House of Sans Rival

Spent four days, inclusive of a weekend, exploring the southern part of Negros Oriental, in the Visayas, on a child-friendly itinerary. Since my youngest has turned a year old and is already running, though awkwardly and still falls from time to time, I decided it was time to break my self-imposed vacation ban, after two years, and go island hopping.

Nothing too rigorous and too demanding as I had been used to, just a stretch of beach so the children can build sand castles, a grilled picnic among some mangroves, and an entire morning spotting dolphins.

The Dumaguete airport is the nearest access point to the places I wanted to cover, so the city of Dumaguete became our base. Though we stayed there for only one night, we crossed the city several times during our trip, and it was where we naturally ate more than half of our meals.

The House of Sans Rival, near the famed Rizal Boulevard, was one of the few restaurants we made sure to visit. The pastry shop gave rise to The House of Silvanas proliferating in the food courts of most malls in Metro Manila, specializing in silvanas and sambos, which are just really individual-sized sans rival cookies.

Sans Rival was established in 1977 in Dumaguete City. More than three decades later it is still managing a bustling operation in a cute shop done in blue, and serving pre-cooked meals during lunch and dinner hours.

During our visit the outlet was full-packed with people, ordering whole cakes or slices and eating lunch, even though it was still a full hour before noon. We decided to wait for a table while perusing the pastry showcase, taking tabs of what we wanted to sample.

The lunch set looked promising so we took an early meal. It was a good decision, as we enjoyed everything that we ordered, with good value for money. There were two choices for the main dish, accompanied by a bowl of potato salad.

Fish Almondine, fragrant with lemon-butter sauce

beef stew

The pastries, while not superbly outstanding, can hold their own compared with many pastry shops in Metro Manila. The ingredients used were not the finest, but they are of good quality, and they were all well-made. This is a bit of a wonder, actually, because not a slice went beyond Php30, with even some priced below Php20, yet in every bite you get something incredibly good.

More importantly, all the pastries that we sampled were very lightly sweetened, so that we were able to finish several without suffering sugar glut, and we left the shop full and satisfied, and in the mood for a leisurely walk along Rizal Boulevard before our flight back to Manila.

Cheese Brownie and Opera

Brazo de Mercedes

Silvana

And the sans rival? We nearly weren't able to sample it, as it wasn't displayed in the showcase cabinet. Good thing my companions had the sense to remember what we were there for, and promptly ordered a slice.

Like the rest of the pastries, this sans rival was light in sweetness, but big in flavor. Toasty, spongy meringue layers sandwiching good quality butter and bits of cashew nuts. A cake worthy of being the foundation for which a name, and a legacy, have been built.

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House of Sans Rival
Cakes & Pastries
1 San Jose Street
Dumaguete City
Tel. Nos. (635) 2254440, 2254393, 4229482

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For other posts like this, read The Featured Cakes in the
Cake of the Month series

Lechon for Recess

So school has started, and by this time I hope the kids had already adjusted to their new routines, if any, and more importantly to new teacher/s and classmates.

Stress for me is only just beginning, though. After the rigors of enrolment and the frantic preparation for school opening, not to mention the previous almost unresolved debate on where to enrol the child this year, comes the ten months of assignments, projects, fights with classmates, extra-curricular activities.

Getting a child to school, on time, with enough sleep, well-prepared, well-groomed, all assignments done, all materials secure in the bag, is a major logistical nightmare. The fact is aggravated in my case by my having to go to work two hours away from home every single day, so that stress levels are shooting up to the heavens by dawn, and by the time I arrive home all of us are ready to lie down with sleepiness and fatigue, assignments untouched.

Add to that the planning of the every day baon (food taken to school/office) and it becomes simply unmanageable. And a major headache when I find that sandwiches, or milk, sometimes remain untouched and brought home already spoiled. I get chills imagining my children spending the entire morning inside the classroom shaking with hunger, so that I've tried all the tricks in the book. Even, yes, packing up lechon (whole roasted pig) in their lunchboxes.

just look at that blistered skin

But my kids are not meat-eaters, growing up in my household. So they don't take to lechon seriously. But they do take to ingeniously shaped bread, getting a kick out of biting off faux heads, eyes, tails, feet.

The wonder of visual impact. Animal shaped bread, which I found in a bakery on the way to my son's school and in a bakery atop the Airmen's Mall in Villamor Air Base, don't taste spectacular, but no matter how huge each one is, they get finished before the school bell rings.


