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| San Miguel de Mayumo festivity with Hon. Mayor Marivee Mendez Coronel, town councilor Nica Santiago, the bloggers and heritage enthusiasts and Architect Ervin Garcia |
I recently had the best and tastiest sightseeing culinary and heritage tour, or a Food Trail Tour in San Miguel, Bulacan. On my recent
visit to the quaint town of San Miguel, where i had attended the San Miguel de Mayumo event, I not only got to experience delicious
local foods and delicacies, but also got to tour a growing mushroom farm and
watched several food demonstrations on how they do pickled papaya (achara),
cottage cheese (kesong puti), a well-loved rotiserrie (lechon manok)
patronized by the local for years, and even sweet pastillas (made from
carabao’s milk)—giving me such memorable experience.
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| The lovely smiles of the San Miguel youth |
I guess I was indeed lucky enough to be part of San Miguel
Bulacan’s Culinary and Heritage tour organized by Architect Ervin “Arki”
Garcia of Arki’s Grill in cooperation with Hon. Mayor Marivee Mendez Coronel
and other entrepreneurs. The said tour had given me a glimpse of the kind of
hospitality and warmth this town has for visitors and guests. So what makes the
town of San Miguel Bulacan worth your visit? Check out my many reasons why.
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I have said this so many times but I won’t mind
saying it again: I had never seen such amazing hospitality as I had experienced
here in San Miguel. I won’t elaborate much because it’s best to experience them
first-hand. But you could really feel the warmth of its people.
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| The San Miguel municipal hall was adorned with festive ornaments |
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The native delicacies and local foods: I’ve been
through the different foodie stops here and there are two things I’ve noticed,
one is that they DO NOT SCRIMP on INGREDIENTS, and two, they DON’T DO SHORTCUTS
here. Now, what do I exactly mean here? It means to say that no matter how difficult the process of making a dish, they
still do it manually and as naturally done as possible. Therefore, they prefer
not to make use of anything conveniently “instant” such as MSG and other
flavored seasoning. In fact, Sir Arki’s aunt Tita Lucila “Lucy”Payawal who is
in her mid-70’s painstakingly makes her famous native recipes even up to this
day. She manually does her pickled papaya and creates to-die-for Kalamay (sweet
glutinous sticky rice) with latik. She does heirloom recipes that’s worth
publishing and sharing in books. And she proudly says she does these with TLC.
“It’s not for everyone (what she does), because it requires not just patience
but hard work and extreme dedication as well,” explains Tita Lucy. She hopes
someday that she will be able to pass on the said legacy to younger generations
that’s why she has agreed to do the food demonstration despite her age. For
someone in her mid-70’s, I truly admire Tita Lucy’s strength and vigor. She still had that bunny energy in her that
may even rival that of a millenial’s.
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| A bottle of Achara or Pickled Papaya |
