Kalami Cebu! - A Gastronomic Guide to Cebu

 Call me old-fashioned but when it comes to food that I crave for when I live away from Cebu, Dim Sum from Harbour City is on my personal Top Ten list.  I just consider steamed rice with some spring rolls and siomai as the best lunch option on some days.  This love goes back to over 25 years  ago when I discovered this type of food in the old Ding Qua Qua near STC in Mango Avenue.  Even up to now, I always associate this type of food to good times with family and friends.

It has been quite a while since I have last eaten Steamed Rice .  I am not talking about cooked rice. Steamed Rice has a different meaning for Cebuanos.  Steamed rice is the ultimate rice dish found in dim sum places in Cebu.  The Cebuano favorite is made of fried rice topped with a rich sauce that has pork, shrimp, and peas.  A new dim sum place opened in Robinsons Cybergate and since I was craving for dim sum, I invited some of my workmates to eat at Tsim Sha Tsui.  

What's the best value eat-all-you-can restaurant in Cebu? One of my high school buddies celebrated his birthday recently and he wanted to meet some of the boys of our high school batch. We all wanted to eat something that reminded us of high school. Something we call "old school".  Way back in the 1990's, one of the most popular restaurants that we frequently ate at during the weekends was  Ding Qua Qua .  Ding Qua Qua's location then was beside Rustan's in Mango Avenue.  The place was known for its dim sum.  The most popular dishes were steamed rice, siomai, lumpia shanghai (spring rolls), and hakaw. Steamed Rice is not your ordinary rice, this is a specialty. E very Cebuano knows what steamed rice means.

Cebu is like the dimsum capital of the Philippines.   Cebuanos were lucky to have the Ding Qua Qua (Kokseng) Group which introduced them to the wonderful world of dimsum.  I was introduced to dimsum way back in my elementary days at the old Ding Qua Qua in now what is known as Mango Square.