The attention to detail is impressive. Besides the almost natural coloring, the spikes and spines make me almost afraid to touch this crab. There is also a lobster, a crocodile and a fish. My son is requesting a mouse. I say eeewwwww.

The lechon, from Villamor, can be ordered to one's preference - filled with hotdogs, ham or bacon. Maybe Mang Tomas?

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The bakery selling lechon bread is on the 3rd floor of the Airmen's Mall. The Airmen's Mall is located beside the Villamor General Hospital, inside Villamor Air Base. Villamor Air Base is beside NAIA Terminal 3. To get to Airmen's Mall enter the gate beside the PAF Museum, which is just across the hospital. Ample parking in front of the hospital and the mall.

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Kee-Ann's Fried Siopao

Classes in all levels opened one week after another starting on the first day of June, which happened to be a Monday this year. So for the last few weeks mothers have been shopping and shopping upon receiving the list of things needed for their kids’ school year.

I’m lucky that I still have a preschooler who goes to a school which provides all materials. I only needed to supply personal toiletries and stuff, all bundled in a pastel paper-wrapped box – but all these things had been required last year, so I only needed to unearth them from oblivion in the always messy playroom.

As for my eldest – he’s starting grade school this year, but looking at the list of materials he needed I saw no reason to hype myself up and go shopping big time. Especially since the two kids received trolley bags stuffed with school things as gifts from an aunt, and previous uniforms can still be used (they have to be ordered from the school, anyway). So I just visited the nearest bookstore and assembled everything in a night or two.

But for other mothers out there who needed loads of notebooks, papers, pencils, bags, holders, scissors and arts crafts, and other school materials, plus uniforms, for several kids, it would have been quite economical to make a trip to the veritable shopping destination that is Divisoria.

It is during these times that vendors at Divi, for short, make a killing, getting the feel that everything is alright again with this world. No A (H1N1) pandemic, no freakish weather, no economic crisis. The same goes during the few weeks before All Saints’ Day, gaining momentum as Christmas approaches. And before school year ends by March/April.

Divi holds and sells all things. And I mean all things. One street, or mall, specializing in one thing or another. It is the ultimate cheapo’s destination – everything can be had at unbelievably low prices, the products the same quality as those being sold in most generic malls.

It is quite interesting, too. Various trinkets and gadgets, which are guaranteed to malfunction in a day or two, abound.

But I don’t go to Divi to buy made things. I buy things there to make things. Materials for party favors and decor, ingredients and containers for party food, textiles for sewing curtains, bedspreads, pillows, mantles, odds and ends for Christmas ornaments that I get a kick out of making every year.

So luckily I avoid the mob, which can be monstrous and quite unpredictable, during peak seasons, except for Christmas shopping. I could go ahead and buy holiday favors in September or October, along with birthday party materials and candle-making paraphernalia, but products are also seasonal, and you’d be hard-pressed for choices when shopping out-of-season.

Not to mention the moolah allotted for seasonal shopping are also given seasonally. Which is important, because I treat any trip to Divisoria as an opportunity that should be maximized.

I don’t go there regularly, because it is such a harrowing, back-breaking experience managing the congested alleys under the sun, or rain (with mud to boot), people carrying piles of boxes and loaded pedicabs jostling for every inch of space anywhere and everywhere, that I usually need months to condition myself and months to recover afterward.

Of course the blame is partly mine, since I have to maximize due to the irregularity of my trips, I tend to buy much, much more than I could actually carry home. So in addition to whatever I go there for, I include kilos and kilos of fruits and vegetables, dessert ingredients, household items, toys, ponytails and other girl stuff for my daughters, and whatever are laid out on the pavements that attract my attention, which are usually a lot.

Cheapskate that I am, I take the view that bringing a car would negate the savings I would accumulate from buying at Divisoria because of the fuel expense, plus finding a parking space is an additional stress factor.

It is best to go to Divisoria early in the morning, when the traffic is still manageable and the crowds are still thin. But no matter how early I go I end up trolling the alleys and stalls til evening, which is when it really gets interesting (the regular stalls close at 6PM but vendors lay out ingenious stuff along the roads by dark). By that time I am ready to collapse, with sheer exhaustion from lugging loaded plastic bags, and hunger. Because, frankly, there is no decent eating place in and around Divisoria.

