Manila looks poorer when the bounty from the sea is difficult to find here. Think diwal and scallops. But only for this week, the sea bounty will be available at Mandarin Oriental Manila’s Paseo Uno.

The familiar face in Paseo Uno is Pauline Banusing, indefatigable promoter of Ilonggo cuisine. Some months ago, at another venue, she cooked batchoy, binacol and chicken inasal.

But what drew people on the first day to Paseo Uno was diwal, also called angel wings and described by Claude Tayag as  “diwalicious.”

Sometimes I  think that  because it’s rare, then food seems to be more delicious. But seafood we get from the weekend market like oysters from Bulacan, clams and bagongon (black conical shells) cooked with coconut milk and fiddlehead fern (pako) for me are as good.

Now in season, the diwal meat is fat so that it inflates when cooked. Perhaps the most inflated diwal I had was at Breakthrough restaurant in Iloilo.

If word gets out about the availability of diwal at Mandarin, then you can bet that the shellfish

will be the first to go in the buffet and it may take a while before being replenished.

Pauline’s debut as featured cook of an Iloilo food festival was also at Mandarin. She told me then that she had to learn from specialists in her home province the techniques and even the right ingredient brands to use.

We had a good laugh as she told me the batchoy of one good cook had monosodium glutamate (MSG) but it only had to be “Marca Pating.”

She had something special for the opening lunch, lobsters. Grilled perfectly, the red roe was still soft. Pauline said she bought those directly from the man who harvests only when asked.

You can imagine the bargain price for a kilo when you know how much lobsters are sold to tourists like us by smart vendors who pace through the beaches of renowned resorts.

The Iloilo food fest, however, will only be until Sunday. What should also be interesting is a cooking class by Pauline Banusing who will teach Ilonggo dishes—chicken inasal, batchoy, kadios-baboy-langka (KBL), prawns with crab fat, Ilonggo kilawin na tanguigue. The lesson price includes breakfast and lunch. For info and reservations call 7508888.

Food face-off

The National Food Showdown 2011 happened last weekend at World Trade Center. It was a venue for culinary competitions involving 52 culinary schools, some as far as Mindanao and the Visayas.

I was told that about 120 students from Ilocos Sur also attended the first day which had 5,000 guests who watched and participated.

Chefs from hotels and restaurants as well as teachers from the schools made up the professional contestants.

I’ve attended and judged many such contests through the years and have seen a vast improvement in the quality of the entries.

And there were times the students outshone the pros in both workmanship and creativity.

I was delighted that the judges, expats and our own chefs, acknowledge such good work this year by giving some of them the perfect score, earning for the competitor the gold with distinction medal.

While all the competitions are important, the much-awaited result was the winner of Chef Wars, which had finalists from Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao and the National Capital Region who came to the event to vie to be the best of the best.

This year belonged to NCR, with International School for Culinary Arts and Hotel Management and Marriott Hotel winning their respective heats.

It was a show, indeed, as students also made full use of their eight minutes of fame for the dessert flambé and flairtending contests by putting on costumes and displaying their dancing skills.

Though their entertainment skills were not counted in the scoring, you could tell that students take that as their fun portion by cheering on their schoolmates and screaming. That gives so much energy to the contest.

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