebu! - A Gastronomic Guide to Cebu

I love exploring my city late at night to look for food.  In a way, I believe that in any city in the world some of the best local food comes past your bedtime.  While many are asleep, I am having an awesome food trip.  One of my recent discoveries is the super yummy Bakagan of Mandaue.  If you ask your well-to-do Cebuano foodie friends, what Bakagan is, the question will probably be returned to you.  Well, my short definition of Bakagan is that it is a soup dish made with the skull of the pig boiled for hours.  This dish is characterized by a gingery broth with pulled pork-like meat that is very tender.   Bakagan is perfect during the rainy season or after a drinking session.

We recently celebrated Earth Day.  I have seen many people posting about ending plastic pollution and maybe, on that day many people refuse to use plastic.  As for my contribution on this topic, I would like to share my experience the last time I went to the beach.  As a food blogger, I discovered the favorite snacks of Filipinos or let say Cebuanos by picking up plastic trash at the beach.

kala In the past year, there have been many Milk Tea and Coffee Shop places/stalls that opened in Cebu.  It comes from all around the world.  Beverage brands from Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Sri Lanka have invaded Cebu.  This weekend a Tea brand from Macao has opened in SM Seaside City Cebu.  Macao Imperial Tea has a lot of interesting offerings that can surely quench the Cebuanos' thirst for sweet drinks.

I am not a picky eater and I love eating local food even the bizarre ones.  Bisaya YouTube sensation Jomie Hospital told me that we have to do a challenge as part of his 12 challenges of Christmas.   I decided to make him eat some of the bizarre local foods that I enjoy eating.  Jomie is quite picky and that is where all the fun began.

In the past year, I have been spending a lot of time in hotels and restaurants.   One thing I noticed is that there are only a few hotels that put local food front and center.  The first time that a hotel became my resource for local cuisine was last year when I stayed at Hotel Salcedo in Vigan where I got educated on Ilocano Cuisine.  In Cebu, the hotel that could really teach tourists about local food is Cebu Parklane International Hotel.

In the 3rd blog post on #TheSustainableDiner Series, we are featuring Mangga Cafe.  At first glance, you might think that this cafe is just an ordinary cafe serving baked goodies with mangoes but you will be in awe once you know their story.  You see, Mangga Cafe serves bread, tea, coffee, and cakes that are made from Mango Flour.   Mango flour is made by processing discarded mango seeds.  Those mango seeds that we usually just throw away gets transformed into delicious food.  It is Food to Waste to Food. I have eaten at a lot of cafes in my life and this is just one of those that I want to heavily promote.

After joining #TheSustainableDiner forum organized by WWF-Philippines, I concluded one of the best ways to help their project is to promote local food and slow food on my blog and vlog.  I have always been a fan of local delicacies since I grew up in the province during the time when fast food was not yet popular.  I am actually a bit sad that many local food bloggers mostly write about fancy stuff and trendy restaurants.   In some ways, I was guilty of the same practice. I realized that it is time for some changes in my blog and I think one of the biggest causes that I will support will be promoting local food.  5 Good Reasons to Promote Local Food It is beneficial to the economy The people selling local delicacies like balut get eggs from local farmers.  Their children go to local schools.  Their money is spent mostly in the community.  The vendors buy cellphone load and even eat at local eateries or buy ingredients at ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was one of the foodies invited by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines to be part of the Sustainable Dining Forum.  The aim of the forum was to raise awareness on mindful production and consumption of food.  I realized that as a consumer and a blogger, I can do my part in helping the program achieve its goals.  I am now writing a series of blog posts promoting #TheSustainableDiner program because I believe that it is a worthy cause to support.  For the first post of the series, I will give a few reasons why I will not do the Spicy Noodle Challenge and how it relates to the WWF-Philippines Sustainable Dining Program.