The few fastfood joints are scattered too far away from one another that I usually think it is not worth walking there with blistered palms from all the bags and an aching back from my huge backpack.

But a few years into my Divisoria treks (started in earnest after I got married), I had learned to manage shoppping the whole day, with fried siopao.

laid out and ready to cook

Specifically, Keeann's fried siopao, virtually a street food made, cooked and vended in a small stall in the heart of the shopping district. I had first seen, and bought, ready-to-eat fried siopao walking along the length of Ongpin Street in Chinatown, but I had since discovered that Keean's freshly-made on the premises fried siopao is a great way to tide me over one whole day of shopping, right within the location of the stalls I frequent.

It is not the usual asado-filled siopao, with large chunks of pork fat, but a soft bun containing lean ground pork sauteed with chives and finely chopped jicamas. Crunchy, a bit sweetish with salty undertones. The siopao I prefer.

The fried tag gives the siopao dough a sightly burnt bottom, but otherwise it is not much different from the common steamed buns. I suspect some form of seasoning - light soy sauce, perhaps - is added to the sauteed filling, so that the steamed buns are saucy enough and do not need the requisite siopao sauce.

steaming merrily away

At P15 a piece, the fried siopao is so Divisoria, cheap and Chinese, but filling and satisfying. I usually buy one mid-morning, stop by again by mid-afternoon for several more to bring home, gobbling another piece on the road while I contemplate the things I bought, and the things I will make of them. And plotting the next trip to Divi.

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Keean's Fried Siopao

• 665 Sta. Elena Street
  Binondo, Manila
  Tel. No. (632) 3093036
• 1670 C.M. Recto Avenue
  (Nice Hotel)
  Tel. No. (632) 3091498

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The Best Pasalubong Packaging

Pili brittle rounds - pili nuts cooked with sugar and formed into discs - that come semi-wrapped in dried, large pili leaves, four pieces to each leaf.

Handy, economical, but best of all environmentally correct, and impressively presentable. Informative, too, for those of us who didn't have the privilege of growing up seeing pili trees in our backyards, and who won't likely see any tree, or even just a leaf, on a tourist trip to Bicol, where these trees abound.

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Fruits in Between Seasons

Some fruits abound for such a short time that I tend to see them as "fruits in between seasons," because they appear at the tail-end of summer and disappear just as the rainy season is in earnest.


Lychees are imported and so are expensive, leaving gaping holes in my pocket because my elder daughter can finish a kilo of them in a day. Those we've had this year are small with big seeds, so the flesh is relatively lesser, but so, so sweet.


Siniguelas, which my baby has taken to, and duhat, though, are quite cheap, mainly because these can all be harvested from the neighbors' backyard trees. A kilo of each fruit is about Php40, and would yield a lot of the berries, which could be more than enough for sensitive teeth, even if shared (the fun of eating these are in sharing in the bounty).


Huge makopa, freshly harvested from the vendor's own tree beside her house. Freshness of the fruit is critical when eating it, because fruit that had been sitting on the counter for days will have the texture of cotton.

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Rowena's Cheese Tarts

On our way to Tagaytay last weekend, along the Sta. Rosa-Tagaytay road, a companion commented that there are some mean cheese tarts at Rowena's.

I was still groggy from the nap I had just indulged myself in during the ride, so I just filed that information in my mental archives. It didn't get a good reception there, though, as I've grown wary, and weary, of the quality of goods from roadside pasalubong shops. And about cheese tarts - let's just say I'm not particularly enamored of them.

Leaving Tagaytay we took the same route going back, and I was indifferent. Normally, I would be breathlessly be on the alert, fearing to just even wink for fear of going past a food shop I intended to drop by.

But I hadn't been too keen on getting some cheese tarts then, as the back of the vehicle was already crammed with beef, fruits and vegetables, plus some thousands worth of marigolds in a variety of colors, ylang-ylang saplings, eucalyptus plants, four seasons and a variety of herbs.

The driver, though, ceremoniously eased the vehicle onto Rowena's patio, so we had no choice but to file out into the afternoon heat and into the store, so as not to disappoint him.

Getting into the store was a bewildering bit of experience. Maybe it was sunstroke, but I think it was the cacophony of products from all over that greet the customer upon entering, when all I was expecting was tarts.

