dampa sa macapagal

The Philippines is an archipelago of approximately 7,000 islands, though only about 2,000 of these are inhabited. Surrounded by water, seafood is extremely cheap here. I actually rarely take advantage of that when I’m here since I don’t like to eat fish. When I first returned to the Philippines in 1998 (13 years after immigration to the US), my family and I went to a sutukil (short for sugba, tuwa, kilaw, meaning seafood that is grilled, cooked in a gingery clear soup, or soaked in vinegar) in Cebu, where you buy some fresh seafood at the market then have it cooked right there. At that time, I actually just ate some grilled pork. However, when I was here a couple of years ago, we had bought big prawns in Palawan, and they were really cheap. So, I knew I wanted to do that again this time around. You know how expensive prawns are in the US, so I am going to make myself sick with prawns (and maybe crab, though I am crabbed out from all the blue crabs I ate before I left the DC area) while I’m here.


Manila has its own version of sutukil called dampa. A dampa is a small shack or hut and, originally, there were dampas along the coast, near where the fishermen dropped off their catch. On Saturday afternoon (March 15), we went to dampa sa Macapagal , also known as Seaside Macapagal Boulevard, a reclamation area near Manila Bay.

We bought a kilo of prawns for P360 (almost $8) and a kilo of pork belly for P160 (almost $4). We then went to Aling Tonya's, one of the airconditioned restaurants that do the cooking. We had half the prawns cooked in spicy garlic butter and the other half made into tempura, while we had the pork belly grilled. With cooking charges, rice, and drinks, we spent about P800 (almost $20).