Balaw Balaw Restaurant: An Extraordinary Fare

Crescent Moon Cafe Culinary Experience
Angono Petroglyphs
Art Houses: Nemiranda and Blanco Museums
Balaw Balaw Restaurant: An Extraordinary Fare

So maybe the exotic menu of this restaurant is perhaps the weirdest selection I've ever come across up until now, but that's what makes the Balaw Balaw Restaurant a great attraction.

The Balaw Balaw restaurant is pretty close to Nemiranda's Art House and in fact, when we came, Nemesio Miranda was presiding over a meeting with (I presume) other artists. Perhaps the Atelier he founded? We were too shy to come forward and talk to him. We recognized him from the photos we saw at his Art House.

The wild boar and breaded frog legs dishes. They don't look scary at all.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised but really, to find out that the restaurant doubled as a folk art museum, brought our art tour to a whole new level. That meant every single place we visited today was an art stop, even the restaurants. Lol.

The owner and artist of the restaurant is Perdigon Vocalan, now deceased. His paintings and sculptures can be found mostly on the second floor of the restaurant.

I wanted to try the creepiest dish (in my opinion anyway), which was the uok, or beetle larvae, but my companions weren't as adventurous. So we ended up ordering the wild boar, breaded frog legs and a minaluto, which were decidedly less risky than the other exotic dishes. A minaluto is a huge basket with everything on it: pork, salted eggs, chicken, fish, squid, clams, shrimp, various vegetables and a huge mountain of yellow fried rice on a bed of banana leaves. A single order of this was enough to satisfy our group, which was composed of seven people. I found it to be really delicious.

The delicious minaluto

Other exotic dishes were frogs marinated in wine, crickets, cow butt and balls, aborted duck eggs (balut) in banana leaves, and freshwater eel. I'd like to return one day to try one of these.

This final destination ended our Angono Art Tour teambuilding activity and we went home with a higher sense of cultural knowledge about the Philippines.

Balaw Balaw Specialty Restaurant: Folk Art 16 Dona Justa Street, Angono Rizal
Contact No: 651-0110