It was dissonant, finding Virgie's mango tarts and barquillos from Cebu, BongBong's piaya and biscocho from Bacolod, lengua de gato and chocolate crisps from Baguio, pastillas from Bulacan, turrones from Pampanga, and a whole slew of un-local goodies, that for a minute I wondered if I were still in Tagaytay, or in a duty-free shop equivalent of balikbayan goldmine.

Needless to say, I had difficulty finding the actual, busted tarts. It didn't help that the youngish crew manning the cafe at the other end of the room were snotty, and a throng of people were inspecting goodies here and there. Several chillers were leaning on a wall, and that's where I turned my attention to, but the first thing I saw were boxes of tocino del cielo, those mini milk-less custards that's a Kapampangan specialty.

I turned back to the counter - the other half, at the back of the showcase cabinet for the cafe, where pink-and-green boxes were stacked on every available space. Opening a box I caught a view of some anemic mini cheese tarts with strawberry and blueberry topping, at six pieces per box.

I managed to engage a manang in between customers, and asked what the specialty was. It was the cheese tarts alright, at Php160 per box. Despite throwing thousands of money on plants grown in the highlands climate and which were guaranteed to perish in my hands, I wasn't about to part with Php160 then for some anemic tarts.


Besides, the toppings were selfishly scanty, just a drop each in the middle of the tart. So I asked if they retailed, and I was directed back to the cafe. I felt I had to buy something, so as not to go back to a dismayed driver.

So I held my patience, and managed to buy a piece each of the strawberry and blueberry cheese tart, plus a chocolate version, because I, like everybody else on the planet, cannot resist anything chocolate.

One piece cost Php35, considerably more expensive than buying a box, wherein a tart is 24% cheaper. But I thought it was a good deal, rather than spending for a box that might get thrown in the trash bin later.

I had been relieved to get back to the van. It was an exhausting ordeal, managing to buy something at Rowena's.

And the tarts? The chocolate was what I threw away, looking so appetizingly chocolatey but not tasting anything remotely chocolate. The cheese tarts were promising - they were actually mini cheesecakes, with strawberry and blueberry topping. The cheesecake was good - satisfyingly salty and creamy.

But the toppings weren't enough. The photos in their website (which I found only now) show topping that covers the entire cheesecake, but not the actual ones, as in the photo above. And I still have a problem with the anemic crust, which was a bit gummy, and was tasteless. If it were made of buttery, crumbly shortcrust, or an oatmeal-based, spiced one, the cheese tart, with more topping, would have been incredible.

But it seems I had been misled. The website showcases the tarts, not the cheese tarts. Tarts in buko (young coconut), mango, apple, ube (purple yam) and pineapple. Now I didn't get to sample those. I was led to the cheese tarts. I would have been more interested had I known Rowena's were known for their fruit tarts.

So, next time. That is, if I could muster the effort, and energy, to go back to that discordant shop.

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Rowena's Tarts
#152 Brgy Francisco,
Tagaytay City
Tel: (+46) 860 2481
Mobile: +63920 9080318
Email: rowenas_tarts@yahoo.com
Website

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Mahogany Market

Stayed for a weekend night in the "ridge city" of Tagaytay (it is believed to be sitting on the lips of a caldera, though), going there after office hours on Friday and leaving at check-out time Saturday, after enjoying the uncharacteristically clear sights of Taal Lake and the country's smallest volcano.

On the way home we dropped by the Mahogany market, known for fresh beef. Indeed, all stalls sported assorted beef cuts, still warm, some with the cow head on display to prove authenticity (sometimes unscrupulous vendors substitute beef with carabao meat).


Tenderloin was at Php220, which was real cheap, while boned cuts ideal for soup was just Php160 per kilo.

The fruits and vegetable section was overrun by the smell of ripe langka, though not as ripe as I would have preferred (they were still a bit anemic to me).

The famous Tagaytay pineapples, tiny but very sweet.

I was so happy to spot basketfulls of green bananas, humongous and fragrant, selling for only Php50. It is so difficult to find these bananas in the areas I regularly inhabit, so it had been a blissful find.

But no matter how happy I was, I can only eat so much bananas. They are rapidly ripening, so an aunt-in-law thought it best to make them into a salad. It consisted of thinly sliced green bananas, chopped Fuji apples and segments of pomelo, mixed with a little condensed milk, served very cold (almost frozen). It's a bit weird, but it's nice and refreshing, with a mixture of varying textures and contrasting tastes.

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