Skip to main content

Sooo Pinoy in Iloilo at Emilion Modern Filipino Cuisine


Ilonggo specialties welcomed the Sooo Pinoy Foodie Team as the Roadhouse where Emilion Modern Filipino Cuisine was located. I remember the famous Chef Gene Gonzales coming to Iloilo years back to launch the newest offerings of Emilion. From then on, the restaurant has enjoyed the Ilonggo patronage because of its affordable price and authentic Ilonggo and Pinoy flavour. 
I was part of Sooo Pinoy, Food Trip na Pilipinas! which is set to visit 300 restaurants in 10 key regions/areas all over the Philippines and Iloilo is the first food stop . The goal of the Food Trip is to show that Filipino dishes per region have different identities based on the culture, lifestyle and history of the area.  The food trip also aims to show that there are many Filipino recipes from different regions of the Philippines, each having its own specialty that has to be recognized for the unique flavor it adds to the Filipino Cuisine.
As the second restaurant on our second day, Emilion has prepared the very typical Ilonggo specialty – Laswa (topmost photo). There’s nothing “malandi” about this dish for it’s just stewed vegetables with seafood, that time – shrimps. I almost grew up with laswa as we have a backyard vegetable garden at home. But now, all these are just available at the market, just ask for a laswa mix and you’ll be given saluyot, okra, squash and string beans among others. It’s like the Ilocano’s dinengdeng but much simpler as it is just stewed with salt as seasoning. A perfect partner for fried meat or fish.
Emilion also showcased their  Dinugu-an and Puto which are perfect snacks. They have this daily afternoon snack buffet that includes this combo plus a host of other Filipino snacks like pancit and native delicacies. For only PhP99, it’s a very affordable snack buffet that already includes bottom less drinks. Now that’s really affordable! 
And there’s KBL – kadyos, baboy, langka which is my favorite Ilonggo dish. It starts with grilled pork hocks or just even regular meat, and then it has unripe jackfruit and the kadyos beans. These beans are very well known across Western Visayas but almost “alien” to other regions. It is characterized by its dark violet color which also turns the broth somewhat pale purple.

The broth has hints of sourness but not like sinigang. Thanks to an endemic souring fruit we Ilonggos call batwan. It grows in clusters in trees like big grapes and can be found only in Western Visayas. But they are available in pureed form sold in bottles during food fairs. They can be also used in another Ilonggo dish called pinamalhan – a paksiw made dry.
The food trip at Emilion showcased how the Ilonggo food scene offers very affordable yet sumptuous offerings. From local dishes to Filipino staples, it has a lot to offer even to those with discerning palates. Truly, it was a Sooo Pinoy visit at Emilion Modern Filipino Cuisine.

Filipinos are encouraged to join and support the Sooo Pinoy movement, a partnership between Unilever Food Solutions and the Department of Tourism, and go on a gastronomic adventure that both fills the stomach and enriches our awareness of our own identity.   To know more about the campaign, food lovers are invited to like the Sooo Pinoy page on Facebook and follow @SoooPinoy on Twitter

Popular posts from this blog

An Ilonggo favorite - Valenciana

Found in almost all occasions like fiesta, birthdays, reunions and others, Ilonggos really love valenciana because most if not all have grown accustomed of having it in special gatherings at home.  A complete " go, grow and glow " dish because it has the carbohydrates, protein and vitamins and minerals in just one spoonful, Valenciana is really an " occasional dish ".  Here's the recipe for Valenciana

Ultimate Ilonggo Favorite: KBL Kadyos, Baboy, Langka

K.B.L. or Kadyos, Baboy, Langka is the ultimate favorite dish of most Ilonggos. It is also one of the most missed native dishes as kadyos and the souring ingredient, batwan , are hard to find when outside of the Ilonggo region.  Basically, it is boiled/stewed pork dish owing its "deliciousness" to the combination of the soft and tender pork, the tamed sourness of  batwan  and the  malinamnam na sabaw .  One of the "secrets" of the malinamnamn na sabaw , is the fact that the pork, whether just the plain meat or pata (hocks) are first grilled or broiled. This gives the broth a rather smoky taste that makes it more appetizing.. Learn how to make the Ilonggo dish KBL (Kadyos, Baboy, at Langka) with the recipe below. Ingredients 1 kilo Pata (pork hocks) or pork cubes, GRILLED and sliced into bite size pieces  1 unripe Jack fruit, cubed 2 cups pigeon pea (kadyos) 6-8 pieces batwan fruit  (or tamarind powder) 1 piece pork broth cube (

Easy Century Tuna Recipes

If you're looking for simple, easy  and delicious Century Tuna recipes online, congratulations, you've found it right here! How about spicy tuna sisig or tuna sinigang ? Maybe stir fried tuna with pickles or just yang chow fried rice .  I love Century Tuna from its flakes in oil variety, the spicier the better, but when I discovered the versatility of its solid variant, it became an obsession. At first I was just into the usual tested recipes; pasta and sandwich filling, but then it got simpler – I just eat it straight from the can! Usually with a piece of bread or an apple. I just add a few drops of vinegar to spice it up a bit. Then came the experiments. Yup I got tired of that habit that one day, I decided to test my skills in the kitchen. Serendipity, you might call it yet most of them turned into good recipes that I have shared now and then. Satisfying my Palabok cravings had me experiment on this recipe on the spot. With Century Tuna in lieu of the usu

Takway

The gabi (taro) is just one of those plants which is edible from "roots to tops". The most popular of which is the tuber part which is used in a variety of dishes and mostly in combination with coconut milk. Its leaves, of course, is the main ingredient of a Bicol specialty, laing . It is dried then chopped and sauteed with other ingredients including, again, coconut milk. Then there is takway . The local term for its tendrils/runner, that part which is torn between being a stem or a root for it neither grows upwards nor downwards - it grows sideways . Scraped off of its outer skin, takway is often a key ingredient in vegetable dishes like laswa and the gabi tuber with coconut milk and local snails know as bago-ngon . It is also popular when cooked adobo style with guinamos , the local bago-ong . It is very popular in the region that even big supermarkets sell takway in style - cleaned and plastic wrapped in styro with some additions to make it easier to prepare.

A native delicacy called Inday-inday

Now you may ask, what is Inday-Inday ? It's another repetitive-feminine named native delicacy that is made from rice like its more popular sister - baye-baye . While the latter is has its own original flavor and make, inday-inday is actually a combination of two well loved native delicacies - muasi ( palitaw ) and bukayo . But the muasi portion is not the the usual palitaw  recipe for the it's more firm and gummy (I don't know the English term for kid-ol ). Actually its more like a hardened kutsinta and this makes it more to my liking since I'm not really fond of muasi in the first place.  And its not quite easy to find inday-inday in the market today, though I've seen and tried it in Sabor Ilonggo stalls but their's is more like suman latik for the based is ibos -like. Ibos is malagkit rice boiled in gata which is called suman in Tagalog. Despite the uncertainty for its nomenclature (I've read that inday-inday is just plain pal